Parents who follow the Tiger parenting style are keen on high academic achievements for their children, no matter the circumstances.
A Tiger parent relies on raising the kids harshly so that kids can achieve their parents’ dreams even if the kids do not accept or like these dreams.
This style was mentioned in the book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom,” written by law professor Amy Chua, who describes her strict childhood spent living with two tiger parents who moved to the USA from China.
In this book, Amy Chua also describes how she implemented this style and became a tiger parent while raising her two daughters, who became successful in many things.
This parenting style is preferred by Asian families, where they have different customs and cultures, like giving respect to people, unlike Western cultures, where respect is earned.
In this article, we will discuss the following:
What is the tiger parenting style?
It is a style that resembles the authoritarian parenting style, in which parents have high expectations from their kids to listen to their orders and instructions blindly.
Tiger parenting style has the same high expectations, but tiger parents care about their children, like providing safety.
They also share being harsh in discipline and shaming if the kids fail to do the task they were asked to do.
These parents will control the lives of their children without considering their wishes because they think that they have more experience in life, and they will prioritize their kids getting high grades and studying more than socializing with friends, attending parties, or having fun in general.
This parenting style was used when old and poor East Asian countries realized that education was the only way to help them and their children have a brighter future.
“A Doctor in the House: The Memoirs of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad” is a book by Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia, in which he describes his poor childhood and his realization that a good education for every Malaysian citizen was the only way to make a strong country.
In fact, tiger parenting did exist a long time ago, but the term itself came to light when Professor Amy Chua mentioned it in her book back in 2011.
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Some tiger parenting examples
We can see clear examples of this style from some parents, such as:
- Tiger parents think highly of their kids, even if they have low IQ grades.
- Parents, especially Tiger moms, will shame their kids harshly if they get low grades in school.
- A tiger parent will set strict rules in the house, like studying for several hours a day without letting the child have any chance of socializing with other friends or practicing anything else.
- These parents will force their children to join a specific college without considering their wishes because they think that they know what benefits them.
- The parents are not easily satisfied with their children’s efforts, even if they do their best, because they think their children can do better.
- Tiger parents will do everything they can to ensure their kids get a certain level of education that meets their own standards.
- A Tiger parent will teach her children to not talk back to her and to listen blindly to her orders.
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Benefits of Tiger Parenting
As we can see from the examples, some good traits can be:
- Kids will study hard and become more diligent to meet their parents’ expectations.
- Kids will be more self-disciplined than anyone among their peers so that they can avoid the shaming and blaming of their parents if they make mistakes.
- Children raised by tiger parents will be more accountable and thus succeed in their careers later.
Negative effects of Tiger Parenting
By now, we can say that the tiger parenting style has more cons than pros, like:
- Children will not be able to achieve their own dreams as their parents will ask them to achieve their personal dreams.
- Children will feel over-pressured because their parents will always ask for more success, and that could finally lead to anxiety.
- Continuously shaming and disciplining a child could affect the child’s health and cause a possible childhood trauma that may last forever if not treated with caution.
- Normally, children and parents share mutual love and respect so that they can have a healthy relationship, but children of tiger parents will be afraid of their parents to avoid punishments, and that could lead to a bad relationship between them.
- Using a tiger parenting style will take away creativity from children, as they only do what they are told.
- Children can have depression because these days they have more technology than their parents’ old days, so they can know how other parents from around the world treat their kids with mutual respect and love.
- Children will not be socially accepted because their parents prefer studying to going out with friends.
- Kids of tiger parents will have difficulties making decisions and suffer from a lack of self-confidence as their future is only decided by their parents.
Our criticism of Professor Amy Chua
Amy Chua is a professor of law who was born in the United States. Her parents, who came from China, were tiger parents, and she was inspired by their parenting style.
Chua’s parents tried to force her to join a medicine school, but she refused and applied to law school. Later, her father blamed her by saying that she would not keep up with her doctor friends, and eventually, Amy Chua admitted that this was somehow true.
So when Amy Chua wrote her book, she only based her opinion on her life story and personal experience, not on an academic approach.
Preferring and cherishing a tiger parenting style is not supposed to work with all people from any culture, as it is not a healthy choice for families even if they come from East Asian countries, as mentioned above.
Professor Amy Chua may have written that book for propaganda purposes and as an open invitation for Asian American citizens to hang on to their old ways of parenting, identification, and culture.
Is a tiger parent good at all?
Let’s first say that every parenting style has its own merits and demerits and that raising kids cannot only rely on following a specific parenting style but also other aspects like our neighborhood, the school of our kids, and the circumstances surrounding us.
So, even if we try to be perfect, we cannot guarantee anything because success is not a food recipe.
Tiger parenting style, generally, is not good as it can only work for specific situations and circumstances.
As we can see from this statistic, the U.S. and Western European countries have a higher happiness index than Asian countries.
I know that the happiness index for countries cannot be measured by following a parenting style, but raising kids while being supportive and giving them unconditional love is necessary for their mental health.
our infographic to summarize this topic
Other parenting styles
Knowing and reading about different parenting styles will help parents raise their kids in a good way because we should not imitate the same parenting style used by our parents. After all, time has changed drastically.
Briefly, there are four main parenting styles researched by clinical and developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind.
She categorized the parenting styles according to responsiveness and demands.
Responsiveness means that parents care about their kids’ wishes and needs.
Demands mean that parents set high expectations for their kids, like behaving well, achieving high academic results, etc.
In this style, children expect high responsiveness and high demands from their parents.
Authoritarian parenting style
The authoritarian style has high demands with little to no responsiveness.
This style has high responsiveness with no demands from the parents.
This style has no responsiveness and no demands from the parents.
These were the main four parenting styles; lately, some new sub-types of parenting styles have surfaced, such as:
In this style, parents give their kids the freedom to do new things unsupervised but only when they feel confident in their abilities.
Lawnmower parents will do whatever it takes to solve issues that face their children without giving them a chance to solve their own problems.
Parents in this style will pay close attention to their children’s experiences like a helicopter hovering over their heads.
