Youth Voices: Does Tiger Parenting Work? [BLOG]

Youth Voices is a blog written by Asian American youth around the country. Kara Chyung is a high school sophomore in eastern Pennsylvania. A second-generation Korean-American, she is fortunate enough to experience the advantages of two different cultures. She is a passionate student, an avid tennis player, a clarinetist, a student council officer, a member of her Scholastic Scrimmage team, and a vocalist in her school’s ensembles. When she has time, Kara loves to read almost anything (especially Harry Potter), and also writes for Powered by Girl, a sister organization of Hardy Girls Healthy Women. 

By Kara Chyung

“The first major study of tiger moms is out. The kids have worse grades, and they are more depressed and more alienated from their parents,” the sub-heading of a Slate article titled “Poor Little Tiger Cub,” proclaimed. The study presented in the article, conducted by Su Yeong Kim, an associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, is claiming to be the first proof that tiger-parenting, a term popularized by Amy Chua’s memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which painted an image of Asian parents as heartless drill sergeants.

Since Chua’s memoir, there has been a backlash against the idea of “tiger parenting.” In the study cited by Slate, Professor Kim followed 400 Chinese-American families in the Bay Area for a decade. The vast majority of parents were foreign-born in Hong Kong or southern China, and three-quarters of their kids were American-born.

“Tiger moms produced kids who felt more alienated from their parents and experienced higher instances of depressive symptoms, concluded the study. “They also had lower GPAs, despite feeling more academic pressure.”

I am no parenting expert by any means, but there are some problems that I have with this study. First of all, Kim’s conclusion suggests that strictness a.k.a. tiger parenting and support constitute opposite parenting styles, when in fact each works better when combined with the other. Being forced to work hard in a loving environment is one of the greatest experiences that my parents could have given me. They only ever expect my best, not the best, and I know that when I put everything that I have into something, they are proud of me no matter what. When I was younger, my parents were very strict when it came to putting the work in but they were always supportive about the results, especially when I failed. But whenever I achieved something that I worked for, I always came away with a feeling of satisfaction and confidence, and felt that my hard work could lead me to accomplish something even better. I owed, and still owe, that determined mindset to my parents.

Having high expectations and applying discipline is no form of abuse. In fact, tiger parents would argue that it is a way of showing love. The parents who expect a lot of their kids do so because they believe that their kids can reach those expectations. My parents expect the best grades from me because they know that I am capable of earning them. However, they have never been disappointed that I am not the best tennis player in the state, or even in the local area, nor are there fits of rage when I do not win a concerto competition. They do not pressure me to get a certain type of job, make a certain amount of money, or even go to a top-ten college.

Technically, I cannot say that I had a pure tiger-parenting experience, because even though my parents held high standards, and I still had play dates and many toys. Also, unlike some parents whose children later say that they rarely heard their parents tell them the words “I love you,” my parents outwardly expressed plenty of love, Still, they made me do math and play the piano and soccer, but they were never disappointed when I never succeeded at the latter two. In fact, they came to all of my soccer games even though I only scored three goals over a span of seven years. But whenever I do succeed at something, they are my biggest fans.

The reason tiger-parenting gets such a bad reputation is because most tiger parents believe that what is best for their child is academic success and achievement, so they sacrifice everything and go to drastic extremes in order for their child to achieve those goals. It seems backwards to many people, but believe it or not, making a child study all weekend and practice six hours of piano a day are ways that an Asian parent shows love. And when hurtful words slip out in the process, the parent assumes that it is up to the child to know that those words came from a place of love.

Another conclusion of this study that I disagree with is that tiger parenting causes alienation between the parent and the child and brews caustic resentment that lasts for years into adulthood. Perhaps this is true in other relationships, but I actually am much closer to my tiger mom than a lot of my friends are to their mothers. When I was little, I feared my mother more than anyone: I have horrible images of sitting at a dimly lit piano as a seven year-old with my mom towering over me, yelling at me for playing a piece badly, usually because I hadn’t practiced it. But I also remember the level of admiration that I had (and still have) for my mother, wondering in amazement how she managed to work, run errands, cook delicious dinners, and play with my sister and me. I recall how much my mom missed my sister and me whenever we would go away, even if just for a week, how until recently she was too afraid to let us fly by ourselves, and how she once called my relatives just to make sure they had an electric pencil sharpener for us when we stayed with them. As I’ve gotten older, my gratitude for my parents increases, and I wouldn’t trade my relationship with my parents for anything.

Tiger parenting can create unhappy kids and it is certainly not meant to work for everybody. When done wrong, it can stifle a child’s creativity, stunt their potential, and permanently damage his/her relationship with his/her parents. It can potentially make a child feel rejected and even unloved. But what is most often forgotten is that tiger parents do love their kids: they just wildly different ways of showing that they do. I am not a parent, but I am a daughter, and despite this new study, despite the stories of many other Asians and their tiger parents that lack a happy ending, my tiger parents were the greatest blessing I could have ever asked for.

 

 

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