Children of parents classified as “tiger” have worse grades, are more depressed

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/05/_tiger_mom_study_shows_the_parenting_method_doesn_t_work.html

by nostrademons • 13 years ago

179 170 13 years ago

jjtheblunt• 13 years ago

It's almost like kids benefit from running around outside with other kids, rather than being forced to be mini adults. Or something.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

On the contrary, the chart in the article shows that "permissive" parenting produced lower achievement than "authoritative" parenting. The distinction in the article isn't about letting kids "be kids" but whether parents are responsive/warm versus cold.

sebcat• 13 years ago

No, it showed higher achievement and lower rate of depression among the "permissive" group.

nostrademons4• 13 years ago

"Authoritative" parenting means letting kids explore the world and their own interests while still setting strict limits that are necessary for the health & well-being of the kid. An authoritative parent wouldn't prevent their kid from running around outside with other kids, they'd let the kid run around outside "but stay away from the railroad tracks, and don't get drunk or do drugs, and be home by 11".

rdtsc2• 13 years ago

Yes. And I think those are rather orthogonal concepts.

One can be permissive and cold. Permissive and warm. Authoritative and cold and authoritative and warm.

Authoritative and warm sounds odd, but it think I kind of describes my parents. Some issues like respecting elders, saying thank you, making sure to help friends in needs, sharing were non-negotiable, others like what major to choose, or how late early and when to do homework or what extra curricular activities to take or not take was up to me. Otherwise I never lacked loved, attention or time spent with any of my parents. One of them even quit a much better paying job just to make spend more time with me after school and in the evening.

wvenable• 13 years ago

Nobody treats adults that way. I think kids benefit from really being treated like adults.

hackinthebochs3• 13 years ago

This only works if kids are also given adult responsibilities along with their consequences. Giving kids the choice to choose their own path doesn't work when they know that they are not truly responsible for their actions. Contrast kids today with kids decades ago when it was typical for a kid of 13 to get a job to support the family. If you want to treat kids like adults you can't half-ass it.

mtowle5• 13 years ago

I never know what to make of these kinds of studies. The author has full license to decide what "categories" will be part of their spectrum and what their definitions will be, and then further to interpret every data point by themselves. The former you can review and question, the latter you cannot.

So let's question the former:

>Kim decided that for her study, she would both parse further the different dimensions of the Eurocentric profiles and create new ones that better fit the styles of the East Asian families.

Oof. Two biases don't make a right.

>The responsiveness that’s considered an aspect of “authoritative” parenting, for example, was broadened to include both positive and negative attributes: warmth and hostility. Control, she would write, has “multiple facets … positive control is measured by parental monitoring and democratic parenting; negative control is measured by psychological control and punitive parenting.”

The Stasi were a form of positive control, apparently. Just kidding -- kind of. Suffice it to say none of the above are so mutually exclusive that they should be put in categories called "positive" and "negative."

WalterSear2• 13 years ago

Go read the actual study then rather than the article, and find out how she justified her decisions. Most likely, she based them on definitions that were defined and validated by multiple previous studies before her, or presents research demonstrating validity of her claims.

From my time in academia, I can assure you spend most of your time and writing justifying your decisions, and a whole load of very critical people have to agree with your judgement before something gets published.

mtowle5• 13 years ago

>Go read the actual study then rather than the article, and find out how she justified her decisions.

If you've got $11.95 to spare, I'll take you up on that. Unfortunately all that's available is the abstract. But if you want me to analyze that, I will. 232 words, not counting the copyright. 122 unique. 'Tiger' occurs 7 times -- 4th behind 'parenting' (15), 'the' (12), and 'and' (9). My analysis concludes that Kim doesn't just have something she wants to say, she has something she wants the public to hear. I.e., right or wrong, Kim has an agenda.

>Most likely, she based them on definitions that were defined and validated by multiple previous studies before her

I don't see how; she openly states in the quoted section of the parent comment that her delineation of categories was aimed at challenging the standard in the field.

>a whole load of very critical people have to agree with your judgement before something gets published.

In this case, it was the fine people over at the AAJP. The Asian American Journal of Psychology. Most def not a journal oriented toward "their version" of the truth, I'm sure.

bitwize2• 13 years ago

In Japan there is the concept of "amae". The feeling of being loved and "taken care of" is recognized as a valid need, and it is as much the job of the parents to make their children feel safe and supported as it is the job of the children to make their parents proud through high achievement. I don't know what Chinese parents are like back on the mainland, but I suspect that they have similar ideas, as Japanese concepts of loyalty are largely borrowed from Confucius.

Not that amae-based relationships can't be pathological, but they are less one-sidedly authoritarian.

So not only does it not work, I have grave doubts as to whether "tiger parenting" is normal among Chinese, or Asians in general. If anything it's a pathological development among certain first-generation Asian immigrants, who felt the need to produce exceptional children in order to compensate for perceived cultural disadvantages.

doctorstupid• 13 years ago

That's a good point, that this may be more of something arising from the dynamics of cultural mixing, rather than being purely Chinese/Asian culture.

Cultural traits, when taken out of their home culture with its natural checks and balances, can become unhinged and overpowered, like when introducing species into a new habitat.

olivier16642• 13 years ago

On the mainland, the main influence is the one-child policy. So there is four grand parents and two parents for one children. The Children became the family treasure.

Another influence is the "Chines Imperial examination" where the social success is done by being the best at school (that may come from Confucius).

eric-hu• 13 years ago

> If anything it's a pathological development among certain first-generation Asian immigrants

I was thinking this throughout your comment. I've also observed that it's a trait much stronger among first generation families or those closer to them (second generation instead of fifth, for instance).

I grew up as the children of Chinese immigrants and spent a year in college studying abroad in Beijing. I expected to see a city of 20 million high-achievers. I was in for quite a surprise. The people I met there were more like the non-Asians I knew in America than the Asians I knew.

I have no idea what specifically about immigration causes this behavior, or if it's just correlation. It could simply be the case that people prone to extreme "life optimization" are more okay with the emotional upheaval of moving to another country.

wes-exp• 13 years ago

A lot of immigrants to the US manage to immigrate specifically because they are high achievers. As such, it makes sense that immigrants as a statistical group would not really be representative of their home country.

bitwize2• 13 years ago

1) Asian immigrants tend to self-select for high achievement.

2) Asians historically were at a cultural disadvantage compared to other Westerners in America. Americans were at least passingly familiar with other European cultures, and had quite a bit of common ground with them; much less so with Asians so there was a mutual unintelligibility problem. So to compensate, Asian parents tended to pressure their kids to excel in something universal that Americans would consider valuable -- hence the tendency of Asians to gravitate towards the hard sciences, math, and music (oddly enough, Western classical music at that). Amy Tan wrote about this, remarking how unusual and against the odds it was that she became a writer instead of the scientist or classical violinist her mother wanted her to be.

ctchocula• 13 years ago

If I understand you correctly, I think in English it would translate to "affection". In his book "The Conquest of Happiness", Bertrand Russell talks about this and says receiving parental affection is quite important to children.

>The child whose parents are fond of him accepts their affection as a law of nature. He does not think very much about it, although it is of great importance to his happiness. He thinks about the world, about the adventures that come his way and the more marvelous adventures that will come his way when he is grown up. But behind all these external interests there is the feeling that he will be protected from disaster by parental affection.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

This is mostly due to the study's redefinition of the term "tiger" to include "unsupportive."

chockablock• 13 years ago

Not according to the fine article.

The 'Tiger' category emerged from a clustering analysis of parenting styles, and was defined by high scores on both positive ("Warmth, reasoning, monitoring, and democratic parenting") and negative ("hostility, psychological control, shaming, and punitive measures") dimensions.

The claim is that even when they show lots of warmth and positive parenting, parents who are also hostile and shaming, have kids who do just as poorly as the kids of very harsh, unsupportive parents.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

Right. The article defined the "tiger" category to include hostility, the opposite of "supportive."

pchivers• 13 years ago

I was under the impression that Amy Chua (the woman who wrote "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother") gave up the "tiger mom" strategy after one of her children had a breakdown:

"What brings the situation to an end is two horrifying incidents. First, Lulu hacks off her hair with a pair of scissors; then, on a family holiday to Moscow, she and Chua get into a public argument that culminates in Lulu smashing a glass in a cafe, screaming, "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jan/15/amy-chua-...

fatjokes• 13 years ago

I'm not a fan of the Tiger Mother method of parenting, but the description of the incident hardly sounds like a breakdown. It describes Lulu when she was 4 years old, so it's more of a child's temper tantrum than a breakdown.

dubfan• 13 years ago

I think you're misreading the article. The first paragraph describes an incident involving a four-year-old Lulu. It's not very clear when the quoted incident occurred, but either way the language used in the outburst would almost certainly not be used by a four-year-old in a tantrum and is much more characteristic of an early teen.

ryanglasgow2• 13 years ago

It was when she was 13, not 4. At 13 she is certainly capable of understanding her environment, how she's being raised, and realize she's being raised differently than her friends.

mtowle5• 13 years ago

Prior paragraph:

>But the cracks beneath the surface begin to show. [...] Lulu becomes rebellious, openly defying her teacher and her mother and bitterly complaining in public about her home life. By the age of 13, writes Chua, "[Lulu] wore a constant apathetic look on her face, and every other word out of her mouth was 'no' or 'I don't care'."

Looking back, I think I had a breakdown at 13, too.

sliverstorm11• 13 years ago

It is hardly unusual for a young teen to be rebellious, but there seems to be a wide variety in degree.

bilbo0s• 13 years ago

That behavior is fairly common in that age group. It's a bit hard to say what it means without more information.

ffn• 13 years ago

>The book bares all about how the parenting model worked for her older daughter Sophia, now 17 and heading off to an Ivy League college, but backfired dramatically for her younger girl, Louisa, or Lulu, who is now 14

Why do we associate attending an Ivy League institution as a 17 / 18 year old for an undergraduate education as some sort of metric for success?

I mean, I'm not going to be naive and insist that the worthwhile life doesn't look at results and instead only looks at the journey, but to consider one's parenting model as "working" at age 17 because one's child is going to Ivy league is hilariously short-sighted (unless you're planning for your child to die a lot sooner than most people).

My TL;DR point is follows:

17 years is too short to draw any conclusions on how successful a person's life is so the jury should still be out on Tiger Mothering.

untog• 13 years ago

Why do we associate attending an Ivy League institution as a 17 / 18 year old for an undergraduate education as some sort of metric for success?

Because, by all accounts, it is one of the most reliable indicators that the child is going to be successful.

but to consider one's parenting model as "working" at age 17 because one's child is going to Ivy league is hilariously short-sighted

Well, at some point you- as a parent- stop being responsible for your child's life. Many would argue that occurs when the child goes away to college and makes their own choices.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

> Why do we associate attending an Ivy League institution as a 17 / 18 year old for an undergraduate education as some sort of metric for success?

Because, statistically, they're going to earn a lot more money over the course of their careers (especially when you factor engineering students out of the state school equation).

sown• 13 years ago

> "I'm not what you want – I'm not Chinese! I don't want to be Chinese. Why can't you get that through your head? I hate the violin. I hate my life. I hate you, and I hate this family!" Her relationship with Lulu in crisis, Chua, finally, thankfully, raises the white flag."

I started crying when I read that. I literally have tears in my eyes right now. I'm hardly surprised, though.

I expressed my opinions years ago here on HN, about this tiger mom horseshit and how it's basically child abuse, to me, even though I'm into my 30s it's still with me.

My mom did this shit to me and I had a couple of good, solid breakdowns. Constant pressure, college resume padding horseshit, extracurricular activities that I don't care about (kudos to you if you enjoyed them but most of the people at these things aren't enthused about it). NOthing I ever did was good enough, impossible busy work, constant comparisons to so-and-so kid's, being paraded out to brag about the family name, etc.

Then I did the unforgivable. I flunked out of college. I got FAT -- the worse! And grew a beard. She told me I was a complete embarrassment and she didn't want me around. Because of a beard. I guess I was about 25 when she said that, and I've seen her a three times since then.

vishaldpatel4• 13 years ago

I have a feeling that there's a certain crop of high-school overachiever who, upon finally being free, ends up failing for the first time and in a spectacular fashion after they go to college.

How has your life evolved since 25? Did you end up losing the weight and the beard? Did they finally leave you be to pursue your own goals?

ScottBurson2• 13 years ago

At least you're still alive.

I am reminded of the tragic case of Mengyao "May" Zhou, an MIT grad and Stanford grad student, whose death in 2007 was ruled a suicide. (While there was no clear evidence of foul play, the evidence for suicide was not overwhelming either -- in particular, she left no note.) While she was clearly very successful in her studies and was thought to be happy, some of the details that came out at the time left me with the distinct impression that she killed herself to get out of a life she had not chosen and could see no other escape from. Her father in particular seemed to have a habit of stating flatly how she had felt, as if he didn't have to ask her. That struck me as a big red flag that suggested that he related to her as an extension of himself rather than as a separate person -- a common pattern in "tiger" parenting.

I emphasize that this is only my impression; I didn't know her and have no privileged information about her. But the father's subsequent behavior -- insisting she was murdered and making rather wild suggestions about who could have done it and why -- did nothing to change that impression (even making allowances for understandable grief). Instead of stopping to wonder whether he really knew her -- who wouldn't wonder that after an unexpected suicide? -- he dug himself into his position. I think that in his denial that she could have felt any other way than how he wanted her to feel, he is still refusing to hear the message of her suicide.

It is bad enough to be living a life designed by someone else, where you know it's not your choice but you feel compelled to do it anyway. But to have had your own desires and feelings so rigidly unacknowledged for your whole life that you can't even imagine living your own life for your own reasons -- that seems to me unbearably painful. I have a feeling that is the place May Zhou was in.

goggles99• 13 years ago

It may not work to raise your kids like you live in China, when you actually live in a western country. Of course this is a great exaggeration as an example, but picture Kim Jong Un as prime minister of Britain. How do you think that would work out?

1. Tiger moms in America are far more permissive, they swing back and forth - providing an unstable and inconsistent environment for their children. 2. The kids are inundated with the highly permissive hippie culture of the west even though the tiger mom tries on and off to limit this. The kids eventually rebel.

rdtsc2• 13 years ago

What is the infatuation with violins? Why not a Chinese folk instrument? Why are violins and tiger parents so closely related?

Cadsby• 13 years ago

Because they're associated with high status, culture and sophistication. It's a way to signal that you are part of the affluent, upper class.

And no, I don't agree with the value/emphasis placed on it either.

bithive123• 13 years ago

It's not violins specifically, it's any western orchestral instrument that you can carry to and from school (or piano lessons).

My mother and I were frequently at odds about my violin lessons and practice habits but she was also a nurturing person and tried to explain the benefits of deliberate practice and musical training, which as an adult I now recognize.

Full-on "tiger" parents may be more fixated on western instruments because it's meant to be a status symbol not a means to enrich the child.

EdiX• 13 years ago

Because orchestral music is high brow. The melody in orchestral music, for cultural, acoustic and agility reasons, is usually written in the soprano range, and therefore it is given either to violins or woodwinds in that range.

Unlike woodwinds, a violin doesn't drip on the floor: if you are playing an instrument for social status not having a puddle of spit (or a damp cloth) at your feet is important.

illuminate4• 13 years ago

I'm so very surprised that the media didn't put as much energy into her retractions that people heard about this.

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

As I commented when I shared the link kindly posted here among my Facebook friends, "Like most studies of child-rearing of this nature, it is correlational rather than experimental, subject to argument about definitions, and not yet replicated, but this is food for thought." So if we think about what this means, yes, parents should be affectionate toward their children rather than reserved. Parents should also be open to children pursuing THEIR OWN interests rather than the profile of interests reputedly best for getting into a famous college. Indeed, parents should be open to the possibility that a career in private industry in an occupation in which job applicants show what they can do through work-sample tests and being a "smart and gets things done" worker can be better for a young person than piling on lots of higher education degrees.

That said, letting Junior play video games all day (as contrasted with WRITING a few video games) is not good for Junior either. Maybe Junior won't report being depressed in that case until reaching his twenties and finding out he is unemployable at a living wage that allows independence from Mom and Dad. Maybe Junior, while growing up and having limited life experience, might benefit from some actual adult leadership and guidance. It is possible to do too little as well as too much in parenting.

(Basis of knowledge: I am the father in a "half-Asian" family, although oddly I am probably the "tiger-like" parent as a native-born American, while my Taiwanese wife is more easy-going. We have one child who has grown into independent adult life as a hacker and three younger children still living at home.)

vishaldpatel4• 13 years ago

You know, unless Junior wants to go pro.

tokenadult2• 13 years ago

You know, unless Junior wants to go pro.

Are you talking about the video games? I have local friends who have more children than I have, and two of the boys in that family traveled overseas to try out the professional gaming circuit in one of the countries with serious gaming pros. (That family is very supportive of children trying out their interests, to its credit.) After the boys made the trip, they came back here, and if the last report I heard about their activities is still current information, they are buckling down in their studies and pursuing other careers.

macey• 13 years ago

I feel like this was always obviously the case in the United States. Nothing about US culture complements tiger parenting. Go ask Chinese kids in China how they feel about it. (hint: their culture fully supports and _expects_ this parenting style)

ceras• 13 years ago

I'm not sure I understand your hint. When I studied in Beijing, most Chinese college kids I talked to just lamented about how hard they worked throughout their childhood and how overly stressed out they always were. Nobody spoke positively about this.

cafard2• 13 years ago

"he vast majority of parents were foreign-born in Hong Kong or southern China, with relatively low educational attainment and a median income of between $30,001 and $45,000 in each of the study’s three phases, spaced out equally over eight years."

Wait. Amy Chua is US born, no, and of at least the educational attainment needed to teach at Yale Law--which I assume is paying her & her husband rather more than $45K between them. So how do she and her daughters relate to this, except as a hook to grab our attention.

robryan• 13 years ago

They popularized the idea and the term used to refer it. Obviously their anecdotes don't prove anything.

defen• 13 years ago

Yeah, and her father is a EE professor at Berkeley who predicted the existence of the memristor...not exactly a family of "low educational attainment".

illuminate4• 13 years ago

We do not possess a media with any skeptical abilities, regurgitation of press releases and narratives is all we have.

dbg314152• 13 years ago

Curious, why no mention of parenting that leads to high-achieving and high-depressive kids.

jere2• 13 years ago

I think the implication is that those are incompatible.

dbg314152• 13 years ago

Well... there are a lot of Jews out there who tend to disagree. Ha.

laurentoget• 13 years ago

Unless you include every jewish male character in a woody allen movie or a philip roth novel, which can be read as a case study on highly depressed high achievers.

sliverstorm11• 13 years ago

Hardly. Not a new phenomenon in the least. Off the top of my head, we can look to 1897:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cory

It is of course a poem, not a historical figure, but it was written all the same.

sliverstorm11• 13 years ago

Much trickier subject. Unsuccessful and depressive go together quite easily. Successful and depressive is a stranger beast, probably requiring more than a rudimentary understanding of psychology to wrangle.

jere2• 13 years ago

I'm reading this as: Asian students perform better than other groups even with ineffective parenting. Am I missing something?

>“Whenever scholars compare European-American and Asian-American families,” she said, parents among the latter “almost always score higher on controlling and lower on warmth, which means they’re more likely to be classified as authoritarian.” Yet, their kids were outperforming whites in school. This gave rise to the “achievement/adjustment paradox”: kids doing well by external measures while feeling torn apart inside.

scott_karana• 13 years ago

Many immigrant tiger moms have lower means, have the same reasoning as Chua, and could use her book as justification.

This seemed cautionary to me.

sliverstorm11• 13 years ago

Am I missing something?

One thing that comes to mind; at least in the Bay Area, asian students often grow up in whole communities made up of other asians, so even if their parents are mucking things up a bit, they are still fully immersed in the culture of extreme focus on academics and achievement.

illuminate4• 13 years ago

"Am I missing something?"

Class. All the "tiger moms" are of high economic condition. Lower-classed Asian immigrants do not follow the model.

aclevernickname2• 13 years ago

This "Tiger Parent" situation is a bit of a conundrum: we as society are unable to tolerate this form of child abuse, but are equally unable to say something about it, for fear of being considered "racist" by someone hiding behind the shield of "Chinese Tradition".

ddoolin• 13 years ago

Because it's not child abuse. Just because a group of people don't agree with it does it make it "child abuse."

aclevernickname2• 13 years ago

Keep telling yourself that. I'm sure that will help you sleep at night. Meanwhile, this "successful" woman will keep verbally/mentally/emotionally abusing her children, and nice people like you will look the other way.

alexholehouse• 13 years ago

If tiger moms organize and control their kid's lives, do the kids ever learn skills relating to decision making and time management, two absolutely crucial skills for 'real world' survival?

RYUUSEiiSTAR5• 13 years ago

Not even just those two skills, but anything to do with the 'real world'. I struggle to talk to people and have constant shivers even when I know I'm in a non-threatening environment. I just can't make conversation easily.

Even something as simple as when I took the train for the first time by myself going to uni. I was petrified I would miss my stop or something equally stupid, when the solution would be to just get off and hop onto a train that would take me back.

Again, I don't think I have a tiger mum, but she's awfully close.

ikailan• 13 years ago

Anecdote alert. I have a wannabe tiger mom. Unfortunately, she had to work full time+++, so full on tiger-ness could not manifest.

Just as children of many non-tiger moms DON'T learn decision making and time management skills: some do, and some do not. There are other factors at play. At a certain age, it's near impossible for a tiger mom to control 100% of someone's life.

swampthing• 13 years ago

From the article:

"Tiger parenting doesn't produce superior outcomes in kids"

Not to point out the obvious, but correlation doesn't equal causation. It could very well be that the worse grades a child gets, the more reason the parents have to become "tiger".

dmishe• 13 years ago

I had to google what is tiger mom, and found this: "never allowed:

- attend a sleepover

- have a playdate

- be in a school play

- complain about not being in a school play

- watch TV or play computer games

- choose their own extracurricular activities

- get any grade less than an “A”

- not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

- play any instrument other than the piano or violin

- not play the piano or violin.”

Well, fuck.

gradstudent14• 13 years ago

There's a few things on the list I disagree with (games, sleepovers, school play) but otherwise? Spot on. Kids lack sufficient perspective to understand which activities are important and why.

eatitraw4• 13 years ago

> Spot on. Kids lack sufficient perspective to understand which activities are important and why.

Important to whom? I am pretty sure kids know what is important to them and why. Sure, this may be different to what their parents think(e.g. their parents may find games, sleepovers and other stuff "unimportant").

BTW, you can use the very same logic as justification for controlling adults. [And frankly speaking, this logic is used by (almost?) all politicians]

gcr2• 13 years ago

Certain parents also lack a sufficient perspective to understand what kinds of activities are good for their kids' well-being and happiness.

sliverstorm11• 13 years ago

I agree. No child should ever be allowed to be anything less than the best student in their class.

eatitraw4• 13 years ago

Oh crap. Why do someone want to do this with their own children?

I am especially puzzled about the purpose of: "- play any instrument other than the piano or violin - not play the piano or violin." I just don't understand the logic behind this two restrictions.

kaitai• 13 years ago

Folks, the list is supposed to be funny. Of course it's over the top and somewhat arbitrary. The author knows it. She's also over the top and somewhat arbitrary.

rickyc091• 13 years ago

The idea is that if they cut out all the extracurricular / social aspects of a child's life, then the child will have nothing better to do other than focusing on academia. Of course, in reality that doesn't happen. Children will rebel when they come to that age.

As for the no violin / piano. I think you have it wrong. It's "no musical instruments other than piano or violin." (http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-03-06/news/ct-met-ti...)

sliverstorm11• 13 years ago

It's intended as a somewhat humorous wording of "you MUST play an instrument; your choices are piano or violin, NOTHING ELSE."

RYUUSEiiSTAR5• 13 years ago

I'm nearly 21, and this is pretty much the case for me STILL. Friends I've known for 16 years of my life I still can't sleep over. Allowed to go out? I begged and was promptly banned afterwards (whilst I was in year 7) from leaving the house until after my HSC (AU, NSW's final hs exam, but this obviously didn't stick after a few months).

Drama? Sports? I was raised by quiet, somewhat anti-social Asian parents all my life, that was never a problem.

Computer games? If it's maths related then that was okay (and I put up with it because I was so intrigued with computers and the sums were easy enough after all those self-study maths books).

19/20 for a test? Why didn't you get 20/20? Your friend did. Begin silent treatment.

I started playing at 7 because there was a program in school and I wanted to be one of the kids who got to leave class for an hour. I loved it at first, and then was moved from the private class to a one-on-one with a specialised teacher. Again, it was something new and I liked it, but it increasingly became tedious and I hated it. I hated the boring music, I hated the scales, I couldn't even reach half the notes whilst playing broken chords. And then I began to despise it. It was only by a slim chance I found an amazing pianist and composer that I fell in love with the piano again.

Now that I'm in uni, life is better, and I've found something I love doing. My grades are better and I can work at the same time without it hindering uni work. My mum is definitely not a tiger mum, she's not that bad, but it does make me wonder if I would be excelling as much as I do now if I didn't have all that pressure growing up.

Nursie2• 13 years ago

If you're nearly 21 why are you still either at home or listening to their rules about who sleeps over where?

You're an adult, these things are now your choice.

beachstartup• 13 years ago

i'm asian american and grew up in california, i knew lots of asian kids growing up.

all the kids that had super-strict parents were screwed up in some way by the age of 25.

dropouts, burnouts, social maladjusts, booksmart losers, drug addicts, delinquents, criminals, etc.

not all asian parents are like that, but a LOT are, i'd say probably 4-5x the rate you'd find in the general population. /anecdata

candybar• 13 years ago

What's clear to me from these articles and studies is that there's no silver bullet - if you want to raise your child well, you have to spend a lot of energy understanding your child and guide him, but from his perspective, not your own. Be firm, for his own sake, but without injecting yourself too much. It's wrong to forcefully impose your own goals and expectation borne out of your own insecurities on your children at a stage when children can make decisions on their own, but it's also wrong to be secretive, manipulative and passive-aggressive about your expectations or pretend to yourself that they don't exist. Instead be gradually open about your own feelings and expectations and why you have them and allow them to make decisions that incorporate, but aren't forced by your own desires. All of this is a hard balancing act that demands a lot of mental effort and emotional maturity, not something we can follow out of a book. The more we try to follow someone else's rules for raising a child, the less effort we spend understanding own child and/or look inside ourselves to understand what we truly need to do.

abalone• 13 years ago

It sounds like the study reduced the definition of "tiger parenting" to simple authoritarian attitudes.

I went to a high-achievement school with a lot of kids of tiger parent types, including an elite music school. That's not the whole picture. Maybe these kids ended up depressed (who knows), but worse grades? I don't think so.

The study notes "the vast majority" of parents it looked at had "relatively low educational attainment and a median income of between $30,001 and $45,000". Oddly it claims it also "controlled for socioeconomic status", but that seems suspect when the vast majority of the sample is in one particular income range.

So the study mostly looked at poorer households with low-educated parents. This is quite different from Chua, a Yale law professor, on the high end of both income and education.

There's a big difference between just yelling at someone and yelling at someone while putting them in elite schools, music lessons, explaining derivatives to them, critiquing their essays, etc. I don't doubt for a SECOND the psychological impacts of authoritarianism, high stress and poor socialization. For me the argument against tiger parenting is more than it's not worth the psychological damage it inflicts and that it kills creativity, both of which are really important in life, beyond just being a finely honed academic machine. But poorer grades, no way. This study is just using its own simplistic definition of the term.

eeemmmccc123• 13 years ago

Both of Amy Chua's children are, in a sense, positive outcomes. One was "good enough" for her mother's standards, and another rebelled. But sometimes, different outcomes happen:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/28/magazine/who-was-responsib...

gwern3• 13 years ago

I jailbroke the paper for you guys: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/85192141/2013-kim.pdf

epo• 13 years ago

There is the old saying that "talent skips a generation". It is much an observation on parenting styles as anything. This "tiger" moniker just refers to extremely pushy (read "abusive") parents. Their reward will be producing children who grow up hating them.

Children of parents classified as “tiger” have worse grades, are more depressed

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