Tiger Parenting

 

Tiger parenting is a term that became popular after its use by Chinese author Amy Chua in the Book titled ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’ (Chua). The term Tiger is mainly used to refer to part of the native home of Tigers which is East and South East Asia where there is a strict culture when it comes to raising children. After the publication of the book, the term has become popular in describing how Asians, particularly Asian Americans raise their children so that they perform well academically.
Characteristics

Tiger parenting is mostly strict and authoritarian parenting that in many cases entails the use of negative parenting such as the enforcement of strict and sometimes severe rules. Another characteristic may be the restriction on the use of leisure time, which the parent may consider putting into more productive use, like learning a new skill. However, contrary to the tiger parenting methods used by Amy Chua in raising her daughters, which was mostly power assertive negative parenting, most tiger parents in East Asia as well as the majority of Asian Americans also, use positive parenting strategies when raising their children (A. P. Association 2). These positive strategies include encouraging those who fail the first time to try again instead of punishing the children for failing as well as community support in helping the child to succeed.

Tiger parenting is controversial because people, even scholars, express divergent views on it. Some view it as necessary as its outcome produces desirable results such as disciplined, academically successful children. This is important in this increasingly competitive world. Others consider it to be a destructive form of parenting that moulds children into machine-like robots from whom perfection in expected in everything that they do. Several successful and controversial examples of tiger parenting bring about the question as to whether tiger parenting is ethical or not. Tiger parenting is an ethical way to bring up a child as are both good and bad aspects of Tiger parenting, but the realization of the benefits of this type of parenting depends on how the parent does it.

The Ethics of Tiger Parenting

Tiger parenting is ethical, in terms of its consequences. First, it helps in molding hard working children. In almost every study done in the United States including a survey done by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science 1-3) shows that Asian Americans by outperform every other racial group in the United States academically at all levels. Asians have a hard work ethic that their tiger parents instill at home. Most Asians believe that Success comes about because of personal effort rather than natural ability. This belief seems to be paying off.

The children of tiger parents are highly disciplined. Asians are respectful to their elders due to cultural factors. Tiger parents enforce discipline rigorously, and the children who grow up in such households are usually respectful and considerate not only to their parents but to most people in society. In contrast, the mode of parenting that is predominant in the United States is where the parent tries to be friends with their kids rather than to be authority figures. This results in a culture of entitlement amongst non-Asian children in the US and brings problems later in life when the children grow up and join the workforce where there are authority figures who demand respect.
It is important to note that tiger parenting is not only ethical, from a consequential perspective, but also from a deontology perspective. The children try to satisfy the parent’s high expectations. Many Asian parents push their children to perform well because most of them came from deprived backgrounds and do not want their children to have the same negative experiences they had while growing up. At the same time, most of them believe in the American Dream, which rewards those who make the greatest effort to succeed thus they place high expectations on their children and push them towards achieving those expectations. Tiger parenting has largely been responsible for the rapid transition from being one of the poorest minority groups in the Sixties to the most successful and wealthiest minority group today.
Children of tiger parents grow up to be model citizens and residents with moral values and ethics. East Asian immigrants have gained favor across the globe not only because of their hard work ethic, but also because of their ability to easily integrate into the culture of their host country and most importantly, rarely bring any social tensions with them. Asian Americans in the US have the lowest crime rates of any racial group in the country mainly due to the instilling of discipline and respect for authority by their parents. East Asian children gain less exposure to social risks like underage drinking and use of dangerous drugs in their teens than other racial groups.

Unethical Tiger parenting practices and their effects
However, other scholars are of a different opinion. They believe that tiger parenting is unethical because of negative consequences ignored or overlooked by its proponents. . Tiger parenting can lead to several negative effects that may affect a child’s development into a whole person.
An example of a negative consequence of tiger parenting is that children may end up having poor social skills. Many tiger parents make the mistake of being excessively strict and restricting the social lives of their children. Such restrictions create several problems later on in life, as the individual is unable to get along with most people ad ends up being shy and alone most of the time. Excessive individualism where selfishness and self-interest may also become a problem when it comes to social interaction. This phenomenon is already quite common in China and is becoming common amongst Asian Americans in the US.
The children may end up having mental problems. Too much of a good thing can be poisonous. In this case, excessive tiger parenting can bring about the very results that the tiger parent is trying to avoid. According to research done by Yasmin Anwar of UC Berkley (Anwar 2), pushing, and straining your child to succeed can lead to depression, anxiety, and inability to express emotion. Such issues can lead to poor academic performance, forcing the tiger parent to exert even more pressure. Asian American girls and women seem more sensitive to this pressure since they record the highest suicide rate amongst females of all racial backgrounds. (A. P. Association 1-3).
Children of tiger parents often have low self-esteem. Both Tiger parenting and American society are responsible for this problem. Many Asian Americans still feel like outsiders in this country, and this affects their self-esteem. Tiger Parents try to teach their children that only through success will they be equal to their white counterparts and woe unto the child who fails! The use of humiliation as a way to encourage the child to succeed always has detrimental effects if the child does fail or does not do as well as expected. When a child feels that their parent’s love is conditional, based on their achievements, it acts as a demotivator rather than a tool of encouraging success.

The children may end up being poor innovators. Children of Tiger parents may be the most successful academically, but perform poorly when it comes to innovation and people skills. Despite the high academic achievements of Asian Americans, they hardly feature in senior leadership roles in the country. The reason given is that most Asians are content with being just being ‘worker bees’ and as people with poor social skills. As computerization takes over the complex mathematical and science jobs that so many tiger parents push their children to excel in, social skills will become more important, and it is about time tiger parents realized that.
Tiger Parenting can be ethical or unethical depending on how it is applied. A balance has to exist between being strict, while allowing the children to have social skills and to have a degree of independence to think for themselves. While it is a good thing to encourage and push your child to succeed, there are limits to this and the child should not strain just to please their parents at their expense. A parent should allow their children to act like children once in a while. After all, we are only children once.

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