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The Last of the Tiger Parents

nytimes.com

71–80 of 88 posts

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#71
post #55

From my experience, Tiger Parenting is a very effective way of propelling people through standardized testing and competitive exams/admissions. I think it tends to stop working once there is not a clearly delineated pathway to achievement - for example in independent research. It's absurd to think that no-one who came up with a Tiger Parent philosophy won't be a good researcher or independently creative, but there do…

I think this is a little unfair. Tiger parenting is never designed to make the child into some kind of Issac Newton figure. Tiger parents want their children to become financially successful - lawyers, doctors, etc. High-skill workers. The fundamental difference between these professions and say the sciences is that you don't have to come up with anything NEW to be successful. As a thought experiment, you can find a…

>I think this is a little unfair. Tiger parenting is never designed to make the child into some kind of Issac Newton figure. Tiger parents want their children to become financially successful - lawyers, doctors, etc.

And why is this their call?

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#72
post #70

From my experience, Tiger Parenting is a very effective way of propelling people through standardized testing and competitive exams/admissions. I think it tends to stop working once there is not a clearly delineated pathway to achievement - for example in independent research. It's absurd to think that no-one who came up with a Tiger Parent philosophy won't be a good researcher or independently creative, but there do…

> From my experience, Tiger Parenting is a very effective way of propelling people through standardized testing and competitive exams/admissions. I think it tends to stop working once there is not a clearly delineated pathway to achievement - for example in independent research. Or you know, child happiness and personal fulfilment.

They're not going to be very happy and fulfilled when the U.S. economy is a smoldering wreck, they're having to work day and night to pay the taxes needed to support the baby boomers, and are boning up on their Mandarin and facing the prospect of leaving their families behind to emigrate for better opportunities.

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#73

The author has the privilege to not have to raise his child the way he was, because he is very successful and rich. Once you have economic wealth, you reach higher and higher on the Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs. He and his children have the privilege and luxury of pursuing the top echelon, which is self-fulfillment. He doesn't have to force education down his children's throats because they will inherit his and his wi…

I vehemently disagree for multiple reasons. I'll address them in order: The first is that tiger parenting requires a large investment of a parent's time to be successful. For those that are absolutely poor and barely surviving they have little time nor energy to actively participate in their kid's schooling. The second is the factor of luck which I firmly believe is far more important. My parents were the exact oppos…

I want to agree with your position. I've seen some data about suicide rates based on parenting strictness, and have anecdata of losing people due to exactly this style of parenting. The tradeoffs some parents make when faced with extreme poverty are sad. Hell, the fact that a modern industrialized society has as many suffering people as ours does is sad.

But I don't think your refutations hold up. This will be a bit of a tome, sorry.

> For those [parents] that are absolutely poor and barely surviving they have little time nor energy to actively participate in their kid's schooling.

That's true for a lot of people. Structural disadvantages are huge. But at the same time, it's not true for large classes of deeply impoverished people. As the author of TFA pointed out, [east] Asian immigrants are, by some metrics, the poorest group of people in the New York area--and definitely severely economically disadvantaged no matter what measurement you use. And yet the academic performance of those groups--even in that area--continues to surpass many others. Given how endemic poverty is among those demographics, I don't think "it's not the poor kids doing super well in school" holds up; the intersection must be large, and something must be materially different about the practices of those folks in order to combat what, elsewhere in the country/world, would be the multiple-generation-damning sentence of poverty.

> Families don't pull themselves out of poverty through adherence to education or work ethic.

That's anecdotal. In general, this is a dangerously politicized area. To argue that families do not, as a rule, pull themselves out of poverty flies in the face of many areas in which they do so in very significant numbers (like the one discussed in the article). However, to argue that therefore all impoverished families can and/or should do this is to echo the most callous and ignorant positions of modern American conservatism.

I think that escaping poverty is possible--not just among outlier families out in the statistical noise--and that figuring out how/when this occurs is important to improving a lot of people's quality of life. I also think it's super important not to let those investigations ever take on the tone of "...and anyone who doesn't bootstrap themselves out of poverty has nobody to blame but themselves". Study in this area must not come at a tradeoff with acting compassionately--compassionately at macro (e.g. political/voting and economic policies/investments), medium (e.g. donating to causes and activism), and micro (e.g. offering what help you can to people you see suffering on the way to work each day) levels--towards those struggling with poverty.

> there's also survivorship bias in play.

I can relate to this personally, having lost people (suicide, overdose, other) due to circumstances correlated with both insanely strict parenting and severe poverty. But I don't think these answers to the question of "how/why/when do families escape poverty with minimal outside assistance?" is an instance of survivorship bias. The hypothesis being tested is "X allowed these specific groups to escape extreme poverty". Nobody's arguing that many (most) others in that situation don't escape, and nobody's arguing that poverty doesn't exist because some people escaped it--that would be survivorship bias. As you point out, there may be long-term costs that are being overlooked, but that's not the same thing.

When you say "On average those exposed to this style tend to do worse", do you mean worse compared to remaining in poverty? If so, citation needed. Or do you mean that "tiger" parenting has worse outcomes compared to other strategies? I don't think most people would disagree with you there. The important question, though, is why this strategy is practiced so effectively among severely impoverished people, and why it has positive results compared to the "control" majority--which, as you point out, is a vicious cycle of poverty feeding back into lack of energy feeding back into lower parent participating feeding back into stunted academic development.

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#74
post #71
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a little unfair. Tiger parenting is never designed to make the child into some kind of Issac Newton figure. Tiger parents want their children to become financially successful - lawyers, doctors, etc. High-skill workers. The fundamental difference between these professions and say the sciences is that you don't have to come up with anything NEW to be successful. As a thought experiment, you can find a…

> I think this is a little unfair. Tiger parenting is never designed to make the child into some kind of Issac Newton figure. Tiger parents want their children to become financially successful - lawyers, doctors, etc. And why is this their call?

Because they are the children's parents?

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#75
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a little unfair. Tiger parenting is never designed to make the child into some kind of Issac Newton figure. Tiger parents want their children to become financially successful - lawyers, doctors, etc. And why is this their call?

Because they are the children's parents?

Yes, and because most children will sit around and play video games without external motivation.

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#76
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a little unfair. Tiger parenting is never designed to make the child into some kind of Issac Newton figure. Tiger parents want their children to become financially successful - lawyers, doctors, etc. And why is this their call?

Because they are the children's parents?

Did your parents decide your profession? What's next, arranged marriages?

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#77
post #9

Offtopic but do most HN'ers have NYT subscriptions or use extensions to workaround the paywalls? Anyone else wish they could filter out paywalled links from HN?

I've got a subscription. When I finally felt on my feet as a programmer I got a subscription to the NY Times and my hometown paper. I think we should support publications that do good work, rather than trying to avoid them/hack around it. If you're a working programmer/job-in-tech a newspaper subscriptions is almost nothing money wise, but contributes lots back.

Sure, if you don't mind the NYT/WaPo in their current incarnation as the official organs of the establishment.

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird .)

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#79
post #72
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my experience, Tiger Parenting is a very effective way of propelling people through standardized testing and competitive exams/admissions. I think it tends to stop working once there is not a clearly delineated pathway to achievement - for example in independent research. Or you know, child happiness and personal fulfilment.

They're not going to be very happy and fulfilled when the U.S. economy is a smoldering wreck, they're having to work day and night to pay the taxes needed to support the baby boomers, and are boning up on their Mandarin and facing the prospect of leaving their families behind to emigrate for better opportunities.

People have followed their dreams in much worse times -- and with much less luxuries.

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#80
post #79
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not going to be very happy and fulfilled when the U.S. economy is a smoldering wreck, they're having to work day and night to pay the taxes needed to support the baby boomers, and are boning up on their Mandarin and facing the prospect of leaving their families behind to emigrate for better opportunities.

People have followed their dreams in much worse times -- and with much less luxuries.

Following your dreams is a luxury for people in the global top 5% (mostly in the west). Everyone else is locked in bitter competition. I'm not convinced America will stay comfortably above that fray over my daughter's lifetime.
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