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The Last of the Tiger Parents

nytimes.com

81–88 of 88 posts

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#81
post #48
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a spectrum, of course. But at the end of the day, you have concrete choices to make. When picking classes for my five year old daughter's summer school, I can check the box for "Disney Princess" dancing or "Little Engineers."

Out of curiosity, which one do you think your daughter would pick?

If I had asked her (this was last year), she would've chosen Princess dance. But I didn't (because she's five and what does she know) and signed her up for Little Engineers (and Little Chemist and the math classes, etc.) and she loved it. This year, I signed her up for Princess Dance the first week, then Little Engineers one of the other weeks. She enjoyed Princess dance, but asked if I had signed her up for Little Engineers because she was looking forward to that.

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#83
post #43

There are alternatives to Tiger Parenting … I had two friends at school and met exactly same situation visiting their families one day. We were given some homework to do... Jewish family: Misha, you are so smart, why you cannot solve this exercise? Russian family (same Tiger style): Vladimir, why you cannot solve this exercise, why you are so lazy? I do remember that the comparison impressed me - parenthood is an art…

[deleted]

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#84

I'm interested in what really qualifies as "Tiger Parenting", especially over whether my childhood counts as tiger parenting: I don't remember elementary school that much. I remember getting my homework done quick because I could play the N64 or Xbox when my homework was done. Maybe that instilled in me the notion that academics come first. I also remember taking math quizzes and being pretty good at them in elementa…

I believe the term "tiger mother" was popularised by Amy Chua's book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" which is a great read for people interested in parenting.

It's been a few years since I've read the book, but your upbringing sounds extreme dissimilar from what Chua calls tiger parenting. Where you start to diverge is where you have time for video games once academics are taken care of.

In the tiger parent model there are no video games or playtime with friends when academics are done. That is when you do additional academics or learn foreign languages or practice classical music.

Getting good grades is not an accomplishment to be rewarded and straight A's don't get you any latitude. These accomplishments are the bare minimum of expected behavior for your child.

A gifted child can become a high achiever with a casual approach to academics. With a rigorous approach the idea is that average children become high achievers and gifted children become world class.

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

This could be explained through quite a few different avenues. For example, Asian-Americans tend to be lumped together despite how many different cultures actually make up that group. There's also the greater paradox you bring up in that they both compose a group grappling with deep poverty and a group that has seen academic success. It's hard to say therefore that the two are necessarily correlated because we should see academic success tied with decreasing rates of poverty. While it has dropped slightly over the past few years they still remain deep in poverty and have been for decades.

>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.

Saying it's politicized would be objectively and statistically incorrect. Socioeconomic mobility in America is incredibly low. People do not, on average, pull themselves out of poverty at any significant rate in America [1]. I believe it would be fair to state as a rule if you are born in poverty, the chances of you rising up the rungs are not very high.

People escape out of poverty due to a lucky alignment of circumstances that give them the opportunities that other people are more easily afforded access to. The way to therefore improve people's QoL is to ensure that people have these opportunities by improving healthcare, reducing burdens on poor families and ensuring that people have equal opportunity regardless of race or gender.

>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.

Please read the article before you request citations. The author directly cites a study which states that tiger parenting has the opposite result on average [2].

For the rest of your points, these specific groups tend to have successful people that are propped up as a result of the model minority stereotype. That would be almost exactly survivorship bias because we only see the successful people, not those that tried and failed or are still part of the huge group still living in deep poverty.

[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2006/04...

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3641860/

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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-…

In what is nearly an internet first, most of my re-responses are of the "sorry, I was actually closer to your position and mis-stated mine" variety:

> It's hard to say therefore that the two are necessarily correlated because we should see academic success tied with decreasing rates of poverty. [..but we don't]

No factual disagreement here. I think that the cases in which it does trade off are important--but not because I think we (the US, if you're a citizen) as a society should double down on education as the sole/primary solution to poverty, but simply because these dynamics are important to understand. As you imply, there are many other things also needed to address poverty as a social concern.

> Saying it's politicized would be objectively and statistically incorrect.

That's not what I meant. I didn't mean to suggest your claim was suspect because it's a politicized area, just that discussions about the implications of claims here need to be undertaken carefully given the chargedness of the subject. You are not an exemplar of that polemic.

> If you are born in poverty, the chances of you rising up the rungs are not very high.

In general, I agree.

> People escape out of poverty due to a lucky alignment of circumstances

"Lucky" does not explain the trends described in TFA. Explanation follows.

> The author directly cites a study which states that tiger parenting has the opposite result on average.

Correct. The cited study does not find a conclusive advantage in the "tiger" parenting style (and finds several potential disadvantages). However, my original claim was narrow: that this parenting style appears, given the other claims of the article to be practicable and effective in the face of extreme poverty. My question was not about the choice between "tiger" parenting and other styles in general; rather, it was about why it (according to TFA) is (practiced|able to be practiced|effectively practiced) by people in impoverished situations that, as you say, are usually correlated with "poverty as multigenerational sentence, caveat luck".

I have no speculations on why that difference exists, though it's fascinating--and, I suspect, important to some aspects of social progress. If there is research suggesting that there is not such a correlation, I'd be interested in that as well. Let's just be clear: this is about parenting/upbringing strategies that, in contrast to the norm, counteract or appear to counteract the effects of severe socioeconomic disadvantage, not such strategies on balance in other situations.

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#87
post #80
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Following your dreams is a luxury for people in the global top 5% (mostly in the west).

You'd be really surprised.

People follow their dreams even in the bottom 5% -- including as refugees, in times of war, and in all kinds of bad situations, and in all kinds of cultures, not just "the west".

The "starving artist" (who does or does not make it) is not something out of fiction, and neither is the piss poor bootstrapped entrepreneur.

Re: The Last of the Tiger Parents

#88
post #35

> When I became a parent, I felt the wonder and uncertainty that accompany the awesome responsibility of fatherhood. But I was absolutely sure of one thing: The childhood I devise for my two young daughters will look nothing like mine. They will feel valued and supported. They will know home as a place of joy and fun. They will never wonder whether their father’s love is conditioned on an unblemished report card. I w…

If money is so important why don't you 'tiger' yourself, make a few million and then give them to your children?
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