Tiger kids

I've always had the feeling that the whole 'tiger mom' fascination was driven less by cultural forces and more by feature writers' excitement at having a new buzz word to play with. A new paper that I'm not qualified to critique in a journal I'm not familiar with is not going to decide the issue for me, though I will admit that I was always a bit skeptical of the notion that really high levels of stress got kids to perform at their best.

Here's a key passage from the abstract*:

Path analyses showed that the supportive parenting profile, which was the most common, was associated with the best developmental outcomes, followed by easygoing parenting, tiger parenting, and harsh parenting. Compared with the supportive parenting profile, a tiger parenting profile was associated with lower GPA and educational attainment, as well as less of a sense of family obligation; it was also associated with more academic pressure, more depressive symptoms, and a greater sense of alienation. The current study suggests that, contrary to the common perception, tiger parenting is not the most typical parenting profile in Chinese American families, nor does it lead to optimal adjustment among Chinese American adolescents.

* Does “tiger parenting” exist? Parenting profiles of Chinese Americans and adolescent developmental outcomes. By Kim, Su Yeong; Wang, Yijie; Orozco-Lapray, Diana; Shen, Yishan; Murtuza, Mohammed Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol 4(1), Mar 2013, 7-18.

via Yahoo