✨What if the Tiger Moms Were Right?
I thought tiger moms were terrible until I met one.
The term Tiger Mom was popularized by the 2011 memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. In it, Amy Chua describes a parenting style of fiercely high expectations. These moms were strict, demanding, and ruthlessly dedicated to their children’s success.
The backlash was immediate and sharp. Cries that these mothers were cruel and even abusive sprang forth from all major publications.
Battle Hymn came out three years before I became a mother, so I never gave it much thought. I wasn’t going to be that sort of parent, and I haven’t been.
But then I met a Tiger Mom… and honestly, I had a lot to learn from her.
I first met Priya (not her real name) at a piano festival. We connected on the fact that we both homeschooled, and how it was partially because we could offer our children a better education. But she wasn’t like any other homeschool mom I’d ever met. She was intensely focused on giving her kids the most exceptional education possible. Not in a gentle, floating way, but with mission-level intensity. Best classes, best extracurriculars, best programs.
She had been putting them through IQ and aptitude tests for years.
At first I was put off. Really? Is all that necessary? It’s a bit much.
As I got to know her though, a fuller story emerged. When Priya’s oldest son was 6 years old, it was clear he was gifted but she could get no accommodations from the school. She got the first IQ test so she had concrete evidence to force the system to act. Multiple tests followed, but in the end the school system couldn’t contain her son (or Priya).
Over the next decade, she tells me of finding online parent groups for gifted kids and mentors for her children. She also talks of the challenges she faced. It’s hard (and lonely) forging your own path. As I sit next to her on her couch, she looks exhausted, and she has a right to be. She works full-time, homeschools her younger son, and drives her oldest to a specialty high school a long way from home.
But here’s the thing. Her kids aren’t unhappy. Rather, they are the most driven kids I’ve been around. The youngest’s room is filled with wires and breadboards that he’s using to program a robot he’s building from scratch. Priya tells me that they had to set computer limits because he was staying up until midnight working (not watching YouTube, working).
The oldest attends high school on a college campus because he’s already doing graduate level math in 10th grade. When they came to dinner, my husband (an Engineering PhD who does data analytics for a living) had a lively conversation with him about Lie Group Theory which is an advanced mathematical concept typically taught to Systems and Controls Engineers their first year getting their PhD. Priya says it’s hard to get her oldest to do anything else besides math, and wonders what happens if he finishes his bachelors before he graduates high school.
Getting to know Priya and her remarkable children got me thinking.
What if the parenting style we’ve been told to avoid is exactly what kids need right now?
What if our children need a bulldozer to clear their path in a world that has never been more crowded? Our children won’t just be competing with other humans, but AI. It won’t be enough for them to be able to read classic literature, write a good essay, and be proficient in math.
Maybe I need to be a tiger? Certainly, I need to raise tigers: strong, resilient, and ready.
Lucky for us, we aren’t shooting in the dark. There are decades of research to fall back on… and honestly, Tiger Moms aren’t that far off.
What does the science say about the parenting styles that lead to the strongest kids (both academically and emotionally)? And how can we adapt this knowledge to our changing, modern world? Finally, like most science, not all of it is useful in the home. In the next section, I’ll break down what the research actually supports, what we can ditch, and how I’m applying it with my own kids.