Asian-American 'Tiger Parenting' Ineffective and Harmful?

Results from the first major study of Asian-American "tiger moms" shows evidence that kids whose parents employ this aggressive parenting style have worse grades and academic achievements, more depression, family isolation and a greater psychological maladjustment, according to an article on Slate.

Although it is lodged in cultural stereotypes, the concept of an Asian "tiger parent" is prevalent in American culture and media. Author Amy Chua's 2011 memoir "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" sparked plenty of controversy among parents and experts in child development, many of which who felt that the aggressive parenting style described was lodged in misunderstood and unstudied stereotypes about Asian-Americans.

Chua, whose book was written in a tongue-in-cheek style, described herself as being a tough, Yale professor and mother who implemented forced hours of music practice, severe restrictions on extracurricular activities, bans on social activities such as sleepovers and, "on the rare occasions her children failed to attain their mother's high expectations," punished and shamed her two daughters.

Though some critics of the memoir said her parenting style was too forceful and aggressive, one of her daughters eventually landed at Carnegie Hall, providing support for the idea that Asian-American tiger parents often produce "whizzes" and successful children.

However, results from the first major study on the parenting style state otherwise. When Chua's book "first hit the transom," associate professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas, Su Yeoung Kim, thought: "Oh my God! I actually have data for this!", according to Slate.

When the book came out, Kim had already been following 300 Asian-American families for a decade, and recently published her results in March, the results of which likely surprised Chua and her fans.

According to the results, children with "tiger" parents were more aliented from their families, had lower academic achievement and attainment, were more depressed and more psychologically maladjusted than their peers who had "supportive" or "easygoing" parents. In Kim's study, children and adults answered a variety of questions about their parenting styles and its effects during the childrens' adolescence.

Most parents studied were foreign-born from Hong Kong and southern China, "with relatively low educational attainment and a median income of between $30,001 and $45,000 in each of the study's three phases, spaced out equally over eight years." Three-quarters of their children were born in the U.S., and the study controlled for confounding factors such as sibling order and socioeconomic status.

Before Kim began her study, the term "tiger parent" did not exist and was not recognized by scholars of human development and family sciences, although researchers and scholars all shared similar ideas about Asian-American parents, regarding them as more controlling and more likely to produce academically successful children.

The concept contradicted the experience of European-American children, whose parents that were unresponsive and overly strict tended to "produce messed-up losers."

"Whenever scholars compare European-American and Asian-American families, [white parents] almost always score higher on controlling and lower on warmth, which means they're more likely to be classified as authoritarian," Kim told Slate. However, the children of European-American parents were being outperformed by the children of Asian-Americans, giving rise to the "'achievement/adjustment paradox': kids doing well by external measures while feeling torn apart inside."

Kim decided that for her study, she would create new profiles from the ones traditionally used by academics since the 1960s, which include the profiles: permissive, authoritative, and authoritarian. Kim used reported and self-ported postive and negative characterizations of parents (including affection, warmth and hostility and shaming) and a statistical method known as latent profile analysis to determine four new profiles: supportive, easy-going, harsh and tiger.

Those parents that were labeled by themselves and their children as "supportive" scored high on positive attributes, those scoring low on both positive and negative dimensions were deemed "easy-going," while "harsh" parents scored high on negative attributes and low on positive ones, and "tiger" parents scored high on both positive and negative dimensions.

"Warmth, reasoning, monitoring, and democratic parenting were considered positive attributes, while hostility, psychological control, shaming, and punitive measures were considered negative."

In addition to measuring the dimensions, Kim measured the outcomes for each of her categories. She found that supportive parents produced the best development outcomes. Children of supportive parents scored high on family obligation, academic achievements, educational attainment and low on depressive symptoms and alienation.

Although Kim's data is reliable, it is also very subjective, as the rating for the amount of academic pressure is Kim's own.

Kim found that in terms of parenting, Chinese moms and dads are not so different from European parents, but what's different is the emergence of the "tiger" type, which was presumed to be less common among white parents since tigers score themselves more highly on shaming their children, suggesting that they themselves feel no shame in doing so.

Despite popular notions about the children of Asian-American tiger parents being successful and well-rounded, Kim's findings illustrate that this concept is not rooted in reality, and tiger parenting can have detrimental consequences for children. Harsh parents often produce children with low GPAs, depressive symptoms.

"Tiger parenting doesn't produce superior outcomes in kids," she said.