8 ms·

The Last of the Tiger Parents

97 points by ilamont 8y ago

sand500 8y ago
This is something I sometimes think about. My parents were pretty strict and emphasized education but were not "tiger parent" strict. I did pretty well in school but not "straight-A valedictorian" well. I'm out of college now with a job at the big 5 but I wonder where I would be had I studied harder in school and gotten into a better college. And would I be "happier"?
- magic_beans 8y ago
  Welp, once you have kids you can tiger parent them if you want.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  Unless you're using yourself as a proxy for others, the question isn't whether you'd be happier, but whether a population engaging in a parenting style would render more desired results. I do believe in the value of an educated populace not just for jobs, but for democratic and civic strength.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  My parents were divorced and, anyways, completely hands off when it came to my sister’s and my education. I got a PhD, worked for research labs, and so on; my sister is a waitress and a bartender. There is some nature to consider, not just nuture, I guess.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - haskellandchill 8y ago
    That’s a nice story. Thanks for sharing.
- balls187 8y ago
  What school did you attend?
- haskellandchill 8y ago
  I dream of a big 5 job. Big 10, 20, 100? It seems so safe and nice. But yeah I am happier, that one is up to me :)
- anonnyj 8y ago
  Happiness is an absurd goal anyhow, because it's unsustainable. Better to shoot for content (comfortable, healthy, engaged in creative/work/etc) than gasping for peaks in mood. Less wasteful, less disappointment at not being happy all the time.
- triviatise 8y ago
  happiness comes from within. There is no sense wondering about the past since it cant be changed. The question is what will bring you happiness today to the rest of your life. I graduated in the top 50% of my high school class and had a 3.2/4 GPA at a state EE program. I hear about high school kids studying 3 hours a day, I don't think I ever studied much more than 3 hours a week. Definitely not stellar academic credentials. I ended up entering an md phd program where I washed out after 5 years. Fast forward a few years (20...) and I have my own company and will make about $800k-$1M this year. Yet at no time was I unhappy, even when I was digging for change out of the couch to have enough money to buy food. I remember savoring the ridiculousness of the situation and reveling in it. Yet I'm no happier now than I was at that moment. Part of life is figuring out what truly makes you happy. For most of us it ends up being bringing happiness to others in some way, not achievement and material possessions.
- gumby 8y ago
  > I wonder where I would be had I studied harder in school and gotten into a better college One thing that became abundantly clear from watching my kid go through the college process was that "better" is highly student-dependent. I had a really really great time at university but was happy that my kid didn't even apply there as I think he wouldn't have enjoyed the experience and would not have flourished; in fact he did end up going to a school I could not have handled. Assuming you enjoy your job at the "big 5", is anything wrong? (Not to say that it's always useful to reflect on the path not taken once in a while in case it provides insights for the future! But tiger parenting -- as a recipient of it, though my parents tried to tone it down -- is predicated on there being a "way", which ultimately there isn't, at least in the USA).
MrTonyD 8y ago
This seems like a pretty convincing refutation of the effectiveness of the "tiger mom" philosophy: http://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915301227 http://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
cornholio 8y ago
Coercion is irrelevant. The differentiator is valuing education and viewing it as the sole way for social mobility. Once a child internalizes this world view as fair and implacable, she will chose to do well in school, just as easily as she will breathe. The endlessly adaptable blank mind of the young Homo Sapiens will have latched on to the rules of the tribe in which they have been born, and remain set for life.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
  Well . . . some kids find other reasons to do the work. Competitiveness, simple affinity, or the reasonable observation that there's no reason to not do well in school.
- Avshalom 8y ago
  Rebellion against the status quo has an equally rich academic tradition. "Education" in the abstract doesn't prefer one view over the other. Further education is in no way a guaranteed path to success: I have two BS degrees Physics and Geology with math and CS minors, and yet I am a stock boy at Target. Nothing is a path to anything. We of course hear from the successful children of "tiger moms" but how many stories in the last 50 years do you remember with the headline "my mother demanded everything and I am a fork lift operator at an industrial door warehouse" and yet https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58ff7f40e4b0c46f0782a5b6 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58ff7f40e4b0c46f0782a5b6 Asian Americans are statistically poorer than most...
  - cornholio 8y ago
    > Rebellion against the status quo has an equally rich academic tradition. "Education" in the abstract doesn't prefer one view over the other. Before you can rebel academically, a decade of conformism is required. So few nonconformists survive that such traits are immediately valuable - but do not mistake that for neutrality, modern education is conformist above all else. > Further education is in no way a guaranteed path to success. Sure, and I made no such claim, the article author is concerned about educational achievement in and of itself.
hb3b 8y ago
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?
- windows_tips 8y ago
  try the web link
- com2kid 8y ago
  I realized how often I was running out of free article reads each month, and paid up. The "# of free articles exceeded" pay wall was making it obvious that I enjoy their content.
- sowrabh 8y ago
  Opening in incognito would not count towards the limit, if that helps!
- barefootford 8y ago
  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.
  - cpr 8y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird .)
- villain 8y ago
  Disable JS
- tzs 8y ago
  If it is an interesting enough article to attract a fair amount of comments, which is reasonably common with NYT articles, there will usually be enough information in the comments here to make the thread worthwhile without reading the article. This is especially true if the article is about a controversial or contentious topic, because then people will often cite other articles in support of or opposition to the points of the article and those are often not behind paywalls. If it is a current events news article, there will also usually be other sources covering the same events you can turn to if the discussion is such that you really do need to read an article in order to follow along. If you want to filter them out, you could probably write a simple bookmarklet to do so. Here's something that almost works with HN's current page structure: (function () { var stories = document.getElementsByClassName('storylink'); for (var i = 0; i < stories.length; ++i) if (stories[i].href.includes('://www.nytimes')) stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.hidden = 'hidden';})() You can change the if statement to check for all the sites you want to hide (and to handle links to nytimes.com in addition to www.nytimes.com, and things like that). This doesn't quite hide it. The title line goes away, but the small gray line below with the points and the link to the comments remains, but I think that is fine. It's non-obtrusive and lets you see that something was removed. If you really want to get rid of that other line, this will do: (function () { var stories = document.getElementsByClassName('storylink'); for (var i = 0; i < stories.length; ++i) if (stories[i].href.includes('://www.nytimes')) { stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.hidden = 'hidden'; stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.nextSibling.hidden = 'hidden'; } })() That will leave a small vertical space for the hidden items. That's the next row down from the two that are hidden, but stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.nextSibling.nextSibling.hidden = 'hidden' doesn't get rid of it, so if you want it gone too, you'll have to poke around the page yourself and figure out how to reference it. Here's something you can put in a bookmarklet to un-hide all the hidden stories: (function () { var stories = document.getElementsByClassName('storylink'); for (var i = 0; i < stories.length; ++i) stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.hidden = '';})() or this if you are using the version to hide both lines: (function () { var stories = document.getElementsByClassName('storylink'); for (var i = 0; i < stories.length; ++i) if (stories[i].href.includes('://www.nytimes')) { stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.hidden = ''; stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.nextSibling.hidden = ''; } })() Disclaimer: I suck at JavaScript. There are probably better ways to do this. I don't know how portable this is (worked on Chrome and Firefox). To use, create a bookmark and set the URL to "javascript: <code from above>". You can paste in the "<code from above>" part. You don't have to do any encoding or putting it on one line. Both Firefox and Chrome will automatically do that for you.
glangdale 8y ago
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 does seem to be a rapid winnowing of people who were previously overperforming on tests and 'routine intellectual work'.
- gsam 8y ago
  As a counterpoint, I would like to say that a lot of research still is 'routine intellectual work'. Movers and shakers are rare and far apart. The vast majority of academia are collectively and slowly boiling over problems, rather than taking bold and independent strives.
  - andrewflnr 8y ago
    At a certain level of abstraction, perhaps, but someone who's only good at learning and regurgitating existing knowledge is still not going to do well at even routine research. The "routine" of bulk research is still a higher-order routine than standardized tests.
  - csa 8y ago
    > As a counterpoint, I would like to say that a lot of research still is 'routine intellectual work'. Movers and shakers are rare and far apart. While this is very true, the "movers and shakers" are the ones who set the standard of a research culture. Frankly, that's why the US has a major research advantage over most (probably all) countries that strongly embrace tiger parenting.
    - tolkbot 8y ago
      The US has a major advantage over all countries. And Japan has an advantage over the vast majority of countries. The reason for that is probably how developed their economies are.
docker_up 8y ago
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 wife's wealth. His children can graduate from a city college and still be millionaires from their inheritance. His parents didn't have that luxury, and most of us do not either. So it might not have been pretty, but it did exactly the job that his parents wanted to do. This is how families pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty, through unapologetic adherence to top education and work ethic.
- imh 8y ago
  > And while many tiger cubs run the gantlet and emerge as academic gladiators, on average, children subjected to high-pressure parenting actually tend to do worse in school.
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  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 opposite of the parenting style in the OP because they couldn't be. The only reason why I managed to escape the cycle of poverty was due (un)lucky circumstances that allowed me to scrape by and survive through college. Families don't pull themselves out of poverty through adherence to education or work ethic. Not in America at least. And finally there's also survivorship bias in play. We can say that tiger parenting is successful because of successful people being raised in that environment but we ignore the many people that committed suicide, burned out or otherwise didn't make it as a result of such intense stress. On average those exposed to this style tend to do worse.
  - zbentley 8y ago
rayiner 8y ago
> 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 wonder if that does your kids or anyone else a favor. As someone in position similar to the author, I've chosen to Tiger parent my kids. As my Asian immigrant parents understood: money is really important. It matters so much that financial stress is a leading cause of divorce and people die because they don't have the money for proper healthcare. I don't want my kids to suffer for lack of money. Nor do I want them to feel like they can have their cake and eat it too because they can depend on their parents' money. There's also a question of whether it helps anyone else. Our world is facing immense challenges. Many of the things cans we've been kicking down the road for these past decades are going to pile up on the generation to come. Their generation needs people slaving away in labs or in front of computers. That need might be existential. Your kids shouldn't get a pass on that just because they are privileged and their parents were well-off enough that they could be comfortable without necessarily striving.
- FruityFarm 8y ago
  Is it really either/or? Can't parenting utilize both styles?
  - rayiner 8y ago
    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."
    - pvg 8y ago
      Out of curiosity, which one do you think your daughter would pick?
ken47 8y ago
I was fine with this article until he tried to bring all Asian Americans into it. Surprise surprise, but not all high-performing Asian Americans grew up under the caricature of Asian parenting the author presents throughout the article.
c-smile 8y ago
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 of creating proper motivations really.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
spyckie2 8y ago
As a second generation Asian American who is living in Hong Kong, this article (and most discussions about tiger parents) sounds like the writer has a blind spot - specifically, he wonders if he will emulate tiger parents without any understanding of the cultural values that cause tiger parents to be that way. In Asian culture, obedience, order, and hierarchy are the values that shape society. Western cultures value individualism, but in Asian cultures, you are part of a unit or group, be it family, department or otherwise. This unit has a clear head/leader (parents or boss) who makes decisions for the entire unit with everyone else expected to obediently follow, and this obedience and hierarchy that makes the unit successful is seen as the highest moral standard in Confucian philosophy. However, the head must also be responsible to the subordinates, sacrificing for the subordinates what the subordinates do for the head. If the head acts in this way, he is morally right and the subordinates' obedience is a reciprocation or agreement of a mutually moral relationship. See http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Reading_Revolutions/Confucius.html http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Reading_Revolutions/Confucius.html for a quick summary. If you're a poor Asian immigrant strategizing how to get your family ahead, you will think about it from the perspective of the family unit, ignoring the individual. The generalized strategy would be for the parents to sacrifice themselves to push the kids as much as possible. In Confucian philosophy, the head is 'moral' in beating the kids into studying because they fulfill their responsibility to the kids in providing opportunities for a better life, and the subordinates, (kids) to reciprocate morality, should obediently follow. Unfortunately, the kids grow up westernized. Confucian philosophy works because the moral obedience and obligation to the unit gets so deeply ingrained, it defines your satisfaction and value system on a deeper, instinctual level. You can get pushed to do things you wouldn't want to do as an individual because you get value out of it elsewhere in a moral or social context. However, if there is no carrot because instead of Confucian values of the unit, western values of individualism is instilled, then there is a problem - from the kid's point of view, it's all suffering. Even worse, it's a direct affront to what society is teaching should be valued (independence and autonomy), and it creates deep feelings of your parents 'being wrong' in asian american kids, enough to be a widespread phenomenon. 2nd generation Asian American adults often feel slighted by their parents very deeply beyond rationalism, and it's a moral wrong, a slight to the fundamental rights of human beings - the right to be an individual. But the result is a successful upper-middle class lifestyle, jumping multiple generations of wealth accumulation in just one. This duality makes a lot of Asian American adults at odds with themselves and their culture. A lot of 2nd gen try to push while respecting individual feelings, but there's too little fuel to go full tiger parent - you don't need to jump wealth gaps, you value individualism too much, and most importantly, you just don't want your kids to suffer as much as you did. In this sense, the 2nd generation is similar to the 1st. The major motivation for Asian immigrants was to have a better life, and for their family to not suffer so much. Compared to starving, or being hunted down by communists, or living in old open air houses with no ac or sanitation, what's a bit of forced studying? Contrary to the view of the article, I don't see modern Asian Americans as regressing. I think we have the background and tools to combine the best parts of both cultures - a little pushing to go beyond themselves, with the empowerment that comes from western individual thought - to create a very strong next generation in the future.
manfredo 8y ago
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 elementary school. It was like a game to see if I could be the first one to finish and still get 100%. When I was in middle school and high school I was always aiming for As. Part of it was because I was genuinely interested and motivated to learn. More cynically, if I failed (or was even below average) academically it would be big blow to my sense of self-worth. Also because I desired the status and money that going to a good university would bring. That said, I don't really think my parents ever strictly enforced academic commitment. Sure, I got As, but I also spent a ton of time playing video games, hanging out with friends, etc. I didn't have a bed time - I distinctly remember binging through a whole season of Dexter on a school night once. When my parents found a beer bottle tucked away in a closet (damn friends couldn't clean up for shit) they were more mad that I got caught rather than that my friends and I experimented with alcohol. I'd speculate that if I started getting mostly Bs or Cs they'd probably crack down on recreational time, but this was something that neither I nor my sister ever put to the test. I don't want this to sound self-congratulatory, but I really think in retrospect my childhood was a great outcome. I had academic success because my parents instilled the principles in me at a young age, and by late childhood or young adulthood I was self motivated academically. Thus, in high school I was free to balance school and social life myself any my parents trusted me to get good grades without much input on their part. It's also the kind of childhood I'd want to pass on to my kids. I'd want to instill in them the value of academic and professional success, but want them to be self motivated to achieve those goals beyond early childhood years.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  This is pretty much exactly my situation, and comparing it to a kid a year younger than me (and his siblings), as well as a few others I know, I'd say it definitely wasn't tiger parenting. I worked to get good grades for myself, not because my parents really pushed me to. They certainly encouraged and helped, but that was it. I was very introverted my first few years of high school (did have online friends through games, and friends in real life, but rarely stayed overnight with them, etc) but my parents pushed me to get out of that even. I didn't do much studying, either (bit me in the ass in college tho because I didn't know how to study well lol), and didn't have a bedtime. Now, my brother wasn't as motivated to do good as I was, even though he could. And my parents didn't push him either. They let him have his friends over every weekend and get Bs and such. I'm really really glad I had that kind of upbringing when comparing it to the other kid who had to have straight As, had over 1000 volunteer hours a year, did Tae Kwan Do and several other extracurriculars (his parents wanted him and siblings to go to Naval Academy;they all did end up going). There were times his life seemed awful, even tho he hung out with friends a lot and had fun... His siblings both had it worse off, and it showed in how they interacted with people (i.e. Grades decided worth, no real social skills, etc etc)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

97 points by ilamont 8y ago

This is something I sometimes think about. My parents were pretty strict and emphasized education but were not "tiger parent" strict. I did pretty well in school but not "straight-A valedictorian" well. I'm out of college now with a job at the big 5 but I wonder where I would be had I studied harder in school and gotten into a better college. And would I be "happier"?

magic_beans 8y ago
Welp, once you have kids you can tiger parent them if you want.
threatofrain 8y ago
Unless you're using yourself as a proxy for others, the question isn't whether you'd be happier, but whether a population engaging in a parenting style would render more desired results. I do believe in the value of an educated populace not just for jobs, but for democratic and civic strength.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
My parents were divorced and, anyways, completely hands off when it came to my sister’s and my education. I got a PhD, worked for research labs, and so on; my sister is a waitress and a bartender. There is some nature to consider, not just nuture, I guess.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- haskellandchill 8y ago
  That’s a nice story. Thanks for sharing.
balls187 8y ago
What school did you attend?
haskellandchill 8y ago
I dream of a big 5 job. Big 10, 20, 100? It seems so safe and nice. But yeah I am happier, that one is up to me :)
anonnyj 8y ago
Happiness is an absurd goal anyhow, because it's unsustainable. Better to shoot for content (comfortable, healthy, engaged in creative/work/etc) than gasping for peaks in mood. Less wasteful, less disappointment at not being happy all the time.
triviatise 8y ago
happiness comes from within. There is no sense wondering about the past since it cant be changed. The question is what will bring you happiness today to the rest of your life. I graduated in the top 50% of my high school class and had a 3.2/4 GPA at a state EE program. I hear about high school kids studying 3 hours a day, I don't think I ever studied much more than 3 hours a week. Definitely not stellar academic credentials. I ended up entering an md phd program where I washed out after 5 years. Fast forward a few years (20...) and I have my own company and will make about $800k-$1M this year. Yet at no time was I unhappy, even when I was digging for change out of the couch to have enough money to buy food. I remember savoring the ridiculousness of the situation and reveling in it. Yet I'm no happier now than I was at that moment. Part of life is figuring out what truly makes you happy. For most of us it ends up being bringing happiness to others in some way, not achievement and material possessions.
gumby 8y ago
> I wonder where I would be had I studied harder in school and gotten into a better college One thing that became abundantly clear from watching my kid go through the college process was that "better" is highly student-dependent. I had a really really great time at university but was happy that my kid didn't even apply there as I think he wouldn't have enjoyed the experience and would not have flourished; in fact he did end up going to a school I could not have handled. Assuming you enjoy your job at the "big 5", is anything wrong? (Not to say that it's always useful to reflect on the path not taken once in a while in case it provides insights for the future! But tiger parenting -- as a recipient of it, though my parents tried to tone it down -- is predicated on there being a "way", which ultimately there isn't, at least in the USA).

MrTonyD 8y ago

This seems like a pretty convincing refutation of the effectiveness of the "tiger mom" philosophy: http://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886915301227 http://sci-hub.tw/https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

cornholio 8y ago

Coercion is irrelevant. The differentiator is valuing education and viewing it as the sole way for social mobility. Once a child internalizes this world view as fair and implacable, she will chose to do well in school, just as easily as she will breathe. The endlessly adaptable blank mind of the young Homo Sapiens will have latched on to the rules of the tribe in which they have been born, and remain set for life.

asfasgasg 8y ago
Well . . . some kids find other reasons to do the work. Competitiveness, simple affinity, or the reasonable observation that there's no reason to not do well in school.
Avshalom 8y ago
Rebellion against the status quo has an equally rich academic tradition. "Education" in the abstract doesn't prefer one view over the other. Further education is in no way a guaranteed path to success: I have two BS degrees Physics and Geology with math and CS minors, and yet I am a stock boy at Target. Nothing is a path to anything. We of course hear from the successful children of "tiger moms" but how many stories in the last 50 years do you remember with the headline "my mother demanded everything and I am a fork lift operator at an industrial door warehouse" and yet https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58ff7f40e4b0c46f0782a5b6 https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58ff7f40e4b0c46f0782a5b6 Asian Americans are statistically poorer than most...
- cornholio 8y ago
  > Rebellion against the status quo has an equally rich academic tradition. "Education" in the abstract doesn't prefer one view over the other. Before you can rebel academically, a decade of conformism is required. So few nonconformists survive that such traits are immediately valuable - but do not mistake that for neutrality, modern education is conformist above all else. > Further education is in no way a guaranteed path to success. Sure, and I made no such claim, the article author is concerned about educational achievement in and of itself.

hb3b 8y ago

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?

windows_tips 8y ago
try the web link
com2kid 8y ago
I realized how often I was running out of free article reads each month, and paid up. The "# of free articles exceeded" pay wall was making it obvious that I enjoy their content.
sowrabh 8y ago
Opening in incognito would not count towards the limit, if that helps!
barefootford 8y ago
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.
- cpr 8y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird .)
villain 8y ago
Disable JS
tzs 8y ago
If it is an interesting enough article to attract a fair amount of comments, which is reasonably common with NYT articles, there will usually be enough information in the comments here to make the thread worthwhile without reading the article. This is especially true if the article is about a controversial or contentious topic, because then people will often cite other articles in support of or opposition to the points of the article and those are often not behind paywalls. If it is a current events news article, there will also usually be other sources covering the same events you can turn to if the discussion is such that you really do need to read an article in order to follow along. If you want to filter them out, you could probably write a simple bookmarklet to do so. Here's something that almost works with HN's current page structure: (function () { var stories = document.getElementsByClassName('storylink'); for (var i = 0; i < stories.length; ++i) if (stories[i].href.includes('://www.nytimes')) stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.hidden = 'hidden';})() You can change the if statement to check for all the sites you want to hide (and to handle links to nytimes.com in addition to www.nytimes.com, and things like that). This doesn't quite hide it. The title line goes away, but the small gray line below with the points and the link to the comments remains, but I think that is fine. It's non-obtrusive and lets you see that something was removed. If you really want to get rid of that other line, this will do: (function () { var stories = document.getElementsByClassName('storylink'); for (var i = 0; i < stories.length; ++i) if (stories[i].href.includes('://www.nytimes')) { stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.hidden = 'hidden'; stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.nextSibling.hidden = 'hidden'; } })() That will leave a small vertical space for the hidden items. That's the next row down from the two that are hidden, but stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.nextSibling.nextSibling.hidden = 'hidden' doesn't get rid of it, so if you want it gone too, you'll have to poke around the page yourself and figure out how to reference it. Here's something you can put in a bookmarklet to un-hide all the hidden stories: (function () { var stories = document.getElementsByClassName('storylink'); for (var i = 0; i < stories.length; ++i) stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.hidden = '';})() or this if you are using the version to hide both lines: (function () { var stories = document.getElementsByClassName('storylink'); for (var i = 0; i < stories.length; ++i) if (stories[i].href.includes('://www.nytimes')) { stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.hidden = ''; stories[i].parentNode.parentNode.nextSibling.hidden = ''; } })() Disclaimer: I suck at JavaScript. There are probably better ways to do this. I don't know how portable this is (worked on Chrome and Firefox). To use, create a bookmark and set the URL to "javascript: <code from above>". You can paste in the "<code from above>" part. You don't have to do any encoding or putting it on one line. Both Firefox and Chrome will automatically do that for you.

glangdale 8y ago

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 does seem to be a rapid winnowing of people who were previously overperforming on tests and 'routine intellectual work'.

gsam 8y ago
As a counterpoint, I would like to say that a lot of research still is 'routine intellectual work'. Movers and shakers are rare and far apart. The vast majority of academia are collectively and slowly boiling over problems, rather than taking bold and independent strives.
- andrewflnr 8y ago
  At a certain level of abstraction, perhaps, but someone who's only good at learning and regurgitating existing knowledge is still not going to do well at even routine research. The "routine" of bulk research is still a higher-order routine than standardized tests.
- csa 8y ago
  > As a counterpoint, I would like to say that a lot of research still is 'routine intellectual work'. Movers and shakers are rare and far apart. While this is very true, the "movers and shakers" are the ones who set the standard of a research culture. Frankly, that's why the US has a major research advantage over most (probably all) countries that strongly embrace tiger parenting.
  - tolkbot 8y ago
    The US has a major advantage over all countries. And Japan has an advantage over the vast majority of countries. The reason for that is probably how developed their economies are.

docker_up 8y ago

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 wife's wealth. His children can graduate from a city college and still be millionaires from their inheritance. His parents didn't have that luxury, and most of us do not either. So it might not have been pretty, but it did exactly the job that his parents wanted to do. This is how families pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty, through unapologetic adherence to top education and work ethic.

imh 8y ago
> And while many tiger cubs run the gantlet and emerge as academic gladiators, on average, children subjected to high-pressure parenting actually tend to do worse in school.
fzeroracer 8y ago
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 opposite of the parenting style in the OP because they couldn't be. The only reason why I managed to escape the cycle of poverty was due (un)lucky circumstances that allowed me to scrape by and survive through college. Families don't pull themselves out of poverty through adherence to education or work ethic. Not in America at least. And finally there's also survivorship bias in play. We can say that tiger parenting is successful because of successful people being raised in that environment but we ignore the many people that committed suicide, burned out or otherwise didn't make it as a result of such intense stress. On average those exposed to this style tend to do worse.
- zbentley 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago

> 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 wonder if that does your kids or anyone else a favor. As someone in position similar to the author, I've chosen to Tiger parent my kids. As my Asian immigrant parents understood: money is really important. It matters so much that financial stress is a leading cause of divorce and people die because they don't have the money for proper healthcare. I don't want my kids to suffer for lack of money. Nor do I want them to feel like they can have their cake and eat it too because they can depend on their parents' money. There's also a question of whether it helps anyone else. Our world is facing immense challenges. Many of the things cans we've been kicking down the road for these past decades are going to pile up on the generation to come. Their generation needs people slaving away in labs or in front of computers. That need might be existential. Your kids shouldn't get a pass on that just because they are privileged and their parents were well-off enough that they could be comfortable without necessarily striving.

FruityFarm 8y ago
Is it really either/or? Can't parenting utilize both styles?
- rayiner 8y ago
  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."
  - pvg 8y ago
    Out of curiosity, which one do you think your daughter would pick?

ken47 8y ago

I was fine with this article until he tried to bring all Asian Americans into it. Surprise surprise, but not all high-performing Asian Americans grew up under the caricature of Asian parenting the author presents throughout the article.

c-smile 8y ago

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 of creating proper motivations really.

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spyckie2 8y ago

As a second generation Asian American who is living in Hong Kong, this article (and most discussions about tiger parents) sounds like the writer has a blind spot - specifically, he wonders if he will emulate tiger parents without any understanding of the cultural values that cause tiger parents to be that way. In Asian culture, obedience, order, and hierarchy are the values that shape society. Western cultures value individualism, but in Asian cultures, you are part of a unit or group, be it family, department or otherwise. This unit has a clear head/leader (parents or boss) who makes decisions for the entire unit with everyone else expected to obediently follow, and this obedience and hierarchy that makes the unit successful is seen as the highest moral standard in Confucian philosophy. However, the head must also be responsible to the subordinates, sacrificing for the subordinates what the subordinates do for the head. If the head acts in this way, he is morally right and the subordinates' obedience is a reciprocation or agreement of a mutually moral relationship. See http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Reading_Revolutions/Confucius.html http://hua.umf.maine.edu/Reading_Revolutions/Confucius.html for a quick summary. If you're a poor Asian immigrant strategizing how to get your family ahead, you will think about it from the perspective of the family unit, ignoring the individual. The generalized strategy would be for the parents to sacrifice themselves to push the kids as much as possible. In Confucian philosophy, the head is 'moral' in beating the kids into studying because they fulfill their responsibility to the kids in providing opportunities for a better life, and the subordinates, (kids) to reciprocate morality, should obediently follow. Unfortunately, the kids grow up westernized. Confucian philosophy works because the moral obedience and obligation to the unit gets so deeply ingrained, it defines your satisfaction and value system on a deeper, instinctual level. You can get pushed to do things you wouldn't want to do as an individual because you get value out of it elsewhere in a moral or social context. However, if there is no carrot because instead of Confucian values of the unit, western values of individualism is instilled, then there is a problem - from the kid's point of view, it's all suffering. Even worse, it's a direct affront to what society is teaching should be valued (independence and autonomy), and it creates deep feelings of your parents 'being wrong' in asian american kids, enough to be a widespread phenomenon. 2nd generation Asian American adults often feel slighted by their parents very deeply beyond rationalism, and it's a moral wrong, a slight to the fundamental rights of human beings - the right to be an individual. But the result is a successful upper-middle class lifestyle, jumping multiple generations of wealth accumulation in just one. This duality makes a lot of Asian American adults at odds with themselves and their culture. A lot of 2nd gen try to push while respecting individual feelings, but there's too little fuel to go full tiger parent - you don't need to jump wealth gaps, you value individualism too much, and most importantly, you just don't want your kids to suffer as much as you did. In this sense, the 2nd generation is similar to the 1st. The major motivation for Asian immigrants was to have a better life, and for their family to not suffer so much. Compared to starving, or being hunted down by communists, or living in old open air houses with no ac or sanitation, what's a bit of forced studying? Contrary to the view of the article, I don't see modern Asian Americans as regressing. I think we have the background and tools to combine the best parts of both cultures - a little pushing to go beyond themselves, with the empowerment that comes from western individual thought - to create a very strong next generation in the future.

manfredo 8y ago

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 elementary school. It was like a game to see if I could be the first one to finish and still get 100%. When I was in middle school and high school I was always aiming for As. Part of it was because I was genuinely interested and motivated to learn. More cynically, if I failed (or was even below average) academically it would be big blow to my sense of self-worth. Also because I desired the status and money that going to a good university would bring. That said, I don't really think my parents ever strictly enforced academic commitment. Sure, I got As, but I also spent a ton of time playing video games, hanging out with friends, etc. I didn't have a bed time - I distinctly remember binging through a whole season of Dexter on a school night once. When my parents found a beer bottle tucked away in a closet (damn friends couldn't clean up for shit) they were more mad that I got caught rather than that my friends and I experimented with alcohol. I'd speculate that if I started getting mostly Bs or Cs they'd probably crack down on recreational time, but this was something that neither I nor my sister ever put to the test. I don't want this to sound self-congratulatory, but I really think in retrospect my childhood was a great outcome. I had academic success because my parents instilled the principles in me at a young age, and by late childhood or young adulthood I was self motivated academically. Thus, in high school I was free to balance school and social life myself any my parents trusted me to get good grades without much input on their part. It's also the kind of childhood I'd want to pass on to my kids. I'd want to instill in them the value of academic and professional success, but want them to be self motivated to achieve those goals beyond early childhood years.

dorchadas 8y ago
This is pretty much exactly my situation, and comparing it to a kid a year younger than me (and his siblings), as well as a few others I know, I'd say it definitely wasn't tiger parenting. I worked to get good grades for myself, not because my parents really pushed me to. They certainly encouraged and helped, but that was it. I was very introverted my first few years of high school (did have online friends through games, and friends in real life, but rarely stayed overnight with them, etc) but my parents pushed me to get out of that even. I didn't do much studying, either (bit me in the ass in college tho because I didn't know how to study well lol), and didn't have a bedtime. Now, my brother wasn't as motivated to do good as I was, even though he could. And my parents didn't push him either. They let him have his friends over every weekend and get Bs and such. I'm really really glad I had that kind of upbringing when comparing it to the other kid who had to have straight As, had over 1000 volunteer hours a year, did Tae Kwan Do and several other extracurriculars (his parents wanted him and siblings to go to Naval Academy;they all did end up going). There were times his life seemed awful, even tho he hung out with friends a lot and had fun... His siblings both had it worse off, and it showed in how they interacted with people (i.e. Grades decided worth, no real social skills, etc etc)

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