The Tiger Mum

The most prevailing stereotype of Chinese parenting in the United States is the Tiger Mum described as being strict, harsh, severe and very controlling. The Tiger Mum forces her child to parentally-defined success instead of persuing the child's dreams leading to unhappiness in children.

Chinese parents, however, beg to differ and define their parenting styles neither as tiger mum parenting, nor are they convinced that this model would create the most successful children. Their styles, in fact, cover a wide range of beliefs and approaches.

The concept of the tiger mom as Americans perceive it represents an attempt to use American cultural beliefs of parenting as a baseline from which to make sense of Chinese parenting. The “Tiger mom” has become the go-to phrase for Americans when referring to traditional Chinese parenting styles. This attempt to categorize cultural differences into discrete boxes fails to capture the complex nature of Chinese parenting.

Most of the research carried out to study Chinese parenting styles are based on a culturally-biased theory that was derived from White middle classe samples, a theory that most likely does not capture differences in cultural  beliefs. 

Studies that focus on exploring Chinese parenting beliefs often focus on the cultural notion of training, Chiaoshun, which is rooted in the teachings of Confucius (Chao, 1994, 2001). The most important emphasis in Confucius’s school of thought is respect for the social order, including relationships between individuals as well as relationships between an individual and society (Bond & Hwang, 1986). Based on this idea of consideration for social order, the notion of “training” in Chinese culture encourages parents to teach their children the quality of respect in all of their relationships. As a result, Chinese parents subscribing to this practice reinforce harsh and strict discipline, and hope that their children will learn from their instruction. Thus, parenting practices that appear harsh and strict to others are often simply a culturally-based attempt to train children to act in a socially acceptable manner (Chan et al., 2009). Moreover, when adopting harsh language and strict discipline, Chinese parents assume the children will understand the connotation behind the harsh language. Rather than ruthless punishment, the harsh language and discipline indicates parental trust and high expectations of children’s performances (Chan, Bowes, & Wyver, 2009; Chao, 1994, 2001; Chen & Luster, 2002; Cheung & McBride-Chang, 2008).

The parenting style is not about strictness but about instilling Confucian qualities in children. The priority is that the child becomes "a good person", academic achievement is a close second. Since US-Americans do not know this base and only focus on what they see or believe to see, i.e., harsh practices. Chinese immigrant families combine both, US-American and Chinese approaches creating a cohesive parenting style (via).

- - - - - - -
- Wang, S. (n.d.). The "Tiger Mom": Stereotypes of Chinese Parenting in the United States, link
- photograph by Wang Fuchun via