I got news for you…You go to any any top notch school, with parents from the same social/economic background, the parents end up being all the same.
It’s not just the asian immigrants that are doing this. The asian tiger mom stereotype, though exists, is very much alive in a well-do white family too.
My kid that goes to the same CarmelV elementary school that has white friends who parents are doctors and lawyers and engineers who are very much in as much a tiger-mom/dad as any other asian tiger parent.
What’s more interesting on my observation is that while among the asian families I know where both parents both a full time job, a lot of the well-to-do white families have a stay-at-home parent, which spends almost the ENTIRE DAY shuffling the kid around from school to enrichment programs to sports to everything else they possibly can cram into one day…The say stay-at-home parent are the ones that constantly volunteer as class parent (which I find admirable, frankly) because they want to know what their kids are doing. And they were the first ones that approached the teacher and told the teacher “the work you are assigning is too easy for my kid, my kid is bored. And if you don’t make the work more challenging for my kid, it’s going to be a problem.”
So I’m not sure why some folks think this entire tiger-parent thing is strictly an asian thing. If at all, it’s more of a social/economic thing.[/quote]
When I refer to tiger moms, I mean those that literally force their kids to do 6+ hours of work every night, even at the expense of sleep. Not those parents who simply want their kids to maintain a 4.0, get into a decent college, and make them do the work necessary for that. I define success as happiness – not being a Harvard med grad AND an orchestra violinist with no memory of ever flying a kite in the park, unless that’s what will make them happy. Race has nothing to do with my opinion on the subject, but since you bring it up, I don’t doubt many rich white families make their kids go through that. I will be avoiding those schools, too.[/quote]
Where do people get the impression that tiger parents spend 6+hrs on homework? I think that’s a stereotype in itself. They’ll probably spend some time on homework, and then split the time with things like an instrument (piano or violin) something activity like skating or soccer and some homework. It’s no different than a soccer mom that drops their kid off of some afterschool learning program for 3 hours, then have them go to Sharks soccer practice, etc. And, yes some of the white upper income families spend as much time getting their kids enriched as asian parents do..In fact, I know because some of the same white parents asked me about the same enrichment programs other asian parents send their kids to that I don’t..They ask about kumon, and they ask about the math/science enrichment programs that teach korean and/or chinese, and they ask about if the programs are there on weekends in the afternoon, after their kid is done with golf/tennis/soccer or what have you in the morning. And frankly, I haven’t even heard of a lot of the enrichment programs they mention.
