#tigermother

In the TV show Fresh Off the Boat, set in the mid-1990s, Eddie (the main character) is a Taiwanese teenage boy who moved from Washington, D.C. to Orlando, Florida with his father Louis, his mother Jessica, his two younger brothers Emery and Evan, and his grandmother. Honestly, it’s almost as if the writers of the show sat with us in ENC2305, took notes, and went ahead and made Fresh Off the Boat because the show in its entirety is an absolutely blatant depiction of several concepts discussed in class. 

One idea discussed in class that Fresh Off the Boat emphasizes is that tiger mothers are not just very conscious about their kids’ academic success, they demand that their children be elite! In this particular excerpt from the show, Eddie celebrates his successful quarter at school after realizing he had achieved straight As. Eddie, thinking his mom would be happy, is in disbelief when his mom heads to the school principal’s office and not only demands that school be more challenging, but also that Eddie be enrolled in “extra school” at a Chinese Learning Center (CLC). The episode then proceeds to show the logo of the CLC institution which appears to be a doodle of an unhappy kid with Cs for eyes, an L for a nose, and A pluses on its head. This temporary display of the logo is important because it’s a quick portrayal explaining that the current unhappiness of the children lead to great results, thus summarizing the entirety of the tiger-mothering ideology which is that temporary unhappiness for children equals to their long term success. We are then shown the children inside of the learning center, most likely put there by their tiger-mothers, who all appear to be absolutely miserable. Keep in mind that it’s not called a learning center, but a “Chinese” one, which reinforces this concept even more. Jessica’s demand for more schooling despite her son’s success, the Chinese Learning Center’s symbolic logo, and the children’s misery at the learning center all show that Fresh Off the Boat reinforces concepts discussed in class about tiger-mothers.

Another concept discussed in class that Fresh Off the Boat reinforces is the ideological contrast between eastern and western parenting. These two forms of parenting are different from their very core, and we discussed how western parents tend to take into account different personal traits and emphasize “being the best you can be” whereas eastern/Chinese parents explicitly demand academic success from their children regardless of individuality. In the beginning of this excerpt from Fresh Off the Boat, Eddie was standing with a neighbor waiting for their report cards to be delivered. Eddie’s neighbor had a report card with straight C’s while Eddie had a report with straight A’s, and their reactions to their drastically different report cards were two equally resounding yeses. Eddie’s neighbor is white and is assumed to be raised under western principles which means that when he brings that report card home, his parents will assume he was the best he could have been for that quarter and then they’ll maybe suggest that he tries even harder next time. Eddie on the other hand is raised under eastern parenting principles and was happy because he had reached strict pre-established expectations. The episode then proceeds to show Eddie’s younger brothers showing their colorful, sticker-filled report cards to Jessica and talking about how their “school doesn’t give out grades” because “it fosters unhealthy competition.” These two report card scenes, show how eastern parenting emphasizes “excuseless” maximum potential and how western parenting take individual feelings into account and emphasizes individual potential instead. 

In the TV show Fresh Off the Boat, set in the mid-1990s, Eddie (the main character) is a Taiwanese teenage boy who moved from Washington, D.C. to Orlando, Florida with his father Louis, his mother Jessica, his two younger brothers Emery and Evan, and his grandmother. Honestly, it’s almost as if the writers of the show sat with us in ENC2305, took notes, and went ahead and made Fresh Off the Boat because the show in its entirety is an absolutely blatant depiction of several concepts discussed in class.

One idea discussed in class that Fresh Off the Boat emphasizes is that tiger mothers are not just very conscious about their kids’ academic success, they demand that their children be elite! In this particular excerpt from the show, Eddie celebrates his successful quarter at school after realizing he had achieved straight As. Eddie, thinking his mom would be happy, is in disbelief when his mom heads to the school principal’s office and not only demands that school be more challenging, but also that Eddie be enrolled in “extra school” at a Chinese Learning Center (CLC). The episode then proceeds to show the logo of the CLC institution which appears to be a doodle of an unhappy kid with Cs for eyes, an L for a nose, and A pluses on its head. This temporary display of the logo is important because it’s a quick portrayal explaining that the current unhappiness of the children lead to great results, thus summarizing the entirety of the tiger-mothering ideology which is that temporary unhappiness for children equals to their long term success. We are then shown the children inside of the learning center, most likely put there by their tiger-mothers, who all appear to be absolutely miserable. Keep in mind that it’s not called a learning center, but a “Chinese” one, which reinforces this concept even more. Jessica’s demand for more schooling despite her son’s success, the Chinese Learning Center’s symbolic logo, and the children’s misery at the learning center all show that Fresh Off the Boat reinforces concepts discussed in class about tiger-mothers.

Another concept discussed in class that Fresh Off the Boat reinforces is the ideological contrast between eastern and western parenting. These two forms of parenting are different from their very core, and we discussed how western parents tend to take into account different personal traits and emphasize “being the best you can be” whereas eastern/Chinese parents explicitly demand academic success from their children regardless of individuality. In the beginning of this excerpt from Fresh Off the Boat, Eddie was standing with a neighbor waiting for their report cards to be delivered. Eddie’s neighbor had a report card with straight C’s while Eddie had a report with straight A’s, and their reactions to their drastically different report cards were two equally resounding yeses. Eddie’s neighbor is white and is assumed to be raised under western principles which means that when he brings that report card home, his parents will assume he was the best he could have been for that quarter and then they’ll maybe suggest that he tries even harder next time. Eddie on the other hand is raised under eastern parenting principles and was happy because he had reached strict pre-established expectations. The episode then proceeds to show Eddie’s younger brothers showing their colorful, sticker-filled report cards to Jessica and talking about how their “school doesn’t give out grades” because “it fosters unhealthy competition.” These two report card scenes, show how eastern parenting emphasizes “excuseless” maximum potential and how western parenting take individual feelings into account and emphasizes individual potential instead.

Conclusively, the idea of tiger mothers being demanding and academically oppressive, along with the concepts of eastern vs western parenting are very explicitly portrayed in Fresh Off the Boat. This particular excerpt from the show is richly infused with themes related to tiger-mothers and parenting in general, and there are many more underlying ideas left uncovered.

- Marc Desire

*Images: Screenshots from ABC.com

Someone recently showed me this New York Times op-ed piece on the Palo Alto suicides. It’s interesting to see that this discussion has made it to the New York Times. And also interesting to see that this author extensively quotes the opinion piece written by Palo Alto psychiatrist Adam Strassberg. This piece is one of the more popular posts in response to the situation here.

But my question is, does it really help to pathologize the social and cultural norms that have developed in this region of the world? Do we really reach people when we make them “not normal”? Does it actually inspire those who need most to find another way - their own way?

I’ve been in a series of very lively conversations on this hot-button topic. People seem to need to respond in some way to something as grave as teen suicide. It’s amazing to me how a series of suicides can serve as a catalyst for a community to come together in ways that other events do not. I am also struck by how suicide “statistics” are used to create sociopolitical movements centered around the problems of certain demographic groups.

We read what we want to read into a situation that defies explanation. We respond with the strategies most comfortable to us - whether that is pathologizing certain social behaviors, demanding more data and statistics, studying something more closely (while also remaining emotionally distant from the heart of the experience), forming committees and task forces, or having speculative one-on-one conversations with our neighbors and friends.

For me, I read my own experience into this situation. I recognize that at one time, I believed that Palo Alto was the epicenter of all that was cool about the Bay Area (and therefore, the Western world). There was an allure that spread far and wide, especially to the smaller Midwestern cities I had lived in after college - Ann Arbor, Minneapolis and Cleveland. I had a sense that I was missing out by not at least trying to live in the Bay Area for once in my life.

When I moved to California in 2004 to follow a dream of starting a violin school, I followed an intuitive sense, which was backed up by the research I did, that this area was ripe with parents who would invest heavily in educational enrichment opportunities for their children. The younger the better. I had something powerfully seductive to offer them, and I could get paid immediately.

What I offered was real. But I was also very aware of the game I was playing. I copied the processes that the best schools on the Peninsula used. I noted how Bing Nursery School at Stanford had a 5-year waiting list that prompted parents to fill out their children’s application forms from the delivery rooms after they gave birth. I noticed how preschools that were feeder systems for the best private schools in Menlo Park and Atherton had five-figure tuition rates, and impossibly long waiting lists also.

Did I have a lingering sense of the “wrongness” of all this, even as I played the game of being an educational entrepreneur? Yes, I did. And I grew increasingly uncomfortable with the implications of that game as time went on.

At that time, I only knew authoritarian models of leadership. Collaboration was a foreign and somewhat threatening concept to me. What I had experienced up until that point in my life was extreme expectations for perfection. And those standards of perfection were defined by whoever was standing in the front of the room. Yes. I had a Tiger Mother. Yes. Amy Chua’s book was essentially a scene-by-scene description of my childhood, right down to being locked out on my front porch when I was four years old. I cut out a chunk of my own hair too, but I wasn’t twelve, I was more like eight years old. I traveled internationally to perform and compete in both violin and piano. And there was always drama on those trips that we try not to speak about.

Yes, there was a monomaniacal focus on getting everything exactly right all the time. Or else. And I never dared test the concept of what “or else” actually meant.

So now that I am an adult, feeling deeply moved and touched by the pain that is being expressed through these kids in Palo Alto, how does it feel to read a psychiatrist write, “The ‘Koala Dad’ is the far better parent than the “Tiger Mom’”? How does it feel to read that as a stand-alone statement implying that it has meaning on its own?

I feel marginalized and insulted by it. And the best quote I can find in response to it is this, from Dr. Mario Martinez, clinical neuropsychologist and creator of a theory of mind-body-culture called biocognition:

Health gurus medicalize living conditions they fail to understand, and medicalizing is a form of hegemony. In anthropology, hegemony means domination of one cultural belief over another, with such insidious power that the dominated fail to see the dominator's impositions.

There is a larger context here - a cultural one - that is beyond the limits of reductionist science, school homework policies, getting the right number of hours of sleep, or “becoming a Koala Dad”.