For many families, it’s been the game changer. That is, in a nutshell, why parents invest so much in the child’s study and education. By reading books and getting high remarks, children have the best chance of getting ahead in society – whereby changing family fortunes as a whole. And the best chance usually lies in children reading books. Traditionally, by this I mean throughout history, opportunities for ordinary Chinese families have been few and far between, to put it bluntly. Plus all children who are born into such families.Īmy Chua being Chinese in ethnicity, she must have had this in mind when she coined this phrase for her book.Īnyways, in relation to sons and daughters, tiger moms share similar traits with real tigers nurturing a cub, in that both are fiercely protective of their little baby.Īnd, being tenacious in nature, neither the female tiger nor the human mom is immune to the occasional snarl or shout at the young one.Īt any rate, tiger moms, the human kind, are strict parents who demand the very best, academically, from their child or children.Īs Chinese, I feel for Amy Chua and I feel even more for her children. When we talk about tiger women in China, we understand them to be thus, domineering and snarling-ly relentless.Īll timid husbands married to such women understand what I’m saying. Tigers being the king of the mountain, tiger women are so likened because they share similar dominating traits with the big cat. This may have to do with the fact that in China, fierce and tenacious middle-aged women are sometimes called tigers – or tigresses, to be exact. I guess the question is why “tiger” mom instead of, say, a sheep mom or a dog mom.

Tiger mom seems to be quite well explained in the above.

The phrase was first coined in the book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” a 2011 parenting memoir written by Yale law professor Amy Chua. The phrase “tiger mom” is defined as a strict disciplinarian mother who demands high achievement from her children and maintains control of their activities.

Battle of the tiger mother