UC Berkeley alumna Kim Wong Keltner will be holding an author talk in Berkeley this Saturday to discuss her recent memoir, “Tiger Babies Strike Back,” an account of her personal struggles being raised by an authoritarian and cold “tiger parenting” style.
Tiger parenting involves a rigid approach to raising children with strict rules and harsh punishments, a style Amy Chua associated with Asian-American immigrant parents in her 2011 bestselling book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.” According to research conducted by Qing Zhou, an assistant professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, and Stephen Chen, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF, authoritarian parenting has been shown to result in negative outcomes later in a child’s life, resulting in symptoms such as depression, anxiety and poor social skills.
Keltner speaks out against tiger parenting in her memoir, citing the adverse social and cognitive effects as reasons to rise up against overly involved parenting and reclaim one’s life.
“My book is about being raised by strict parents — specifically, Asian parents — although this phenomenon is not restricted to Asian parents,” Keltner said. “I wanted to write a book for the rest of us who aren’t No. 1 in our class. I wanted to say there’s a different kind of success that can’t be measured by test scores and awards.”
Ongoing research by Chen, a former UC Berkeley clinical psychology graduate student, indicates that an aspect of tiger parenting that involves imposing unreasonably high demands upon children has negative consequences, regardless of whether families were Chinese-American or European-American.
“Across both (racial) groups, parents had high expectations but in different domains and different areas. What was similar, however was those high expectations can be internalized and affect our identities and our mental health adjustments,” Chen said.
Stephen Hinshaw, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has conducted additional research showing that tiger parenting may not be the best method of child rearing.
“If tiger parenting is relentlessly authoritarian with little warmth, there is likely to be more harm than good emerging,” Hinshaw said, citing parenting with “high warmth with high control” as the ideal. “Our own research on youth with ADHD reveals that (this style) of parenting is associated with social competence.”
Keltner recommends that parents moving away from the tiger-parenting style by being more honest with their children.
“I would say parents should be able to admit that they’re wrong sometimes or that they don’t know the answer,” Keltner said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard an Asian parent say ‘I don’t know’ … I think parents need to relinquish or at least accept they’re not in control of the situation at all times.”
Like Keltner, Emily Yu, a fourth-year UC Berkeley student, believes that it is possible for “tiger babies” to rid themselves of the pressures of parental control.
“I don’t think it’s true that kids who have extremely strict ‘tiger parents’ would generally have social skill problems,” Yu said. “If the kid can somehow be outgoing and still manage to get good grades, then they can be really sociable and fun-loving while their parents aren’t around — i.e. during school … or extracurricular activities. Many of my friends who have tiger parents are actually very outgoing and popular.”
Keltner will be discussing Tiger Mom topics at her book reading Saturday at 3 p.m. at Eastwind Books on Shattuck and University avenues.
Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Keltner was raised by an authoritative parenting style. In fact, Keltner was raised by the authoritarian parenting style.
Contact Angelica Villegas at avillegas@[email protected]