The author has the privilege to not have to raise his child the way he was, because he is very successful and rich. Once you have economic wealth, you reach higher and higher on the Maslov's Hierarchy of Needs. He and his children have the privilege and luxury of pursuing the top echelon, which is self-fulfillment. He doesn't have to force education down his children's throats because they will inherit his and his wife's wealth. His children can graduate from a city college and still be millionaires from their inheritance.
His parents didn't have that luxury, and most of us do not either. So it might not have been pretty, but it did exactly the job that his parents wanted to do. This is how families pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty, through unapologetic adherence to top education and work ethic.
I vehemently disagree for multiple reasons. I'll address them in order:
The first is that tiger parenting requires a large investment of a parent's time to be successful. For those that are absolutely poor and barely surviving they have little time nor energy to actively participate in their kid's schooling.
The second is the factor of luck which I firmly believe is far more important. My parents were the exact opposite of the parenting style in the OP because they couldn't be. The only reason why I managed to escape the cycle of poverty was due (un)lucky circumstances that allowed me to scrape by and survive through college. Families don't pull themselves out of poverty through adherence to education or work ethic. Not in America at least.
And finally there's also survivorship bias in play. We can say that tiger parenting is successful because of successful people being raised in that environment but we ignore the many people that committed suicide, burned out or otherwise didn't make it as a result of such intense stress. On average those exposed to this style tend to do worse.
I want to agree with your position. I've seen some data about suicide rates based on parenting strictness, and have anecdata of losing people due to exactly this style of parenting. The tradeoffs some parents make when faced with extreme poverty are sad. Hell, the fact that a modern industrialized society has as many suffering people as ours does is sad.
But I don't think your refutations hold up. This will be a bit of a tome, sorry.
> For those [parents] that are absolutely poor and barely surviving they have little time nor energy to actively participate in their kid's schooling.
That's true for a lot of people. Structural disadvantages are huge. But at the same time, it's not true for large classes of deeply impoverished people. As the author of TFA pointed out, [east] Asian immigrants are, by some metrics, the poorest group of people in the New York area--and definitely severely economically disadvantaged no matter what measurement you use. And yet the academic performance of those groups--even in that area--continues to surpass many others. Given how endemic poverty is among those demographics, I don't think "it's not the poor kids doing super well in school" holds up; the intersection must be large, and something must be materially different about the practices of those folks in order to combat what, elsewhere in the country/world, would be the multiple-generation-damning sentence of poverty.
> Families don't pull themselves out of poverty through adherence to education or work ethic.
That's anecdotal. In general, this is a dangerously politicized area. To argue that families do not, as a rule, pull themselves out of poverty flies in the face of many areas in which they do so in very significant numbers (like the one discussed in the article). However, to argue that therefore all impoverished families can and/or should do this is to echo the most callous and ignorant positions of modern American conservatism.
I think that escaping poverty is possible--not just among outlier families out in the statistical noise--and that figuring out how/when this occurs is important to improving a lot of people's quality of life. I also think it's super important not to let those investigations ever take on the tone of "...and anyone who doesn't bootstrap themselves out of poverty has nobody to blame but themselves". Study in this area must not come at a tradeoff with acting compassionately--compassionately at macro (e.g. political/voting and economic policies/investments), medium (e.g. donating to causes and activism), and micro (e.g. offering what help you can to people you see suffering on the way to work each day) levels--towards those struggling with poverty.
> there's also survivorship bias in play.
I can relate to this personally, having lost people (suicide, overdose, other) due to circumstances correlated with both insanely strict parenting and severe poverty. But I don't think these answers to the question of "how/why/when do families escape poverty with minimal outside assistance?" is an instance of survivorship bias. The hypothesis being tested is "X allowed these specific groups to escape extreme poverty". Nobody's arguing that many (most) others in that situation don't escape, and nobody's arguing that poverty doesn't exist because some people escaped it--that would be survivorship bias. As you point out, there may be long-term costs that are being overlooked, but that's not the same thing.
When you say "On average those exposed to this style tend to do worse", do you mean worse compared to remaining in poverty? If so, citation needed. Or do you mean that "tiger" parenting has worse outcomes compared to other strategies? I don't think most people would disagree with you there. The important question, though, is why this strategy is practiced so effectively among severely impoverished people, and why it has positive results compared to the "control" majority--which, as you point out, is a vicious cycle of poverty feeding back into lack of energy feeding back into lower parent participating feeding back into stunted academic development.
>That's true for a lot of people. Structural disadvantages are huge. But at the same time, it's not true for large classes of deeply impoverished people. As the author of TFA pointed out, [east] Asian immigrants are, by some metrics, the poorest group of people in the New York area--and definitely severely economically disadvantaged no matter what measurement you use. And yet the academic performance of those groups--even in that area--continues to surpass many others. Given how endemic poverty is among those demographics, I don't think "it's not the poor kids doing super well in school" holds up; the intersection must be large, and something must be materially different about the practices of those folks in order to combat what, elsewhere in the country/world, would be the multiple-generation-damning sentence of poverty.
This could be explained through quite a few different avenues. For example, Asian-Americans tend to be lumped together despite how many different cultures actually make up that group. There's also the greater paradox you bring up in that they both compose a group grappling with deep poverty and a group that has seen academic success. It's hard to say therefore that the two are necessarily correlated because we should see academic success tied with decreasing rates of poverty. While it has dropped slightly over the past few years they still remain deep in poverty and have been for decades.
>That's anecdotal. In general, this is a dangerously politicized area. To argue that families do not, as a rule, pull themselves out of poverty flies in the face of many areas in which they do so in very significant numbers (like the one discussed in the article). However, to argue that therefore all impoverished families can and/or should do this is to echo the most callous and ignorant positions of modern American conservatism.
Saying it's politicized would be objectively and statistically incorrect. Socioeconomic mobility in America is incredibly low. People do not, on average, pull themselves out of poverty at any significant rate in America [1]. I believe it would be fair to state as a rule if you are born in poverty, the chances of you rising up the rungs are not very high.
People escape out of poverty due to a lucky alignment of circumstances that give them the opportunities that other people are more easily afforded access to. The way to therefore improve people's QoL is to ensure that people have these opportunities by improving healthcare, reducing burdens on poor families and ensuring that people have equal opportunity regardless of race or gender.
>When you say "On average those exposed to this style tend to do worse", do you mean worse compared to remaining in poverty? If so, citation needed.
Please read the article before you request citations. The author directly cites a study which states that tiger parenting has the opposite result on average [2].
For the rest of your points, these specific groups tend to have successful people that are propped up as a result of the model minority stereotype. That would be almost exactly survivorship bias because we only see the successful people, not those that tried and failed or are still part of the huge group still living in deep poverty.
In what is nearly an internet first, most of my re-responses are of the "sorry, I was actually closer to your position and mis-stated mine" variety:
> It's hard to say therefore that the two are necessarily correlated because we should see academic success tied with decreasing rates of poverty. [..but we don't]
No factual disagreement here. I think that the cases in which it does trade off are important--but not because I think we (the US, if you're a citizen) as a society should double down on education as the sole/primary solution to poverty, but simply because these dynamics are important to understand. As you imply, there are many other things also needed to address poverty as a social concern.
> Saying it's politicized would be objectively and statistically incorrect.
That's not what I meant. I didn't mean to suggest your claim was suspect because it's a politicized area, just that discussions about the implications of claims here need to be undertaken carefully given the chargedness of the subject. You are not an exemplar of that polemic.
> If you are born in poverty, the chances of you rising up the rungs are not very high.
In general, I agree.
> People escape out of poverty due to a lucky alignment of circumstances
"Lucky" does not explain the trends described in TFA. Explanation follows.
> The author directly cites a study which states that tiger parenting has the opposite result on average.
Correct. The cited study does not find a conclusive advantage in the "tiger" parenting style (and finds several potential disadvantages). However, my original claim was narrow: that this parenting style appears, given the other claims of the article to be practicable and effective in the face of extreme poverty. My question was not about the choice between "tiger" parenting and other styles in general; rather, it was
about why it (according to TFA) is (practiced|able to be practiced|effectively practiced) by people in impoverished situations that, as you say, are usually correlated with "poverty as multigenerational sentence, caveat luck".
I have no speculations on why that difference exists, though it's fascinating--and, I suspect, important to some aspects of social progress. If there is research suggesting that there is not such a correlation, I'd be interested in that as well. Let's just be clear: this is about parenting/upbringing strategies that, in contrast to the norm, counteract or appear to counteract the effects of severe socioeconomic disadvantage, not such strategies on balance in other situations.
> And while many tiger cubs run the gantlet and emerge as academic gladiators, on average, children subjected to high-pressure parenting actually tend to do worse in school.
His parents didn't have that luxury, and most of us do not either. So it might not have been pretty, but it did exactly the job that his parents wanted to do. This is how families pull themselves out of the cycle of poverty, through unapologetic adherence to top education and work ethic.