ANG MOH ASKS “WHY SG PARENTS ARE SO KIASU” ALWAYS PUSHING THEIR KIDS

Next generation of (tiger) parents

I am an angmoh guy. Been in Singapore about 8 years.

My first local friends used to complain a lot about their tiger parents. All the pain they went though, from extra tutoring, always having to study, banned from having romantic relationships and ensuring to be home for dinner even when they are full grown adults. I think the worst aspect was not being able to meet their parents high expectations even with amazing performance.

Now they are all starting to have their own kids and I’m very surprised to see they are doing the exact same things to their kids that their parents did to them. In some cases even harder – like enrichment classes when their kids are still babies!!

Can someone tell me why they repeat this toxic behaviour? I don’t get it, especially when there’s little evidence that pushing your kids so hard actually helps them.

Here are what netinzes think:

• It’s because as they grew older they realized they can’t fight the system.. changes in the educational system whilst taking place now will only bear fruit ( for better or worse ) decades later. While economic and political uncertainty just makes competition even more rife. You can argue its only going to get worse with this generation of parents experiencing even more FOMO and kiasuness amidst increasing costs.
• Generally new parents have only two main sources of reference. Their own childhood, and the experiences of their (equally clueless) peers. From when the lady receives the good news on her pregnancy, well meaning friends, relatives and colleagues will start feeding information about parenthood, school life, childcare and anything and everything there is about “getting your child that headstart” I feel it all starts from there.
• As a parent who signed her mini me for a baby enrichment class, i would like to say that it’s a fun session where he enjoys the teacher telling stories/singing songs/play baby gym. It’s only a 1hr session once a week where he gets exposed to a different setting from home/grandparents house and gets exposed to different pple (teachers/other babies). I’m hoping this will help ease him into school eventually. But no we don’t expect him to be the president scholar of his batch 15yrs down the road la. Definitely no crazy tuition schedule for him when he gets older 
• Lessons and experiences imprinted from childhood are commonly brought forward to the next generation because its so deeply ingrained.