Kimmy Yam
Sat, June 15, 2024 at 10:00 AM EDT·9 min read
Many Asian Americans know the reality of growing up with piano lessons on Saturday, language school on Sunday — and trying to push back on it all whenever possible in-between.
Jennifer Chan was raised with similarly harsh expectations, but now the Clearwater, Florida, mom is trying to reverse that dynamic as a parent.
“I’m letting my kid be quite feral,” Chan, 34, said with a laugh about her oldest daughter, who’s almost 3 years old. “She just runs free.”
Chan is among a number of Generation X and older millennial Asian Americans who have been rejecting the stricter “tiger parenting” style for a looser approach — one with less emphasis on achievements and more focus on just allowing feelings to be felt and kids to be kids.
Experts and parents say it’s a shift that has been happening over the past 20 years, and they point to a number of factors: grappling with their own rigid upbringings, more awareness about mental health, having privileges their immigrant parents and earlier generations didn’t have, and a move away from collectivism and seeing parents as all-knowing elders.
