Last year, the publication of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother created controversy over how parents should raise their children. While the parenting tactics employed by the “Tiger Mom” reflected stereotypical Asian parenting, stressing education and chosen extracurriculars, the tactics of the new “Tiger Mom” emphasize a strict diet.
Dara-Lynn Weiss is the new “Tiger Mom.” In the April issue of Vogue, Weiss wrote about her tactics to manager her daughter’s weight. Weiss’ daughter, now eight, had weighed 93 pounds at age seven. Under the austere supervision of Weiss, Weiss’ daughter now weighs a healthy weight of 77.
“I stopped letting her enjoy Pizza Fridays,” Weiss wrote.
Weiss cut down her daughter’s dinner portion by half and banned dessert so that the 2nd grader would quit her habit of eating “adult-size plates of food.”
The change in her daughter’s weight shows that being strict reaped desired results, but Weiss’ story also sparked some caustic remarks. On the internet, she was denounced as “[the most] selfish women to ever grace the magazine’s pages,” and one to hand “her daughter the road map to all her future eating disorders.” Others have described Weiss’ account as “provocative.”
The emergence of the “Tiger Moms” can be labeled as neither a positive nor negative arrival, but it seems to provoke a question that had hitherto been quiet: “What is ‘good’ parenting?”
