Tiger moms, helicopter parents, and the tough, hardworking nanay

Since Amy Chua came out with her “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” parenting styles have come under closer scrutiny—and criticism.

There's helicopter parenting, in which a parent pays very close attention to her child's every action and problem. And then there's its opposite, slacker parenting.

The tiger mom way of parenting seemed effective, at least for Chua, who successfully raised two daughters using an authoritative voice in a very strict household.

Scores of parents as well as doctors and psychologists have voiced their concerns about tiger parenting. Dr. Kevin Arnold, a psychologist and author, wrote in his blog The Older Dad on www.psychologytoday.com that tiger parenting “promotes conformity over creativity.” He claims that when children do as they are told, their creative potential is lost. “If the tiger mom is wrong,” Dr. Arnold writes, “children can be doomed to thinking in only one, incorrect way.”

Another argument against tiger parenting is that children reared this way are not able to develop social and relationship skills. (Amy Chua and other tiger mothers don’t allow sleepovers or participation in school plays, among other interactive functions.) Dr. Arnold says that tiger parenting “makes it less likely that children will learn to thrive in an economy that relies on relational capital.” And because tiger parents use punishment and shame to force their children to do better, the kids may end up with low self-esteem and high stress levels.

Helicopter parenting, or hyper-parenting, although popular and widely practiced, has taken a lot of flak as well. Helicopter parents make life too easy for their kids, controlling everything from their schedules to important life choices like college majors and universities. Hyper-parents basically run their children’s lives. This type of parenting produces highly dependent children who are unable to make their own decisions, take risks, and learn from their mistakes.

But parenting—and motherhood—does not easily fall into categories. Many moms are a mix of styles, and every mom's parenting style is different and unique to her, even differing with every child.

The troubleshooter

“My mother’s parenting does not nurture, it troubleshoots,” says Diego Silang Maranan, co-founder of Manila-based research collective Curiosity Design Research. Maranan earned his Masters in Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada and is now a faculty member at the University of the Philippines Open University.

His mother, Aida Fulleros Santos, is the founder and current president and executive director of WeDpro, a feminist organization established in 1989. She also taught women’s studies and is an independent consultant and “on and off poet”. Santos is also the mother of Len Maranan-Goldstein, a development manager at Northwest Maritime Center.

Maranan defines Santos’ parenting as an “insistent, occasionally frightening, but ultimately empowering guidance.” He continues, “It is the kind of parenting that pushes fledglings out of nests and brings them closer to the sky.”

Santos candidly declares she is not a tiger mom.

“I don't know how best to describe my parenting; Parenting is class-based and contextual,” she says. “When I was a young mother, I had values about parenting that I learned from my own parents, so I taught my children about hard work, studying well, not cutting classes, the value of education, doing house chores and the like.”

As a mother, Santos could be strict. “But I was always aware of how overly strict and dogmatic my parents’ child rearing was,” she admits. “So I promised I would never be physical with my children, I wouldn't insult them.” But she is also only human. Once when her daughter was 5, she lost it and hit her butt with a walis tambo.“I cried and said sorry, but I was very aware of the fact that I hit my child, and no reasoning would undo what I did,” she says.

The tough Filipino nanay

Santos became a parent during the martial law years. She was active in the resistance movement against the Marcos dictatorship and would “disappear” without telling her family where she would be and how long she would be away. “I was a political prisoner when my daughter was 4 and she sometimes spent days with her parents in prison,” Santos remembers. Her son was born two years after her "temporary release" as she was undergoing trial in a military court until 1986 when the EDSA revolution happened.

“I was not the universally present mother, and my children were as important as my political work,” she says in hindsight. “I probably deprived my children of the things they needed and wanted, including the economic security that they needed most.” Santos has always said that she does things for the good of her kids. She admits, “I don’t know if they believed me, but it was the most honest thing I could say.”

Many years later, we see that her children turned out very well, despite her doubts. The years were difficult and it was not “a bed of roses,” but the kids went through the rough and Maranan says today of his mother: “She’s a tough woman, tougher than I will ever be. [I understand,] more deeply than ever before, the difficult choices she’s had to make as a parent, an activist, and a woman. I’ve never looked back since then.”

What Santos’ advocacy means to her is probably what work means to many other Filipino mothers. As they need to be away for work, either locally or abroad, these mothers don’t even get the opportunity to become a tiger parent or a helicopter mom, even if they wanted to. For many Pinoy moms, work comes first and the scraps of time left after trying to earn a living are what is given to the children. Yet we are resilient, both mother and child, and we all emerge more than okay in the end. We don’t need any labels. The Pinay mom is tough and hardworking. Period. — BM, GMA News