During a group text thread, I learned how one of my non-mommy friends saw me as a mother. In my close knit circle of friends, we like to put pictures of celebrities as our contact images for each other for amusement. I’m guilty of putting a picture of a crying Kim Kardashian for my best friend. She does the same exact crying face as her, so it was fitting! In the group thread, my non-mommy friend chose a picture of Constance Wu, the actress that plays the character Jessica Huang in the hilarious T.V. show Fresh Off the Boat as my contact picture. If you have never seen the show, she is known as the Tiger mom. My friend saw me as a Tiger mom?! I was surprised at this, because I didn’t quite agree that my motherly ways fit all the characteristics of a Tiger mom.
Characteristics of the Tiger mom:
She is fierce.
She invokes fear.
She is never wrong.
She does not compliment her children in public.
She allows no one to mess with her children without threatening bodily harm.
She is always blunt.
She always leads.
She always tells everyone in the family what to do and rarely considers their opinion.
She is a shark with school work and expects nothing less than an A+ on all tests.
She expects her children to always be the winner of every competition and bring home some form of proof i.e. trophy.
She expects her children to always be the smartest in their math class.
You get the point! The Tiger mom is extreme! I believe most mothers have an idea of what type of mom they are. Some of us can be in denial or delusional about it, but I guess it helps to have friends who can enlighten us about how we can be as mothers. It caused me to evaluate my parenting towards my children. I know she chose the picture as a joke and did not truly see me as that extreme of a mother. However, behind every joke is some sort of truth. I am not that extreme, but I did at times, catch myself exhibiting some of the characteristics listed and couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea of having a little bit of Tiger mom in me.
If we really evaluate ourselves as mothers, we would realize, we all have a little bit of Tiger mom in all of us. We all have a little bit of every “type” of mom in us; the judgmental mother, the perfect mother, the clueless mother, the loose mother, the soccer mom, etc. All the moms I know including myself have a little bit of each of these characteristics. There are days when I am a Tiger mom, there are days when I am a judgmental mom, and there are days when I feel like I have no clue what I am doing as a mother. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what type of mother we are. What matters is that we are doing all we can for our tiny humans, even if it means we have to get in the role of the Tiger mom to get. it. done.
