James' World 2

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Vivek Ramaswamy, a key member of President-elect Trump’s team, recently reignited the debate around tiger parenting, equating it with “tough love” and framing it as a surefire path to success. His comments painted tiger parenting as a deliberate strategy for raising high-achieving, resilient children, but they overlooked the deeper roots of this parenting style.

Every time “Tiger Moms” enter the cultural discourse, I chuckle. I remember reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother as a young mom, and laughing as I imagined telling my deceased father that these practices are supposed to be reserved for Asian kids.

My reaction to that book seemed so much less judgmental than that of my friends—I read it as Amy Chua’s sincere desire to raise strong, healthy children. I thought her observations that nothing is fun until you attain mastery and that parents shouldn’t assume fragility in healthy children were particularly astute.

My friends seemed to see her as a one-dimensional figure: the demanding mom with her arms folded, demanding endless hours of violin practice. But I read a funny, conflicted mom who is truly struggling to figure out what her parenting practices should be in the face of a culture that believes otherwise.

Not having gotten the memo that these practices are only for Asian women, my father demanded academic excellence. He expected me to write book reports on books I had read for pleasure. If I brought home a grade that was less than 100 percent, my father wanted to know where the other two points went.

His higher education had been cut short by economic circumstances, and his chronic illness meant we relied on my mother’s job as a guidance counselor for our income. He always praised my mother’s master’s degree and stated his foregone conclusion that I’d attain a Ph.D. “Imagine…” he’d muse. “You get to write a thesis. And a dissertation.” His tone of voice made these sound like treats. (They weren’t, mostly.)

Even on his sickbed, my father expected me to write a detailed error analysis of my mistakes on tests. I protested in vain that the test was over, I got an A, even if two points were “missing,” and I really didn’t want to. He told me that disciplined scholars faced their mistakes, and he was right.

I felt loved by my father, if frustrated by him, and I read Chua’s book in the same light. I knew that he was afraid of poverty and that he saw higher education as a buffer against that fate. He also knew that he was dying. He was trying to protect—and prepare—me.

Now, Vivek Ramaswamy has brought high-demand parenting back into cultural discourse.

As someone who works with parents navigating their own post-traumatic experiences, I’d argue that tiger parenting is, at its core, a trauma response. It’s not just about wanting your kids to succeed; it’s about needing them to. And that distinction matters because it tells us something profound about how trauma shapes our parenting.

What Is Tiger Parenting?

Amy Chua described tiger parenting as a style that demands excellence. Kids are pushed to master difficult skills, often at the expense of leisure or emotional validation. While this approach can foster resilience, discipline, and achievement, it can also come with significant emotional costs—for both child and parent.

But why would a parent adopt such a rigid, high-pressure approach in the first place? Let’s explore how trauma influences parenting styles.

Trauma and the Fear of Failure

Trauma leaves an indelible mark on the way we view the world. For parents with unhealed trauma, especially trauma related to scarcity, poverty, or persecution, the stakes of “failure” can feel unbearably high. If you’ve experienced a world where not being the best meant losing opportunities—or worse, safety—it makes perfect sense that you’d do everything in your power to prevent your child from ever facing that reality.

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Hmmm…A president for the people?

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CLIMATEWIRE | President Donald Trump’s cancellation of a 31-year-old environmental justice directive threatens the health of tens of millions of people in minority or low-income communities, which have often been dumping grounds for pollution, waste sites, and heavy industry, said civil rights advocates and experts.

Revoking a 1994 executive order by President Bill Clinton removes a mandate that survived four subsequent presidencies, including Trump’s first term, and required federal agencies to address the “high and adverse” environmental and health effects of their decisions on areas with high rates of poverty or large minority populations.

“It’s turning the clock back on decades of work,” said Peggy Shepard, co-founder and executive director of WE ACT for Environmental Justice, based in New York. “They’re working to eliminate policies and programs that support equity, support environmental and climate justice, and that’s just going to have a harmful effect on the health and well-being of so many people in these disadvantaged communities.”

Clinton’s Executive Order 12898, signed in February 1994, required federal agencies to analyze environmental and public health hazards in minority or low-income communities and to avoid adding to them.

Trump, in his own executive order that repealed the Clinton-era mandate, said the policies violate federal civil rights laws, sow racial division, and “deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system.”

Following Trump’s revocation, agencies will review each program for areas where “race and other marginalization identities are considered by the agency and how they are considered,” George Washington University law professor Emily Hammond said. Political appointees will lead the reviews and give reports to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

“It will be OMB that’s actually giving the final say to policies that are eliminated,” said Hammond, who was Energy Department deputy counsel in the Biden administration. “This process takes a while.”

Trump framed his revocation — and several others Tuesday — as an effort to end “illegal preferences and discrimination” in government.

Trump’s directive also will bar most federal grant programs from prioritizing projects that help minority or low-income communities. It also axes a 60-year-old equal employment executive order and several diversity and inclusion policies. Critics said the president’s moves ignore research about the health and financial effects of pollution on poor people.

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WHEN ABC BROADCAST A REMAKE OF AN episode of All in the Family, shot before a studio audience in 2019, the network recreated the Bunker family home In Queens, New York, down to the doilies and faded wall­paper, with Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei taking up Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton’s roles as Archie, the ultraconservative loading-dock worker, and his kindly wife, Edith. Set in 1976, the episode centers around the unexpected arrival of David Brewster, their son-in-law Mike Stivic’s high school friend, a Vietnam War draft dodger who fled to Canada but just sneaked home for Christmas. When Edith invites David to join them for the holiday dinner, Mike cautions his friend not to tell Archie what he’d done—and to avoid such topics as “politics, religion, sex, books, movies, war, peace, guns . . . grapes, lettuce.”   

Archie, meanwhile, has invited his pal Pinky Peterson, whose son Steve was killed in the war. Mike’s worst fears are realized—David’s secret spills out and the joyous gathering quickly devolves into a bitter confrontation over the war, with a spitting-mad Archie yelling, “What he done was wrong!” Finally Pinky stands up and makes peace. “My kid hated the war too,” he says. “But he did what he thought he had to do. And David here, he did what he thought he had to do . . . if Steve was here, he would want to sit down with him. And that is what I want to do.” Pinky then walks over to David and shakes his hand.  

All in the Family debuted 50 years ago in January 1971, two years before the United States withdrew from Vietnam, and four years before that divisive conflict ended. Fifty-eight thousand Americans died in Southeast Asia, and when the Christmas special originally aired in 1976, the war was still a festering wound. The very day ABC restaged the show in 2019, Congress had started impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, and the country found itself as polarized as ever. So much had changed in four-plus decades—and yet so little.   

Back in the 1970s, of course, it was bold for a sitcom to take on such a sensitive topic as the war. But All in the Family was unlike anything seen before on television. Up until then, TV had a blandly homogenous quality. Three networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC, ruled the airwaves, and the newly created Public Broadcasting Service had a niche audience. They all worked under a draconian Television Code, and offered wholesome and uncontroversial family entertainment. There was no political content, and situation comedies were inhabited by white middle-class families, noble lawmen, and quirky country folk. One of the few working-class shows was The Honeymooners, which centered around Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden, his wife, Alice, his sewer worker friend, Ed Norton, and Ed’s wife, Trixie. It went off the air in 1956 after just one season, but would gain classic status in reruns. The Honeymooners influenced another series about working stiffs—this one animated: The Flintstones, which first aired in 1960 and featured Fred Flintstone, a prehistoric quarryman from the town of Bedrock, his wife, Wilma, best buddy, Barney, and his wife, Betty.   

That was about it for blue-collar comedy until Archie Bunker barged into America’s living rooms. Here was a full-throated “angry white man” from the borough of Queens who proudly proclaimed, “I hate change.” Americans had never seen a character like Archie on their television screens. He epitomized President Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority—conservatives who felt overlooked by the general public and Washington politicos—and he broadcast his biases and prejudices every week as he jostled with Mike and his feminist daughter, Gloria, while demeaning the superficially dim but disarmingly insightful Edith.  

Yet though Archie was proudly reactionary, he harbored a hidden kindness, and the show possessed a subversive and not so subtle radicalism. During All in the Family’s nine seasons on CBS, creators Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin used their series as a televised soapbox to masterfully portray the upheavals and concerns racking the United States. They slyly wove current events into a sitcom and used the medium to explore the rifts within American society and culture. The show pondered the war, the Watergate scandal, and the liberal-conservative divide and depicted the country’s changing views on such topics as politics, race, sex, religion, and women’s rights.   

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It is time to act as people of a responsible republic. Don’t be complacent!

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A thrilling crush, excruciating embarrassment or fervent dedication to a cause—adolescence can mean all of these things. For me, it involved a burning curiosity about the natural world, which led one time to my grandmother discovering a bag of cow eyeballs in the fridge. My dad had helped me collect them at a slaughterhouse for dissection.

I didn’t mean to upset anyone; I just wanted to figure out how sight works. Like others my age, I was also driven to understand why things are the way they are and how they could or should be different. A while after my eyeball phase, I declared myself a humanist and took to wearing a four-inch peace sign around my neck. My sister and I began writing and performing (admittedly somewhat histrionic) folk songs through which we attempted to express our discontent with various global, local, and historical injustices.

As a teen, I was swimming in big ocean waves, so to speak—watching, listening, questioning, and grappling to make sense of all the complex cultural and emotional information coming my way. Who are we humans, anyway, and who am I? Now, 35 years later, I am still fascinated by these questions and by the ways in which adolescents struggle to make sense of what they witness and experience.

Take these responses from teens in urban Los Angeles to my asking them why they think some people in their neighborhood commit violent crimes:

“They have, like, a lot of emotions. They’re really mad, so they just kill somebody. Like, overly aggressive.”

“Everyone has a history. Like, everybody has an action or choice or some sort of history—some sort of thing happened to them that affects how they act in the future.”

The difference between the quotes is subtle but critical in its implications for brain development. The first one describes the proximal reason for a crime and represents the kind of focused thinking people need to keep themselves safe and to respond appropriately to shifting circumstances. But the second reveals awareness of the broader historical, cultural or social context in which individuals do the things they do.

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Cinta Fosch

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We were just a couple hours outside of Billings, Montana, when we saw our first bison. It was a stunning, hulking, fuzzy, and otherworldly beast. My 9-year-old son Silas’ first comment was, “I can’t wait to tell my brother about this.”

Over the next four days, he mentioned his 2-year-old brother, Sunny, many times—to me, to our very tolerant Austin Adventures guides in Yellowstone National Park, to strangers we passed on the trail. “My little brother loves grizzly bears! My little brother is way too small to do this hike.”

He showed his baby brother’s photo to the friendly hotel bar staff once we were back in Billings enjoying happy hour at The Northern (milk for him, sage-smoked Old Fashioned for me): “This is my little brother. He’s two. He is going to be so jealous that I saw Old Faithful.”

Will his little brother indeed feel a bit jealous at this adventure we took without him? Probably. But soon, he’ll get a special mom-and-me trip of his own. And parenting experts say this is a great idea.

Perks of Traveling With Just One Child

Traveling with just one of your kids has several benefits, but the biggest might be uninterrupted quality time. “Solo time with a parent is critical for a child’s development, particularly in households with more than one child,” says Joy Kennedy, PhD, developmental psychologist and researcher with the Education Development Center. She explains that 1:1 time helps everything from bonding to language development, and ensures that each child gets the attention they need.

“This is something I have been recommending to parents for almost 20 years,” says Tammy Gold, LCSW, MSW, CEC, licensed family therapist, and parenting coach. She explains that while quality time with the whole family is crucial—whether that’s nightly dinners at home or an annual group trip to grandma’s house—“it’s also important to get one-to-one time with your children.”

Otherwise, “children might fight for attention or ‘air time’ or become covertly upset at the children getting the most attention,” she explains. Or worse, the quieter child—or if you have one child with a disability, the “glass child” sibling—can “become apathetic and give up trying to bond if there are other, louder siblings,” adds Gold. The last thing you want is for these children to feel there is no hope for special attention, she explains. Dr. Kennedy shares that, in her family, she needs to prioritize solo time with her younger child since her older one tends to dominate family conversations at home. In my family, it’s the opposite; my 2-year-old is wild and wonderful and loud, and my more easygoing and reflective 9-year-old can get a bit lost in the shuffle. This was the motivation behind our Montana trip: Letting Silas be the star of the show, once again.

Here are some other benefits of traveling with just one child at a time,

Travel tailored to their interests

Have you heard the Dylan Moran quote, “You can’t please everyone, nor should you seek to, because then you won’t please anyone, least of all yourself”? The same is true of family travel.

Going middle-of-the-road with all activities, trying to ensure it’s something all your kids enjoy, can be a recipe for a dull destination. Instead, “personalizing activities without any potential interruptions or changes that larger groups can inherently bring gives the parent and child more leeway to plan around what suits their needs,” says psychiatrist Doug Newton, MD, MPH.

This was part of why I chose Montana and in particular Yellowstone: Silas is an adventurer and wildlife aficionado and I knew he’d be floored by the opportunities to see and learn about bison, bears, osprey, and more—and to earn his Junior Park Ranger badge. Would his 2-year-old brother be even half as interested, or manage even half of our hikes? Nope. 

Independence and autonomy

“Spending time apart from other siblings can give kids a chance to feel independent and develop confidence as they exercise a bigger role in decision-making,” says Dr. Newton.

The day-to-day at home can often leave kids going along with the group or catering to a younger sibling’s needs. Twosome trips, on the other hand, give you as the parent the opportunity to ask your child: “What do you want to do today?” And then you can actually make it happen! 

Minimal conflict

I’m no stranger to multiple-child travel, which means I’m also accustomed to separating sibling spats on the road or in the air. “Stepping in to mediate conflicts and oversee relationships within the family takes focus away from quality time parents can have with individual children on a family trip,” says Dr. Newton.

A one-on-one trip, on the other hand, gives everyone a chance to have their own space and be heard as an individual.

Secure attachment

When parents can focus their attention onto one child for any amount of time, “it strengthens their attunement and overall connection. In turn, this strengthens secure attachment, a hallmark of positive outcomes in life,” says Stacy McCann, a licensed clinical mental health therapist and parent coach.

Of course, this is not to say that deep attunement and secure attachment can’t happen in multiple-child families that can’t swing one-kid-at-a-time

travel. It’s just that planning solo travel with one child will deepen what is already there. It gives each child a chance to communicate with their parents away from the chaos of sibling dynamics, “and experience awe in the world in connection with their parents,” says McCann.

Pitfalls of Leaving Your Other Kids Behind

While the benefits of parent-child trips like mine and Silas’ tend to outweigh the cons, there are some potential shortcomings to be aware of, including the following.

Other siblings might feel envious

Of course, one sibling embarking on an adventure with Mom or Dad may well bring out the little green monster in the other sibling(s). So make sure to establish an understanding among all your children “of why one-on-one time is important and why they’re not included, and to assure them that they will have individual time dedicated to them and their travel needs as well,” recommends Dr. Newton.  

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