Tiger Moms and Other Tropes

Motherly caring - affectionate, caretaking, comforting, devoted, and fond. To treat a person with great kindness and love and to try to protect them from anything dangerous or difficult.

Trauma - deeply distressing or disturbing experiences for you.

"The most beautiful part of your body is wherever your mother's shadow falls."

Ocean Vuong

You might remember me speaking of the young poet Ocean Vuong before. His relationship with his mother was full of resistance and love; not so different than many of our own relationships with our mothers.

Motherhood** and mothering have so many tropes - doting mother, obsessive mother, Tiger mother, Jewish mother, perfectionist mother, Italian mother, controlling mother…. Ocean Vuong, NY Times best selling poetry author of Time is a Mother, in his interview, speaks of his personal experience of his mother’s complexities, “ (they) come from her being hurt and from systems that began before she was born. She tried her best. Every mother had their limit and that renders them human, not a stereotype.” Vuong’s experience of his mother, allows for empathy and acceptance of an imperfect AND loving mother. A mother, where all parts are acceptable, not just the ones listed on a Hallmark card. I love that.

He goes on to say that, in his experience, the Tiger Mom stereotype doesn’t recognize the powerful resilience that his Vietnamese mother exhibited in teaching him how to survive, having herself come from a place of starvation and war. That the very perceived negative qualities of the Tiger Mom trope arise from her own trauma, and as an outcome, she had a mothering desire to educate and bring up her child to be well prepared for this world.

I can so relate to this. In my desire to prepare my children for the world, I overcompensated in ways that were intended to shield them from my own traumas.

For example, I was raised in a super messy, unorganized, chaotic home. I have compassion for my mother, in understanding her traumas, and the very valid reasons for her behaviors. I now see how her trauma infused behaviors played out in my life.

In response to my childhood, I over compensated by expending a lot of energy on perfecting and controlling my own family’s environment and experiences to minimize chaos, dirtiness, and disorganization. One could call me some tropes; perfectionist mother, controlling mother.. There is truth to these tropes, yet they don’t appreciate, as Ocean points out, the situations from which those actions arose, nor the fullness of my being.

Of course, I am accountable for all of my behaviors. I am not, in any way, saying that meaning well excuses harm. The tropes that arise from traumas require actions by me to be accountable: acknowledgment, boundaries, listening, loving, conversations… I don’t want to carry the behaviors from which the tropes are borne. And that’s where my work is.

I also want society to stop labeling me, and all mothers, with any tropes. That’s shaming and we certainly don’t deserve that. The problem isn’t with who I am. The problem is with a system that defines mothers unrealistically, and them shames us for falling short of unattainable expectations. Also, mother tropes ignore the participation or non-participation of fathers, whose behaviors are also borne of their own traumas and responses to societal pressures.

We are all complex, imperfect AND loving beings. Let’s celebrate our full selves.

Which mother tropes were talked about in your culture of origin? What was your mother’s trauma, from which her lessons sprang? What lessons do you think your mother was trying to teach you? How have you mothered in response to your own experiences?

**When I say Mother, I refer to - birth mothers, adoptive mothers, aunties, grandmothers,  LGBTQIA care givers, trans caregivers, foster mothers, estranged from children mothers, those with children passed on, mothers in law, mothers living and those passed on, and, caretaker fathers…If I haven’t mentioned you, or have inaccurately identified you, please know that my omission or misstatement is unintentional and I welcome you correcting me

Kim Ellner