Meaning of tiger mother | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A woman who is fiercely protective of one or more people in her care.
2. A mother who drives her child or children very hard to succeed in school or in extracurricular studies, such as learning a musical instrument.

Examples

“[…] I spent all last night on my knees, beseeching the Great Physician to hear me and heal my boy. […] but the instinct of the tiger-mother is tearing my heart to pieces […].”

“When she was in her busy mood, domineering and protecting me, I used to think what a dolls' generalissimo she must have been in childhood. "And where you're concerned," she would say, "I'm a tiger-mother and a regular Fury. […]"”

“"My sister calls us 'tiger mothers', because we're so protective," she says.”

“I would like to see Oxford and Cambridge turned into graduate universities entirely devoted to research, which at a stroke would cool the ardour of the "tiger mothers" of Holland Park and Hampstead determined to set their three-year-olds on the path to Oxbridge, whatever the human cost.”

“If you have tiger mother tendencies, the very worst thing you can do is visit China. It will only increase your determination to squeeze some achievement out of your young.”

“Tiger mothers and $125-an-hour tutors proliferate, and parents scrimp and struggle to pay up to $40,000 a year in tuition to private secondary schools that then put them on the spot for supplemental donations, lest the soccer field turn brown and the Latin club languish.”

CEFR level