The term chicken parenting, or in Chinese, refers to a group of middle-class parents in China who have high aspirations for their children’s academic success and push them excessively in their studies. It originates from the old Chinese slang , which literally means “injecting chicken blood”. This is based on an unscientific, historical belief that such an injection can invigorate and energise people.
Here, the Post delves deeper into the idea. A typical example of chicken parenting is seen in the “Haidian Mum”. Located in Beijing, Haidian district is renowned for its superior educational resources, fostering an environment of intense academic competition and very high parental expectations.
Mothers aim for their children to be admitted to prestigious universities such as Tsinghua and Peking University in China or Ivy League schools in the United States. From a very early age, the children are enrolled in intensive tutoring classes and engage in rigorous academic preparation for tests. An anecdote that perfectly illustrates the extreme nature of chicken parenting was of a mother in Haidian who asked a study tutor if 1,500 English words were enough for her four-year-old to know.
The approach has also spawned various terms to describe children’s capabilities. Based on the pronunciation similarity in Chinese, frog refers to average children, while bullfrog denotes those excelling in one or more academic areas. Students who are strong in mathematics might be called Ol.