Lei Wanghong on Tiger Mothers

Lei Wanghong | “’Tiger Mothers’ are Multiplying in Urban China because of the Epidemic of ‘Success Education’”[1] 
 
Introduction by David Ownby and Freya Ge, Translation by Freya Ge
 
Introduction
 
Lei Wanghong 雷望红is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Administration of Central South University in Hunan.  Despite her youth – she earned her Ph.D. only in 2019 – she has already published one book, Seeking Equilibrium:  Choices on the Road to Developing Rural Education 迈向均衡的实践：县域义务教育发展的道路选择 (2022) as well as numerous topical pieces for headline venues on issues dealing with education and local management.  The text translated here qualifies as topical because it treats an important educational issue, but was published in a somewhat scholarly venue, Exploration and Free Views, and hence written in a style that strikes me as sociological.  Lei’s CV is available here (in Chinese).
 
Lei’s argument, loosely based on fieldwork, is straightforward, but rich in implications:  for structural reasons, all urban mothers have to be “tiger mothers” while raising and educating their children, but rural mothers no longer have the resources to be tiger mothers and resign themselves to being “cat mothers.”  Most readers will know what tiger mothers are.  Made famous and controversial by Amy Chua's The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin, 2011), the term refers to an approach to child-rearing in which the parents, and particularly the mother, demand excellence of their children and enforce this demand with strict discipline.  Although strict parents can be found everywhere, in the United States at least, tiger mothers are associated with Chinese parenting.[2]  I had never heard of “cat mothers” before reading Lei’s article, although the term appears to be widely used in China.  It refers to parents who indulge or coddle their children, thus the opposite of tiger mothers. 
 
Lei notes that the division between urban tiger mothers and rural cat mothers is relatively recent.  In the early days of the People’s Republic, and presumably earlier in Chinese history, rural mothers were just as strict as their urban sisters are now and kept their children in line with verbal and physical violence.  What has happened over the intervening decades to produce the current situation is that money and resources have come to be concentrated in the cities, and families have become as important as schools, if not more important, in determining educational outcomes for individual students. 
 
Now, rural cat mothers simply can’t compete and indulge their children out of an enduring sense of guilt, which, Lei insists, does no one any good in the end.  Lei tries to sympathize with rural mothers, but her tone on occasion strikes me as a bit haughty.  Perhaps she is raising her own children and hearing the irresistible cry of the tiger mom.
 
Freya Ge confirms the existence of this phenomenon, and describes just how far tiger mothers go to push their cubs toward excellence: 
 
“Almost all my high-achieving friends who went to prestigious universities came from families that attach great importance to education. A friend who is currently studying at Peking University has been the first in her class since primary school, and her mother is a typical tiger mother, a school principal with abundant educational resources who managed all aspects of my friend’s studies and life with grim precision. I remember that every time I went out with her, her mother would dictate exactly how long she could go out, and her time would be divided into fifteen minutes segments, each with a clear plan.
 
In recent years, there have also been frequent news items concerning highly educated mothers who choose extracurricular tutorials for their junior high school children by completing all the exercises in the book on their own before selecting the best for their children in order to increase study efficiency.  This looks absurd, but many parents who are sucked into the maelstrom of the Chinese educational involution applaud it. Numerous articles and books on ‘How to Become a Tiger Mother’ were published a few years ago, and their sales outpaced other educational publications at the time.
 
The phenomenon of rural cat mothers discussed in the article exists in reality as well. Some of my primary school classmates who came from relatively poor rural families had consistently bad grades and always prided themselves on entering society earlier than their peers. I sometimes see pictures of them on social media, and they show off the luxury brands they're wearing.”
 
Lei’s deeper point has to do with what money and neoliberalism do to education, which is to transform it into the kind of meritocracy that has become the concern of many Americans as of late (see for example Daniel Markovits, “How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition”).  She calls on the state to take education back and equal the playing field, because as things stand now, rural children have little chance to better their conditions through education, and in the absence of education, what else is there?
 
Lei’s research provides another subject where American and Chinese parents would have a lot to say to one another if they were in dialogue.  For a recent memoir on the difficulties of growing up in rural America, which richly illustrates the laxism of rural parents, see Monica Potts, The Forgotten Girls:  A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America (Random House, 2023).  For the trials and tribulations of an immigrant American tiger mother (she makes jokes about it in her stand-up routine, but the issues are real), listen here.  For a different perspective on Chinese education, see Peter Hessler, “The Double Education of My Twins’ Chinese School,” in which he registers his appreciation for the rigor and professionalism of the Chinese educational system, acknowledging that he can appreciate it because his children are just dropping in for a year and will eventually go elsewhere.
 
Translation
 
Tiger Mothers Rise in Urban Areas and Decline in Rural Areas
 
In the early years of the People's Republic, there was a popular image in the countryside of someone calling out to one child or another, "Your mother wants you home for dinner," and the child would immediately drop what they were doing and hurry home.  But if the child was slow to respond and did not hurry home, the mother would come storming out of the house with a switch or a broom in her hand, looking for the child who hurry home the next time.  This is the true image of a Chinese tiger mother. 
 
Today , there are fewer of these strict tiger mothers in China’s countryside, and most rural mothers appear to be gentle or even timid.  At the same time, more tiger mothers have appeared in China's cities. These urban tiger mothers are mainly from middle class, and they impose a strict, all-encompassing education on their children, presenting themselves as "super moms." The rise of urban tiger mothers and the decline of their rural sisters reflect a differentiation and reversal of images of motherhood in China.
 
Research in China on the image of motherhood mainly focuses on the changes in the image of urban middle class mothers and the reasons behind these changes. Yang Ke has found that urban mothers have become “managers,” meaning that mothers plan their children’s study time and organize their educational resources.  Zhong Xiaohui and Guo Weiqing have focused on how women are squeezed between employment and childcare, and how some of them use spatial planning, online systems, and time allocation strategies to try to successfully balance work and childcare, thus becoming "super moms." "Hot mamas 辣妈"[3] is a term often used to describe urban mothers at the present moment, challenging their more conventionally “plain” image, referring to someone who manages to balance “being beautiful and raising children,” even as she “has a career and takes care of the home.” “Old-before-their-time mothers 中年老母” is another frequently used term that pushes back against the idea of “hot mamas,” pointing to the fact that for this new generation of mothers, it is not easy to raise children and be a mother, that their beauty is fading, that they are under enormous time pressure, all of which can lead to emotional and psychological imbalance as they try to hold everything together.
 
Whether we talk about mothers as “managers,” or “super moms,” or “hot mamas,” or “old-before-their-time moms,” they all point to changes in the image of urban mothers, and the changes appear to be consistent, having to do the educational environment and the division of labor within the family. With the growth of the education market and the growing popularity of "shadow education 影子教育,"[4] families attach great importance to their investment in children's education and adjust the internal division of family labor to adapt to the changes in the educational environment. Due to the influence of the gendered division of labor in matters of education, we note the simultaneous rise of phenomena like of "competitive mothers 教育拼妈" and "absent fathers 父亲缺席," which puts increasing weight on the mothers, “intensifying 母职密集化” their role and creating maternal anxiety.
 
Meanwhile, there are not many academic studies that focus on the image of mothers in rural China, and existing research mainly focuses on mothers who accompany their children when they study outside the village. There are two conflicting images of these mothers: one that they are selfish, or egoistic, the idea being that a young mother uses the advantages of marriage to obtain a dominant position in family power and resource allocation with an eye toward pursuing an urban lifestyle and the leisure it brings; the second is altruistic, meaning that the mother’s choice to accompany their children is rational family behavior, which leaves this type of women in a comparatively disadvantaged position in terms of the family economy, but gives her a comparative advantage in terms of the children's education, which is why as families divide their labor, more young mothers wind up making this choice. However, existing research has not deeply analyzed the image of rural motherhood and the relationship between mother and child, nor has it succeeded in offering a detailed and concrete picture of what educating children looks like.
 
Overall, in China, there are more studies on the image of urban mothers and fewer on the image of rural mothers, and as yet there is no research that compares the two, nor is anyone looking into the deep background factors that are creating the new maternal images.  Based on the research on urban and rural education that I have carried out over the past two years in a city in Zhejiang and a county in Hubei, I find that there is a significant differentiation between family education and the image of motherhood in urban and rural areas. No matter if we are in a coastal, industrial region on the East Coast or an agricultural village in China’s mid-west, and regardless of the significant difference in economic development level, the differences in the images of motherhood in urban and rural areas remain consistent. Using data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) for 2014-2015, this paper will further analyze the structural causes of the differentiation of the images of motherhood in urban and rural areas, and then consider the changes in the family education system caused by this differentiation and the hidden problems and risks behind it.
 
Differential Changes in the Image of Motherhood in Urban and Rural Areas:  An Analytical Framework of Social Differentiation
 
In Love, Money, and Parenting: How Economics Explain the Way We Raise Our Kids (Princeton, 2019), Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilib0tti argue that an equal society has fewer tiger mothers, while an unequal society has more. From the perspective of social equality, the logic behind the multiplication of tiger mothers is social competition. In a society with a high degree of equality, social competition is weak, and family education pressure is small, so tiger mothers are few.  In a society with a low degree of equality, social competition is fierce, and family education is a source of great pressure, so tiger mothers will multiply. However, this explanatory framework works less well in explaining the changes in the image of motherhood and parenting style in China. As mentioned above, when the People's Republic was founded, China was “poor and blank,” and urban and rural areas were largely equal.  At that time, rural society was full of tiger mothers, and it was not uncommon to see children beaten and scolded by their mothers.
 
At the beginning of the 21st century, with the continuous deepening of reform and opening, the gap between rich and poor is quite obvious.  Nonetheless, the image of the tiger mother in the countryside has gradually declined, and rural children, just like urban children, have instead become "little princes" or "little princesses."  Mothers give increasing care and protection to their children, and especially among poor rural families there are few tiger mothers.
 
A homogeneous social structure exhibits at least two distinct characteristics. First, it entails a high degree of consistency in social values, where different families collectively adhere to a specific set of shared values and regulations. Second, homogeneity prevails among various families, resulting in less pronounced economic and educational disparities between them. In a society governed by established values and rules, its members predominantly follow an empirical logic. Concerning child-rearing within families, mothers can impart knowledge based on time-tested methods, thereby enhancing their own authority.
 
However, within an increasingly differentiated social structure, social values diverge alongside the evolving class structure. Ideological values within families fluctuate in tandem with their economic prowess and development objectives, causing established societal norms to wane. This divergence extends to family upbringing styles, where the absence of standardized educational guidelines and parenting approaches prevails. Mothers no longer rely exclusively on traditional child-rearing methods but instead adapt their approaches based on their own capabilities and the unique needs of their children.
 
Therefore, this paper proposes an analytical framework for studying social differentiation that places what we call "tiger mothers" and "cat mothers" in concrete situations to understand the close relationship between social structure, intergenerational relations, and parenting styles. This framework shows that because groups have different characteristics, they practice different parenting mechanisms and daily logics.
 
Social groups can be divided into two distinct structures: one is the middle- and upper-class family with strong economic power, high educational level, and strong resource mobilization capacity; the other is the lower-class family with poor economic conditions, low educational level, and weak resource mobilization capacity. Although families in different structures have high expectations for their children's educational development, their parenting styles differ due to the influence of their environment and their ability to intervene.
 
In the general context of urbanization, some rural families have been able to move to the city, while most of those who remain in the countryside are vulnerable families who lack the ability to move to the city, and the differentiation between urban and rural families is becoming increasingly evident. In this paper, the differentiated social structure is divided into urban and rural society, and the differentiated families are divided into urban and rural families. Urban families in urban society and rural families in rural society have different family resources and educational environments, thus creating different images of motherhood and different parenting styles.
 
Simply put, since urban families are in an environment with abundant educational resources and strong mobilization capacity, on the one hand they can easily intervene in education, but on the other hand they are influenced by external forces as they compete for certain resources, that is, they follow the logic of competition. Following the logic of competition in education, the mother becomes the authority in the mother-child relationship and takes great pains to educate the children in a way that creates the image of the authoritative tiger mother.
 
Meanwhile, rural families find themselves in an environment that lacks educational resources, even if family members still have high expectations for their children's education.  But since all families in the same structure also lack the ability to mobilize resources, they cannot compete, and what gradually emerges is a non-competitive (lit. “de-competitive” 去竞争化) educational system in which families at the bottom are gradually marginalized. Under the logic of educational marginalization, the mother-child relationship in lower-class families becomes one in which the mother feels that she owes something to her child.  In other words, the mother feels that the family lacks the resources to support the educational development of her children, which means that she cannot win even if she competes.  The feeling that she owes a debt to her children leads her to develop a relatively permissive parenting style, taking on the image of a "cat mother" who lacks authority and spoils her children.
 
The Difference between a Tiger and a Cat: The Differentiated Characteristics of Motherhood Images in Urban and Rural Areas
 
By "maternal image," I mean the role a mother plays in the process of raising her children. At present, there are obvious differences between the images of mothers in China's urban and rural areas, which are reflected in time management, daily education, economic investment, and so on. The image of the strong and strict urban "tiger mother" contrasts sharply with the image of the weak and gentle rural "cat mother."
 
“Tiger Mother:” Images of Urban Mothers
 
Chinese American scholar Amy Chua's The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (Penguin, 2011) sparked a fierce debate about Chinese and Western education in the United States, and for a time the term "tiger mother" became synonymous with Chinese education. The idea of a "tiger mother" can be defined on two levels:  one refers to educational methods stressing strict discipline and total dedication; the other refers to the goal of producing children who stand out from the rest.  In the current educational situation in China, urban mothers are more in line with the first image, in that in the daily management of their children, urban mothers in our country show a tendency to be methodical, rigorous, and calculated, the very image of the "urban tiger mother".
 
Meticulous time management
 
Educational competition among children primarily revolves around the efficient and effective management of time. Children's time management can be divided into two categories: in-school time management, which is overseen by the school and teachers, and out-of-school time management, managed by authoritative parents.
 
Urban mothers angling to win the education race focus on meticulous management of their children's non-school hours, which follows two basic routes. First, they endeavor to maximize the educational value of extracurricular time. Urban mothers actively engage in studying alongside their children and enroll them in tutoring courses, thereby enhancing their children's knowledge and skill development. According to data from the China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) in 2014-2015, the average urban mother spends 0.89 hours a day studying with her eighth-grade child, with 51.9% of city families enrolling their children in tutoring centers.
 
Second, these mothers carefully regulate their children's non-school hours, imposing strict schedules for studying, breaks, and bedtime. Take the example of Ge XX, a high school student in S District, Zhejiang Province. Her mother meticulously plans her daily routine, and all Ge has to do is follow the schedule. Even the parents' activities are tailored to align with Ge's study and rest times. For instance, at 8:30 p.m., one of her parents dutifully awaits her at the school gate for pickup. Before 9:00 p.m., her mother prepares a snack, and at 10:30 p.m., she appears at Ge's bedroom door to remind her to take a bath and go to bed. If Ge is still awake past 11:00 p.m., her mother intervenes, ordering her to stop doing her homework and go to bed.
 
Figure 1 [not shown] illustrates how urban mothers plan and control their children's time, which helps children to develop their own self-discipline. Under her mother's strict time planning and management, Ge XX was admitted to Zhejiang University, which was her goal. Hong Lian has pointed out that the allocation of attention runs through everyone's daily work and life, and the scarcity of attention leads people pay more attention to time management. Urban mothers know this, and carefully calculate and arrange their children's time.
 
Rigorous Daily Education
 
Daily education includes the two aspects of basic behavior and academic education, and urban mothers take a strict attitude toward both. Behavioral education mainly involves all aspects of daily life behavior, including learning habits, eating habits, how children dress, play, and make friends, as well as other aspects of education and management.
 
Academic education is the monitoring and management of children's learning ability, performance, and results. Urban mothers exercise meticulous control over their children's behavior to prevent their children from developing bad habits. They monitor their children's academic education and will become anxious and intervene if there is any abnormality or decline in scores. For example, Mr. Chen, a teacher in an urban primary school in S District, Zhejiang, emphasized that: "Parents today are very concerned with their children's grades, and there is fierce competition and great pressure. I don't announce specific grades in the parents' WeChat group after tests. I only announce the number of students who got 100, above 90, or above 80, but parents are still very anxious about the grades."
 
In one class in an experimental middle school in X County, Hubei, there were only two students from the countryside and the other eight were from the city.  The mothers of the urban students were all very strict about their children's education, and although the mothers of two rural students also paid attention, they did not demand as much and mainly relied on the students' own understanding and intelligence. Mothers in the city attach great importance to their children's behavior and academic performance, and strictly control them; in fact, they imagine the ideal method that will teach their children to be excellent, and never tire in this pursuit.
 
Calculated Economic Investment
 
 
China provides free compulsory education in both urban and rural areas, and all primary and secondary school students are exempt from tuition and miscellaneous fees, reducing the financial pressure on parents. That said, the economic burden of education on urban families has not in fact been reduced, because the cost of extracurricular activities and tutoring has become a source of economic pressure. Urban parents are more willing to invest in the educational products the market offers, but their investment is not irrational or infinite, and they will attempt to accurately measure the input-return ratio, in other words, whether the economic investment will bring cost-effective benefits.
 
The economic rationality of urban mothers is fully reflected in their choice of tutoring programs. Such programs can basically be divided into those that focus on learning activities that will help the child in school and those that focus on hobbies or sports.  In the first group, parents tend to choose math/Olympic math, English, physics, chemistry, and other courses that can quickly improve their children's grades, rather than courses that require more sustained effort, such as Chinese, history, geography, and politics. In the second group, although urban mothers will initially choose according to their children's preferences, they will try to use these courses as a way for their children to obtain additional diplomas, requiring children to take exams frequently to show what level they have reached, even if they have not reached that level.
 
There are two reasons for taking such exams: one is to be able to perform their skill or hobby at school, and the other is to get extra points for special skills on the university entrance application. These certificates become a representation of the value of the children and even of the parents, and the purpose of learning a hobby is not the hobby itself, but the "hobby diploma" that the children receive. 
 
The choice and goals of the course reflect the economic rationality of urban mothers in investing in their children's education. For them, the economic resources invested in their children must be effectively transformed into diplomas or certificates to be meaningful, otherwise the investment is not worthwhile.
 
“Cat Mothers:” Images of Rural Mothers
 
Compared with the urban tiger mothers, rural mothers are cautious and detached in disciplining their children, a maternal image we might label "cat mother." Cat mothers and tiger mothers display significant differences in time management, daily education, and financial investment in their children. Cat mothers adopt loose time management, indulgent daily education, and irrational financial investment.
 
Loose Time Management
 
Rural mothers exercise relatively loose time management over their children, and most rural students decide for themselves how to spend their after-school time. Data from the 2014-2015 China Education Panel Survey (CEPS) show that the average rural mother studies for 0.55 hours a day with her eighth-grade student, 0.34 hours less than the average urban mother, and only 21.5% of rural families send their children to after-school tutoring. Due to work demands or the limitations of their own educational skills, most rural mothers are unable to manage their children's extracurricular activities in detail and allow their children to manage their extracurricular activities independently.
 
Xia Qingli, a mother from L Village, X County, Hubei Province, left the village with her husband to work in the city when her child was young, but she returned to take care of him when he reached school age.  However, she was completely unable to control him, and when he came home after school, he would play on his mobile phone or video games.  When she tried to talk to him about this, he would accuse her of nagging and walk away.
 
Jin, a student at a township high school in S District, Zhejiang Province, also likes to play on his phone, but his father limits phone time to three hours a day. When the time is up, his father takes the phone away.  But then Jin simply asks his mother for her phone, and she gives it to him without discussion.
 
Because rural mothers cannot manage their children’s after-school time, what rural children do with this time is both inefficient and wasteful.  Xia Qingli's son and his classmates spend most of their time after school playing video games, watching TV, and on their phones. Some students don't even do their homework at all. Few rural students participate in tutoring courses. The relaxed time management of rural mothers seems to give rural children free space, but it is at the expense of their future growth.
 
Indulgent Daily Education
 
Compared to urban students, rural students receive less parental guidance in terms of behavioral guidance and academic education. Consequently, they tend to approach their studies in a more relaxed and casual manner. During the era of agricultural collectivization, educational concepts and norms in rural society were relatively uniform. Although students enjoyed a similar degree of freedom as they do today, parents were resolute in upholding certain principles and boundaries. When a child made a mistake, especially with the mother's involvement, they would face strict criticism.
 
In today’s villages, however, it has become challenging for rural mothers to instill proper behavioral standards in their children. They often refrain from criticizing their children when they make mistakes and frequently let such incidents slide, let alone actively supervising their studies. For instance, Jin, a 13-year-old in the first year of middle school in S District, Zhejiang, is already dating (lit. “has already had two relationships”). Despite his class leader noticing this, no action was taken, nor did the parents do anything. In another case, Jin's older cousin, who attends middle school in the same township, has started hanging out with a bad crowd, engages in profanity, and gets into fights. Surprisingly, her mother continues to indulge her behavior.
 
Rural mothers often find themselves in a challenging position when dealing with their children's use of cell phones, engagement in video games, relationships, or involvement in violent or inappropriate behavior. Traditionally, these mothers have resorted to physical and psychological punishments as a means to correct their children's behavior. This approach involves using physical discipline through corporal punishment and instilling a sense of shame through scolding to prompt their children to reflect on and rectify their actions.
 
However, as the acceptability of physical punishment and scolding has diminished in China from both a legal and moral standpoint, rural mothers have reduced their reliance on these methods. Unfortunately, they have struggled to find effective alternatives, often leading to a situation where they simply overlook issues when they arise. Consequently, the family environment can easily become an educational void.
 
Irrational Economic Investment
 
Rural families find themselves at the bottom of the economic hierarchy, with scarce access to resources. For this very reason, rural families possess strong aspirations for self-improvement and genuinely hope to see their children use education to confront life's challenges. Consequently, they exhibit a willingness to invest in their children's educational pursuits.  However, this investment is often irrational, as they invest according to what their children want rather than in developmental goals, and resources are often squandered on consumption efforts to "keep up with the Joneses," creating the poor man's version of the “second generation rich.”[5]
 
For example, the family situation of Wang XX in H Village, S District, Zhejiang is typical.  His mother is seriously ill, he works in a factory, and his wife is a waitress, so their income level is average. His daughter is in the fifth grade, and his wife always buys brand-name clothes for her daughter so that other children won't make fun of her. They saw that other students' parents had cars to take their children to and from school, so they bit the bullet and borrowed money to buy a car so they could do the same. Liu XX from X County W, Hubei, once found her eldest daughter playing games in an Internet cafe.[6] She tried to persuade her daughter to leave, but she wouldn't listen. Liu tried to buy her off with a cell phone, but the daughter took the phone and continued to frequent the Internet cafe.
 
The economic conditions of rural families are generally worse than for urban families, so when the Wangs borrow money to buy a car or when Liu buys a mobile phone to placate her daughter, these are costs beyond those families’ economic means. The main reason rural mothers give in to their children is that they think that the family’s economic conditions bring shame to their children, and they try use material objects to cover up this sense of shame.
 
The Inner Roots of the Divergence in the Image of Motherhood in Urban and Rural China
 
 
The different images of mothers in urban and rural China depend on the combined influence of family resources and the external environment. Urban families have a certain ability to mobilize resources, but at the same time, they are in a highly competitive educational environment. Urban mothers prove themselves via their own efforts and the pressure they put on their children, thus creating the tiger mother image. Rural families lack the ability to mobilize resources and in comparison, they are marginalized in terms of their educational environment. Rural mothers develop their cat mother image out of feelings of helplessness and motherhood debts they cannot pay. 
 
Resource Mobilization and Educational Competition: How Urban Tiger Mothers Establish their Authority
 
The reason that China's urban society is more likely to produce tiger mothers is related to internal and external factors in educational development. In terms of internal factors, urban families have educational resources and the ability to make use of them. The educational resources that urban mothers can allocate include not only money, personal time, and cultural background of family members, but also urban market and social resources. They can mobilize all of these to build a rich network of educational resources for their children outside of school, and resources become the source of confidence for urban mothers to intervene in their children's education.
 
The fierce educational competition is the external factor that shapes the image of urban mothers. Although education resources are abundant in urban society, competition is still intense, and urban mothers must not only compete for general education resources to avoid "losing at the starting line," but also compete for scarce education resources and opportunities to "obtain a better education." For example, due to the large number of students in urban schools, there are few spots for excellent students and limited opportunities to display their excellence. Urban mothers will spare no effort to support the development of their children, to the point of implicating themselves in the competition, accompanying them more often and with greater intensity and increasing the cooperation between home and school to help their children obtain better academic performance and more performance opportunities.
 
Urban families have a certain ability to participate in the competition for their children's education, but the resources and opportunities for education development are ultimately limited. Different families fully mobilize various kinds of educational resources to obtain competitive capital for their children's educational development. Resource mobilization is not only the ticket for urban families to enter the educational competition system, but also aggravates the intensity of education competition and the pressure of inter-family competition. Therefore, urban families face two main problems: the first is to deal with the relationship between resource welfare and resource competition, i.e., enjoying urban quality education resources while facing fierce competition in education; the second is to deal with the relationship between education resources and educational responsibilities, as urban families possess certain educational resources and need to fulfill certain educational responsibilities in passive and active ways.
 
In a highly competitive educational environment, urban mothers, with their educational resources and their mobilizing power, become the supporters and facilitators of their children's participation in educational competition, and this support and facilitation makes it possible for their children to obtain an advantageous educational position; mothers not only become the "heroes" of educational competition, but also feel most deeply the pressures of education, and in their participation in the educational competition they gain the maternal authority to educate their children, and at the same time, they exert their maternal authority in order to guide their children's educational practices.
 
Lack of Resources and Marginalized Education: Rural Cat Mothers’ Feelings of Debt
 
Rural families often contend with limited material and cultural resources, which can result in parents lacking the necessary tools to provide proper upbringing for their children. Consequently, they may adopt a more relaxed approach when it comes to managing their children's daily routines and study habits. This relaxed management style at home is not problematic if the school possesses sufficient administrative capacity and authority. In such cases, students remain subject to the school's requirements even outside of school hours.
 
However, as the authority of school education continues to erode, rural families struggle to maintain effective communication with schools to support their children's education. This breakdown in communication leads to situations where, although students are physically present at school, they are mentally disengaged. Upon returning home after school, they often neglect their homework, making it challenging for parents to play an active role in their educational journey.
 
Qian Minhui points out that education is a crucial path for people to realize upward social mobility. For rural families, it is all the more true that education is the only way to achieve upward mobility, and the idea "education changes destiny" is more important for rural students. If rural students want to change their fate and not remain at the bottom of society, they can do this only by obtaining cultural capital through education, and subsequently gaining social capital and economic capital, all of which will eventually allow them to change their status. However, the current educational pattern is one in which family, school and market are closely integrated, in the sense that the stronger the family's economic base, the better the school the children can attend, and the greater their access to market educational resources.  Conversely, the weaker the family's economic base, the poorer the schools and access to resources.
 
Nevertheless, children hailing from rural backgrounds frequently find themselves marginalized within the competitive education system, primarily due to their families' economic limitations. This economic disadvantage places significant obstacles on their path to upward mobility. In particular, the interplay between family socioeconomic status, school quality, and access to opportunities perpetuates a cycle of marginalization for rural students. Regardless of their efforts, achieving a substantial leap forward often appears insurmountable.
 
Consequently, many rural students and schools disengage from the competitive arena, adopting a more passive and permissive stance. This shift further confirms their marginalized status within the educational landscape.
 
As the family is the weakest link in the family-school-market chain, rural mothers are unable to provide additional resources for their children's education and development, which leads them to feel a deep sense of indebtedness. When their children encounter difficulties, rural mothers often choose to make up for the shortcomings caused by family resource limitations through material compensation and coddling their children, but they lack the ability and authority to guide or correct their children, who resent and even blame the mother, hence the image of the weak "cat mother."
 
Social Stratification Exacerbates the Divide between Urban and Rural Images of Motherhood
 
With the stratification of society, the disparity (lit. “intensity”) in education between urban and rural areas has increased, and the differences between urban and rural families in educating their children have become more and more evident. The emergence of tiger mother and cat mother parenting styles depends on the differences in the resource structure of urban and rural families and the differences in the educational environment of urban and rural students, which together shape the atmosphere of family education.
 
Urban families have abundant educational resources and have a certain ability to mobilize them. When facing increasingly fierce educational competition, they can fully mobilize educational resources to cope with educational pressure. Of course, due to the scarcity of quality educational resources and opportunities, the resource mobilization capacity of urban families is also a source of competition, and urban mothers are under enormous pressure on this front; on the one hand, they have the power and authority to educate their children, but on the other hand, they have to cope with increasing pressure; therefore, the tiger mother posture of urban mothers is actually made up of equal parts authority and pressure.
 
Rural families lack educational resources, generally do not have the ability to mobilize such resources, and only receive the most basic resources from the schools.  Rural schools are at the bottom of the system in terms of resources, which puts rural students at the bottom in terms of access to resources from either the schools or the market and they find themselves in a non-competitive educational environment with no planning for the future. Rural mothers can do little about school resources, and the family can contribute little, so that in a certain sense, the family becomes the "original sin" in the child’s failure to compete.  This gives rise to a strong sense of guilt among rural mothers, who spoil and withdraw from their children, turning into cat mothers. Thus the image of rural mothers as cat mothers a product of helplessness and powerlessness.
 
Leaving Family Education and Educational Involution Behind
 
Since the founding of the People's Republic, children's education has mainly taken place within the schools. At present, however, this situation is changing, and the family is playing an ever more important role in children’s education, to the point that it is exceeding families’ carrying capacity.  Ultimately, the differences in family environments and the state of educational competition jointly determine the image of motherhood and the mother-child relationship in urban and rural families - urban families tend toward a strict tiger mother education, and the relationship between mother and child is based on the authority of the mother; rural families tend toward a loose cat mother education, and the relationship between mother and child is a grounded in a feeling of indebtedness. This also means that the family education system has brought new changes to the urban and rural family education system, and the family education system has become as important as the school education system.
 
The ideal urban family education system is one that promotes democracy and equality within the family unit. In this system, family members maintain a democratic and equitable relationship, allowing each individual the freedom to express their thoughts, needs, and act in accordance with their own ideas. Moreover, minors also possess the right to independent self-expression.
 
However, as the burden of educational competition shifts from schools to families, urban mothers increasingly assume more educational responsibilities. In response to mounting pressure, they may come to wield absolute authority, placing children in a position of complete obedience. This dynamic transforms the initially democratic educational system into an authoritarian structure within urban families, giving rise to what can be termed a "pressure-oriented education system."
 
In rural areas, the prevalent model is the authoritarian family education system, characterized by an imbalanced power dynamic among family members. In this setup, the father wields absolute authority within the family, and children tend to unquestioningly submit to his rule, with limited room for expressing their own opinions. As educational competition shifts from schools to the family in these rural settings, rural students often find themselves in a disadvantaged position, lacking family-based resources.

Rural mothers, feeling unable to compete, often carry a heavy burden of feelings of debt and guilt towards their children. Consequently, they allow their children to grow up without imposing strong guidance or discipline. The children, in turn, appreciate their mothers' leniency and devotion stemming from this sense of indebtedness, but fail to establish a relationship characterized by adult leadership and guidance. This results in an absence of the traditional roles of educator and student within the mother-child relationship, ultimately leading to the emergence of what can be termed a "permissive parenting system."
 
"Tiger mothers" and "cat mothers" emerge as products of the interplay between family resource capacity and the competitive educational environment. The "pressure-oriented upbringing system" and the "permissive upbringing system" are strategies employed by both urban and rural families to adapt to their respective circumstances. These systems underscore the crucial role of the family in education and may signal a shift from individual competition to familial competition.
 
In simpler terms, the challenge of nurturing tiger mothers within financially disadvantaged families not only reflects a transformation in the concept of motherhood within these contexts but also marks the onset of an era where family-based competition becomes paramount. Mothers from less privileged households face constraints imposed by limited family resources and their marginalized position within the educational framework. Consequently, mothers from disadvantaged backgrounds may find their influence over their children's education significantly reduced. In the current landscape, where family-centered education is emphasized, one's birth into either an urban or rural family can lead to vastly divergent life paths. For students coming from modest backgrounds, the fading prominence of the tiger mother figure could represent a severe setback in their educational prospects, as the family may no longer serve as a reliable guiding force.
 
The transformation in the images of urban and rural mothers has sparked concerns about educational alienation. Examining this issue through the lens of educational alienation reveals that the division between urban and rural mothers fundamentally stems from the alienation caused by the competitive nature of education in China. The differing approaches of urban and rural mothers can be viewed as two sides of the same coin within the context of educational alienation.
 
Urban mothers and rural mothers share consistency across three crucial dimensions. First, they both hold common educational objectives, recognizing the vital role of education in promoting family development and enabling social mobility. Second, both urban and rural mothers experience educational anxiety, albeit in distinct educational environments. Urban mothers grapple with anxiety in a highly competitive educational landscape, while rural mothers contend with it in a less competitive setting. However, the sources of their anxiety and their strategies for addressing these educational challenges vary. Finally, both urban and rural mothers are committed to investing resources in their children's educational development. Nevertheless, both groups wrestle with the challenge of internalizing these educational resource investments.
 
In essence, the disparities in the experiences of urban and rural mothers are rooted in the broader context of educational alienation, shedding light on the intricate challenges faced by mothers across diverse educational settings in China.
 
The division between urban and rural motherhood and the resulting disparities in family upbringing systems not only accentuate the growing educational gap between urban and rural areas but also underscore the pervasive anxiety pervading the entire population due to the alienation within the national education system. This situation presents unprecedented risks and challenges.
 
To comprehensively address the issue of national anxiety arising from the increasing significance of the family in educational outcomes, a multifaceted approach is essential:
 
First, the state must uphold the fundamental principles of educational development and the socialized division of labor. This involves restructuring the educational landscape for urban and rural students, striving for parity in student numbers and the composition of student populations between urban and rural schools. This effort aims to mitigate the polarization of educational competition.
 
Secondly, a critical step is to re-emphasize education within schools, offering students professional and structured educational experiences that alleviate parents from the overwhelming burden of their children's education. Simultaneously, a balanced model of collaboration between home and school should be explored. A clear division of roles and responsibilities between parents and schools should be established, fostering a constructive space for the productive growth of both parties.
 
By implementing these measures, it becomes possible to promptly reintegrate urban and rural children into a normal educational and socialization environment, allowing urban and rural families to return to an organized and productive way of life.
 
Notes

[1]雷望红, “为什么城市’虎妈’越来越多，根源在于’成功教育’的大流行,” published in 探索与争鸣/ Exploration and Free Views, Issue 10, 2020.
 
[2]Translator’s note:  My impression is that the term tiger mother came to China from the West; a more frequent term for “helicopter parents” – admittedly not exactly the same thing – in Chinese is jiwa/鸡娃 – “chicken blood babies” -  and refers to the legend that parents will "inject their children with chicken blood" in the hopes that they will be outstanding and successful, like a rooster, a practice that is no longer followed, if it ever was.
 
[3]Translator’s note:  I am well aware that this is politically incorrect, but this is what the Chinese means.  The character la/辣 means “hot” in the sense of “spicy,” which is no better in English, and the context makes the meaning clear.

[4]Translator’s note:  “Shadow education” refers to educational activities occurring outside of the regular school system, including tutoring, online classes, etc.  I assume the term comes from the idea of “shadow banking,” which are “extra-curricular” financial institutions in China frequently mentioned in reports on China’s economy.  See here for more information on shadow banking.

[5]Translator’s note:  “Second generation rich” (fuerdai/富二代) refers to children
of newly wealthy parents to do little or no work but live ostentatiously off the family’s wealth.

[6]Translator’s note:  “Playing games in an Internet cafe” sounds completely harmless to most of us, but in China it is the rough equivalent of “hanging around at the corner bar.”