What’s your parenting style? Are you an elephant or a tiger parent?

King Solomon advised the sluggard to learn about hard work from watching an ant. What animal would he suggest a parent learn from? There are a number of choices and I wonder which species you might set as your role model. Perhaps you are like the tortoise – slow and patient with your children, compared to the hare who rushes them from task to task. Or perhaps you are like the eagle swooping over their heads, ready to plummet down to their level at any necessary moment. Or perhaps you are like the Mother Hen sheltering them under your wing, after all that’s a biblical picture (Luke 13:34). 

As parenting styles have become more popular, one contrast that is often drawn is between the tiger and the elephant. The tiger parent is like an army sergeant fostering ‘tough love’ and seeking a competitive spirit in their children. I can sense this in myself, perhaps some of you can too; after all, I’m not very good at losing at family board games. But this approach can form an achievement oriented focus in a child which may undermine any assurance of acceptance and love. Identity becomes forged on winning at any cost. Like the tiger, ready to fight at any moment, the parent fills the child’s life with the correct activities in order for the maximum possible chance of success in life. This may be couched in terms of avoiding vice through busyness, it may even be stated as ‘giving them every possible opportunity’; but it may also be more about the parent living vicariously through their child as a result of their own failures.

At this point in walks the elephant.