Sunday is Mother’s Day, when we celebrate the women who raised us, cradled us close, and supported us tenderly even when we failed spectacularly. That is, unless you were raised by a tiger mother, that demanding type of mom celebrated in Amy Chua’s 2011 best-seller. Are actual tigers as tough on their kids as Chua was?
Not at first. A tiger mother is fiercely protective and slightly coddling for the first couple of months, when her cubs are defenseless and nearly blind. She conceals them in a cave or dense vegetation and moves them if she suspects they’re being surveilled. She leaves them only to hunt. When the cubs reach six months, the training begins, although a tiger mother isn’t the taskmaster Chua seems to be. Whereas the Yale Law professor admits to berating her children, denying them bathroom access, and tearing up their sheet music when they underperform, the tiger brings her cubs along slowly. In the first hunting lesson, she typically selects a smaller form of prey—a chital, for example, rather than big game like gaur or water buffalo. Cubs instinctively know how to stalk prey, but they have to observe their mothers to learn the finer points of the art, such as how to use vegetation as a screen. The tiger stalks, slinks, and eventually pounces, but she only wounds her target. Once the prey is essentially defenseless, she invites the cubs to finish it off. As the lessons progress, the prey gets larger and the mother provides less help, until the cubs are about 2 years old.