Chicken parenting is China’s helicopter parenting on steroids

Source: SupChina

In the U.S., the concept of “helicopter parenting” became enough of a wonder that it was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2011 (the same year as “tweet” and “crowdsourcing”), defined as “a parent who is overly involved in the life of his or her child.” It was an about-face from the previous generation, when the conversation around parenting involved “latchkey kids An oft-cited 2019 study by a Cornell researcher, Patrick Ishizuka, reports that a new American child-rearing philosophy is turning helicoptering to the next level. Because in China, so-called “chicken parents” have been using a similar kind of rigorous parenting, but on steroids — or in their case, on “chicken blood.”

In recent years, the term “chicken baby” has become popular in China. “Chicken” comes from the idiomatic expression dǎjīxuè 打鸡血, which translates literally to “inject chicken blood.” Chicken blood treatment was a fad during the Cultural Revolution, mostly in the countryside. People waited in line, rooster in hand, to receive fresh chicken blood — the cure-all for countless ills, from baldness to infertility to cancer. It was allegedly a great victory for the people, not so much for young roosters. Once the golden age for health gurus passed, the madness over chicken blood subsided — but the phrase survived as an expression to refer to agitation or hyperactivity.
 

Also read: 5 Books to read based on fatherhood and parenting