鸡娃jī wá

Pushing your kid hard

zhōu mò yě yào jī wá.周末也要鸡娃。Pushing the kid, even on weekends.

鸡娃 means pushing a child hard with classes, tutors and contests, as if you had given them a shot of chicken blood. It is a verb (to push your kid) and a noun (a pushed kid).

Took off: 2021
Started in: City parents’ talk
Today: Now everyday Chinese

What it means

The 鸡 comes from 打鸡血, “to inject chicken blood”, a common phrase for getting someone fired up. 娃 means “kid”. So 鸡娃 is “to fire up a kid”.

Parents who do it have their own slang. The Paper listed some in 2020: a 牛娃 is a star kid and a 普娃 an ordinary one. 荤鸡, “meat chicken”, pushes school subjects, and 素鸡, “vegetarian chicken”, pushes music, sport and art.

How people use it

Parents use it about themselves, often with a sigh, and young adults use it about how they grew up. Said about someone else’s parenting, it is a criticism.

琦琦

我表姐给她儿子报了五个班
wǒ biǎo jiě gěi tā ér zi bào le wǔ gè bān
My cousin signed her son up for five classes.
他才六岁吧？
tā cái liù suì ba?
Isn’t he only six?
对，周末都没时间玩
duì, zhōu mò dōu méi shí jiān wán
Yeah. He has no time to play, even on weekends.
现在鸡娃都从幼儿园开始了
xiàn zài jī wá dōu cóng yòu ér yuán kāi shǐ le
These days the pushing starts in kindergarten.

More examples

她每天鸡娃到晚上十点。
tā měi tiān jī wá dào wǎn shang shí diǎn.
She pushes her kid until ten every night.
周末还要上四个班，这也太鸡娃了。
zhōu mò hái yào shàng sì gè bān, zhè yě tài jī wá le.
Four classes on the weekend? That’s too much pushing.

Where it came from

In December 2020, The Paper described 鸡娃 as the way a new generation of middle-class city parents raise their children. It named Huangzhuang, in Beijing’s Haidian district, as the place where it was fiercest.

An April 2021 article on Tencent News says the word was first written 激娃, “to motivate a kid”, and later became 鸡娃. The same article discusses 小舍得, a TV drama airing that spring about families who push their children.