The term traces back to one of modern China's strangest chapters: the 打鸡血 (chicken blood therapy) craze of the 1960s. A rural doctor theorized that roosters' high body temperature (43 degrees Celsius) meant their blood had special healing properties, and began injecting fresh rooster blood into patients. By 1967-68, it had become a genuine nationwide phenomenon — people lined up at dawn outside clinics, live roosters tucked under their arms. The 'therapy' produced a rush of energy (actually an immune response to foreign proteins) before the government shut it down after cases of anaphylactic shock and death. The phrase '像打了鸡血一样' (like they've been injected with chicken blood) survived as slang for someone in a state of manic, irrational energy — and 鸡娃 extends that metaphor to children pumped full of parental ambition.

The education arms race that 鸡娃 describes is driven by China's exam-based sorting system. The gaokao determines university placement, but the zhongkao (high school entrance exam) is arguably more brutal — roughly half of students are filtered out. Parents in cities like Beijing's Haidian district became ground zero for the phenomenon, spending fortunes on after-school tutoring. By 2021, China's private tutoring industry was worth over $100 billion and employed roughly 10 million people.

In July 2021, the government dropped the 双减 (Double Reduction) policy — a sweeping ban on for-profit K-9 tutoring in core subjects, plus homework limits. The $100 billion industry collapsed overnight: New Oriental laid off 60,000 staff, VIPKid shut down. But the underlying 鸡娃 mentality proved harder to kill than the industry — parents pivoted to underground tutors, hired 'housekeepers' who happened to teach math, and shifted spending to unregulated subjects like coding and debate. The term remains ubiquitous on Xiaohongshu parenting forums, often alongside its dark counterpart: 烂尾娃 (unfinished project kid) — a child who didn't live up to the investment.