Parenting

Parent; when looking in a dictionary one may come across words such as, protector, guardian, father, mother, and one that creates offspring. Be that as it may, when kids think of parents they think up words such as overprotected, hoverer, or final say, these words would never appear in a dictionary. In most eastern cultures being the strict and embarrassing parent was expected, as my mother always says, “If you aren’t mad or embarrassed by me I am not doing my job right.” After all how would children learn to behave and know what’s right and wrong? This kind of parenting is adopted in most families worldwide, kids describe there parents, mostly mothers as “tiger mothers”. However, there is also the idea that allowing a child space, and letting them make there own choices is the best way to parents. By allowing them space, you are allowing them to shape who they are and teaching them to be independent. So the real question I want to uncover in this paper is what style is considered the best parenting style. The popular article that was in the New York Times called, “Raising Successful Children” chooses to oppose this popular opinion that being strict and controlling a child’s choice may not be the best parenting style. The article by no means is saying to ignore kids, or not to discipline them for something that they are doing which may be blatantly wrong, but that there is a difference how one can enforce good behavior and decision making. The example from the article is to have a parent insist on a child go to school to learn information for their benefit, not because they need there child to be a perfect student, but that the education they will receive will be benefit them later. The attitude of the parent in the wrong is the parent who is working non-stop on college essays side-by-side with there child. They are implanting the idea into the child that if both child and parent work hard enough, the child will get into the school of their choice because their parent helped them. They are not providing the tools for the child to do it themselves, and to be successful. The article is simply saying that there may be a better ways to influence and shape children in a more effective way that will benefit them later on. Studies by Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at Berkeley has found that an, “Optimal parent is one who is involved and responsive, who sets high expectations but respects her child’s autonomy (Levine)” These two simple things allow children to create motivation in there life which will benefit them in all different aspects of there life. According to psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford University, and Dr. Baumrind, “The happiest, most successful children have parents who do not do for them what they are capable of doing, or almost capable of doing; and their parents do not do things for them that satisfy their own needs rather than the needs of the child (Levine).” The two articles I choose will reflect the two different styles of parenting. The first is about parents who are considered tiger parents, and how they effect there child. The second article will highlight the idea of positive psychology. I will break down the arguments made in both articles and provide a detailed explanation of the claims made and provide support of the popular article claims. To conclude, I will provide a type of research that I believe should be done to increase findings.
The article Does “tiger parenting” exist? Parenting profiles of Chinese Americans and adolescent developmental outcomes. The study written by Kim, Wang, and Shen identifies parenting profiles in Chinese American families and explored their effects on adolescent adjustment. The study shows that tiger parenting is associated with low educational achievement as well as lower GPA. The study also highlight the effects “tiger parents” have on their kids emotionally leading to academic pressure, depressive symptoms, a sense of alienation, and lack of social skills. The article believes that modern civilization has changed the meaning and role of tiger mothers. In the past most eastern civilizations have always made the mothers in charge of the children making them take on the role of being a tiger mother. Due to evolution and the American thought process of how fathers must be the stricter parent, the term tiger mother has been altered to tiger parents. The study aims to identify two outcomes. The first is identifying parenting profiles for mothers and fathers separately, and to determine if a tiger parenting profile emerges, by using both parent self-reports and adolescent reports of parenting. The second study that will be studied will evaluate various adolescent outcomes such as academic achievement, academic pressure, depressive symptoms, and parent–child alienation, across three distinct developmental periods: early adolescence, middle adolescence, and emerging adulthood. The participants were families who were studied for 4 years from northern California; about one-third were born in the U.S. Families were sent a questioner for mother, father, and children. They were to fill out the survey without any outside help, and return the sealed envelope. The families had to fill out the same questioner 3 times every four years. Mothers, fathers, and children responded to questions about eight parenting dimensions: parental warmth, inductive reasoning, parental monitoring, democratic parenting, parental hostility, psychological control, shaming, and punitive parenting. Psychological control was assessed through a measure of psychological control adapted by Barber (1996) from the Child's Report of Parental Behavior Inventory (Schaefer, 1965). Using a 3-point scale, all participants rated eight items about parents' attempts to regulate children's psychological experience. The study shows that easygoing parents receive better outcomes compared to tiger parenting. Also as expected tiger parenting correlates with high academic pressure. The limitations of this study are the information gathered in California had higher eastern influences compared to other areas across American may have. Also the effect academics may have on parents in the study. This study highlights the claims in the popular article, and how over parenting can affect a child learning abilities. Also how allowing a guideline for children is better then making them do something in a certain way.
In the second article, Maternal Parenting Styles, School Involvement, and Children’s School Achievement and Conduct in Singapore, by Stright and Yeo, study examined the roles of children’s perceptions of maternal parenting styles (warmth, psychological control, and behavioral control) and maternal involvement in school-focused parenting practices (home-based involvement, home-school conferencing, and school-based involvement) predicting children’s school achievement and conduct in Singapore. The study strives to show the importance having a parent who is positive and moderately involved in school can increase behavior and school results. The study also shows how positive involvement increases success for girls more then boys. In the study parents who set goals and allow the child to try and achieve them in a way that is positive where the child can turn to the parents for help if needed is more successful. The parent gets involved with school by talking to the teacher and their child and working to come to an agreement which is not to difficult for the child to achieve with them still getting the fulfillment of accomplishing a difficult task. Parents, who provide the tools to allow the child to grow, end up with children who are happier and have a better attitude that thrive to succeed. The parents who enforce a child to work and micromanage their child studies, in essence do the work for their child make it difficult for the child to build skills to achieve greatness. The study consists of 712 students in public elementary schools. The students were in 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. The schools were picked based of the diversity and cultural difference from different locations of Singapore. The students were given a questionnaires in class assessing the perceptions of how involved there parents were in school. The questionnaires were graded by two parts, the first was academic involvement which was graded by using items from several existing parent report, and the second was graded by how much parents positive encouragement the child got, and factor were graded on five items. The study showed that parents who showed encouragement were positively related to both their use if behavior and psychological control, it also showed a positive relationship to parent’s positive involvement and the increase in children’s later school achievements. The limitations of this study are the low response rate for the study may be because students who were questioned had more involved families. The study supports the claims from the popular article, by giving scientific proof that a positive reinforcement and proper help can develop skills in children that can make them successful later in life. The articles did a great job explaining and creating experiments that measured the impact parents have on children. If I was to create my own research to advance the knowledge of parenting styles, and how being a tiger parent can hurt a child I would use a similar model to the ones in the two articles. I would improve the study by doing this research all across the U.S in public schools. I would target kids from 3rd , 6th, 10th grade and from different cultural status. The reason is so that the data wouldn’t be biased to social standing, race, location, money, or education. I would create a questioner that would be given to the children at school and one for the mother and father. The child’s questions would address what they thought of there mom and dad, and how they interact with each other academically and socially. Who helps them with school work and other social problems. How the children view there parents parenting style. Also how they are doing in school and if they need any help, or are suffering in social and academic areas. The parent’s questioner would cover there social and cultural background. It would also cover how much they think they are involved with their child’s life, school, and everyday activities. Also how they think there child is doing and what they need to improve on. In two years at the same schools across America I would retest the children who would be 5th, 8th, 12th hopefully the same school and their parents so that I can compare the data. This would allow time to see if parents change over time, and if children see difference in parenting styles over a few years. Then I would come up with a certain way to score these result based on a number system. I feel like a more elaborate experiment like the one I proposed would give more data and information on which parenting style is viewed as better. I have always believed that parents who give their children guidelines and help rather then telling them what to do are going to have children who achieve great things. The two articles data helped support the popular article claims that being a tiger parent can affect a child negatively. Both articles had certain flaws with how they collected data or administered there questioner. I believe with certain improvements like my proposed research would provide more information that can be supported and learned from.