Family as a social phenomenon
What kind of parenting helps kids develop inner discipline?
Psychologists classify parents into three types: brick wall, jellyfish and backbone. Some psychologists recommend ‘backbone’ parenting, a combination of strength and flexibility that supports and respects children, while encouraging them to take responsibility for their own behavior. Parents should be on children’s side, but not interrupting, not critical, judgmental or accusatory, never prying or invoking guilt.
By showing that they understand and appreciate the situation the child is in, by giving advice, by showing that they care and that they are to offer support if and when needed, parents reveal themselves as stable, caring and loving. Something that you can never escape is your attitude. It will be with you forever. However, you decide whether your attitude is an asset or a liability for you. Your attitude reflects the way you feel about yourself, about your environment. Oftentimes, people with a positive attitude are people who are extremely successful.
At times we all have experiences that cause us to be negative. The difference between a positive and a negative person is that the positive person rebounds very quickly from a bad experience; the negative person does not. The positive person is a person who usually looks to the bright side of the things and recognizes the world as a place of promise, hope, joy, excitement, and purpose. A negative person generally has just the opposite view of the world. Remember, others want to be around those who are positive but tend to avoid those who are negative.
We adults teach our children about life until we discover that we don’t know about it either. It appears that not many of us can depend on our own wits. We’ve said goodbye to our past and are afraid of our future. Living in a time of general confusion, we have children who have taken to this new life without a moment of hesitation – as fish to water. Many children face family upheavals these days, and divorce, separation and other family breakdowns carry heavy burden for children involved. No matter how sensitive the parents have addressed the problem of family upheaval, children will often feel insecure, angry, and perhaps guilty.
Does for good parents are as follows:
to encourage children to speak their hearts out about the situation they are in;
to really listen to what children say; to be sympathetic and to try to understand the situation from the child’s point of view;
to be supportive in helping children cope with the situation and to adjust to possible changes;
not to take sides – never! Never fall into a trap of expressing feeling as to ‘who is to blame’ to children. It’s far better to try for the neutrality of Switzerland in the emotional war zone.
Contrary to what many parents believe, when the young adult decides to move on with his or her life, wanting to spend more time with his/her friends, often increasing his/her activities outside the home, and generally becoming self-reliant, independent, or self-governing, family life is not finished.
American parents constantly encourage children to think, analyze, to be responsible, dependable, and conscientious. Ever attentive, observant, thoughtful, always gathering information and processing their experiences, children must learn about life’s options and obligations. They experience negotiation, utilizing their parent/others for direction or advice; they must learn their way round their world and their ever-expanding society. Character development becomes integral to the process.
Some sociologists and psychologists proposed that one’s character and personality are primarily derived from one’s heredity and earliest environment that ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’. The early family environment is probably the strongest factor influencing individual development: children imitate parents, close family members ‘to fit into society’. Why is one child resourceful, curious and inquisitive, impelled and cultured while another child in the same family remains unimaginative, simple, uncouth, perhaps rebellious and taciturn? Where does ambition, adventurousness, eagerness, enthusiasm come from, when the parents and community are resigned, content, passive or indifferent?
Influential factors: heredity vs. environment are widely discussed in sociological and psychological circles. Research has discovered and now surmise there is a wondrous blending of both heredity and environment in human development. Children like to experience people leading interesting lives, learning things, changing life’s rhythms; they need to see people making choices that they might make too. People learn to deal in currencies which are meaningful. Each person searches for an environment in which (s)he will survive, thrive, and reach his/her full potential.
One of the guiding principles in American society is the value of individualism, which has a long political and historical basis. This value affects many aspects of typically ‘American’ behavior and attitudes, including the attitude towards privacy. Some foreigners do not understand the American ‘brand’ of privacy. As an example, let’s look at what sometimes happens when American businesspeople go to Japan. Their Japanese counterparts meet them at the airport, and often, from the beginning of the trip to the end, they take care of the Americans, rarely leaving them alone. After a certain point, many Americans feel that they want to be alone and that they need more privacy. It is not uncommon to hear an American say something like, ‘They are really nice and friendly and they take good care of me, but I just want some time to myself’.
Americans want and value privacy. Privacy, to an American, does not mean isolation or loneliness. However, this is sometimes the way it is interpreted by people of different cultures. Certain languages, such as Arabic, Russian, and Japanese, do not even have an exact word for privacy. It does not mean that these cultures have no concept of privacy. However, when and how privacy is expressed may be different from when and how the ‘American’ concept is expressed. Americans may feel the need to give people their privacy or to have their own privacy at times when a person from another culture might not feel the need. In some American homes, parents and children do not enter each others’ rooms without first knocking. This emphasis on privacy exists because individuals feel that their needs must be respected. In contrast, in group-oriented societies people respect the needs of the group before considering those of the individual.
Another American value is the idea of equality. Americans, unlike many people from other cultural groups, like to present an image that everyone is equal. For example, employees often call their bosses by the first names and can even sometimes joke freely with the president of the company. This informal behavior and communication occur among people at all levels in the business and political worlds.
Obviously, however, the company president has more power than a lower-level employee (not to mention a higher salary!). Despite this, Americans choose to be not overly polite and formal with a person of a higher status. Instead, many Americans would rather think of the boss as an equal. In other words, the American tendency is to minimize status differences rather than to emphasize them.
Another American value is future orientation. Americans, on the whole, look to the future rather than to the past. Tradition and ritual, reminders of the past, play a small part in most American lives. There is instead a focus on progress and change, goals that many Americans try to achieve. Many people feel optimistic that they can be responsible for some progress and change (however small) in their lives. This is also related to the American belief in personal control over the environment (and one’s life), and the emphasis on ‘doing’ and acting.
Again, these American values are easier to understand in contrast to the beliefs of cultures in which fate plays a more important role. For example, you can often hear in Mexico, ‘Queserá, será’, or in the Philippines, ‘Bahalana’ (both translate to ‘Whatever will be, will be’), and in the Arab world, ‘In sha’alla’ (whatever ‘God wills’). Americans do not use such expressions nearly as often as members of some other cultures. Values such as the ones just described are the backbone of American culture. They influence how many Americans think and act.
One challenge of cross-cultural communication with Americans is to be able to figure out the difference between cultural behavior, and, when you meet Americans from various ethnic groups, to decide if and how they reflect their bicultural American identity. You will probably discover that you are continually changing and refining your generalizations about Americans.