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Zhiwen Zhang

Professor Aaron Benedetti

UWP 001

8 May 2021

Dear reader,

My target audience is public people, they can easily understand my description

and argumentation in my research essay. I will explain terminology into plain words

to make them easier to follow my statement. My essay subject in psychology aspect

of Chinese parenting style that influence children’s relationship with parents. From

my perspective, parenting style is an attracting topic that makes many students and

parents interested. Because this is what happening in our life.

I’m planning to find essays from pervious scholars that best match my thesis. I’m

going to rewrite my annotated bibliography and maybe the first draft. To gather data

as primary sources, I will create an online questionnaire about parenting style.

Changes I have made so far to my project is the research proposal, I rewrite the

elements that too complicated. For instance, my thesis is too complicated with

multiple questions, so I deleted some of those questions that are less relevant to the

main thesis I want. Furthermore, I added some details of primary sources like

collecting data by using the questionnaire. I also changed the form into the MLA

standard. My current draft analyzes the second sources that conform to my thesis and

main statement. Even though it’s my first time to write such long and complicated
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essay, I believe I can successfully write my own research essay.

Analysis of typical Chinese parenting style

Introduction

In the process of rearing children, there are many aspects that contribute to

cultivate a healthy and well-developed child. The parenting style is one of the most

important aspects that help children to grow. For most families, in order to raise their

children in “correct” ways, parents tend to follow some kinds of structure that makes

their children achieve their expectations. There are several types of parenting styles.

The “authoritarian” and “authoritative” parenting style seems like the most popular

style that used by many families between America and Chinese (Chao1111).

What is authoritarian style?

Among the Chinese parenting style, the most popular one is called “authoritarian”

style because Chinese parents are often called “strict” and “authoritarian”. From the

definition of western “authoritarian” parenting style, what “authoritarian” mean is that

this is an obsessive, intolerant style. But the “authoritarian” style is not all the same to

describe the Chinese parenting style. The most relevant parenting style of Chinese

family is called “authoritarian”, but it has some differences between the criterion of

“authoritarian” in Western and Chinese. Rather than the common meaning of

“authoritarian “, the “authoritarian” style used by Chinese is different. The statement

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that most Chinese family use “authoritarian” style is not totally the actual situation of

Chinese family. Even though the traditional thought of Chinese parenting style is

“authoritarian”, there has some argumentations to reject the statement. According to

Chao’s article “Beyond parental control and authoritarian parenting style:

Understanding Chinese parenting through the cultural notion of training”. He

mentions that there is actually little relationship between Chinese parents and

“authoritarian”. Chinese parents are more involved in parental concern, caring, and

company. While the Western definition of “authoritarian” is equal to domination,

aggress, and not believe in their children (Chao1112). For the difference of culture

diversity, there have many different implications of parenting styles. Chinese

parenting styles mainly focus on keeping the family organized, achieving social

expectations and performing well in school. The standard of “authoritarian” style is

not always accord with Chinese parenting style. In Chinese tradition, they followed

the role made by Confucious --- chiao shun and guan. This is a concept that follows

this reasoning: people are defined by how they get along with others; relationship is in

the stepped form; and by attaching importance to relationship, each party maintain the

social order (Chao1113). By using examples from Confucious’ norms of parenting

style, we can differentiate “authoritarian” style and traditional Chinese parenting

style.

Method

The method through using questionnaire and 5-point Likert scale among
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European-American mothers and Chinese mothers to test the rate of

“authoritarian/authoritative” style. Both America and Chinese mother have the

equivalent average age, they all received the same level of education and upper-

middle class. It also used a univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Multivariate

analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) to measure and analyze the research data. Using

a univariate analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Multivariate analysis of covariance

(MANCOVA) to test the score of ideologies to their children and authoritarian scale

scores between the similar educated Chinese and European - American mothers,

researchers collect data to get higher score of Chinese mothers than European -

American mothers. Researchers conclude that Chinese mothers have higher on

authoritarian score, parenting control and ideologist (1117). After developing the

process of argument, my secondary sources conclude that “authoritarian” style is

significantly more used in Chinese parents than America parents. This finding

supports the society expectation of Chinese parenting style.

To compare with this secondary source, another discusses more about children

development under certain kind of parenting styles. Although the first secondary

source states that the “authoritarian” style results high score in school, it does not

discuss the other aspects including influences on children. While for the second essay,

it not only states the “authoritarian” Chinese parenting style, but also make further

explanation about children development and different parenting style impacts. This

further explanation expands more information of Chinese parenting style. The reasons

to form “Authoritarian” parenting style are the traditional thoughts of Chinese parents
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and they pursue to cultivate their children to be useful (ideologist), but the impact on

their children is also significant. On the opposite of Chao’s argumentation of Chinese

parenting style, Yiyuan Xu, Jo Ann M. Farverb, Zengxiu Zhangc, Qiang Zengc,

Lidong Yud, and Beiying Caie found the “Authoritarian” style results in the highest

“perceived parenting distress” and “mother – child dysfunctional interaction ratings”

(529).

Researchers uses Parenting Stress Index-Short Form that yields three 12-item

subscales to measure the stress level of mothers (PSI-SF; Abidin, 1995). they also use

Child Rearing Practices Report (CRPR, Block, 1981) to collect the data from

mainland Chinese mothers to test the state of children.

Phenomenon of Chinese parenting style

From this graph on newspapers of “CHINA DAILY”, which is draw by Xiaoying

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Wang, we can see there is a boy and his mother. This boy is standing in front of piano

and playing the piano while reading a stack of books and using his feet to write

calligraphy. His mother is Waving her whip to supervise her son. We can see the right

corner from this image, it writes “CHINA DAILY”. So, we can know that this graph

is depicting a “classical” pair of Chinese mother and son. This graph vividly reflects

the “authoritarian” parenting style. In Chinese culture, the strict parents are important

to make children be more excellent. As an old saying goes: “spare the rod and spoil

the child”. This means that Chinese parents tend to use punishments to let their

children be obedient and follows their expectations. From this image, we can see that

this Chinese mother use whip as a punishment to her son. Her son is doing multiple

tasks at the same time: playing the piano, writing calligraphy and reading books. The

multiple tasks bring him heavy pressure, and he can just be obedient to his mother to

avoid the punishment. From his unhappy face, we can indicate that he is not willing to

finish such heavy tasks even though these tasks can make him more excellent. This

graph perfectly reflects the Chinese parenting style that conform to “authoritarian”

style --- obedience, high expectations and intolerance.

First source research

To further prove my statement of Chinese “authoritarian” parenting style, I did a

research. In my research, I asked 10 of my Chinese friends several questions to tell

how their parents treat them: Do they force you to do what you don’t want to do? Do

they usually require you to be what they expect? Can they tolerant things you’ve done
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that not satisfy them? Do they care about your happiness and thoughts? After thinking

about these questions, they rated each question from 1 to 10 points (1 is strongly

disagree, 5 is moderate, 10 is strongly agree). Most of my friends think their parents

are not sensitive aware of and able to understand their feelings. Except the last

question, my friends average score is high (8.4), and they average score slightly low

in last question that their parents care about their happiness and thoughts. From

research, this actively demonstrates that most of my friends’ parents use the

“authoritarian” parenting style. This further elucidate that the “authoritarian”

parenting style is pretty common among Chinese parents. The reason why I want to

use this as my primary research is that I can confirm that whether my research result

is similar to other essay’s conclusion.

However, my research has some drawbacks: my sample size is too small to get a

general conclusion. This result of survey only measures a small amount of people in

my life circle, and we can only conclude that my result is subject to those of my

friends and surrounding people. Besides, the self-report method is not very objective.

Since the self-report is a way to report people’s own ideas in their minds, which is

more subjective than other research like observation and measurement through

instruments. So, I added the survey to know the ideas from my friends’ parents. I

made a questionnaire contains several questions like “what is the frequency to ask

your children’s mood and health?” “How often do you demand your children to do

something that you think is right?” and so on. Each question has level 1 to level 10.

Level 1 means never; level 10 means very frequently. Most parents tend to choose
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above level 5 when they are asked questions about the caring to their children and the

control willing to their children. My questions are not directly asking the caring

frequency or the control actions, but indirectly ask them in another way that can

reflect their level to represent “authoritarian”. This result indicates that parents

themselves may not be aware of their control of their children, but they still got a high

level of “authoritarian” parenting style.

Different cultures of parenting style

There is a difference between Chinese traditional education and American

parenting style. According to Scarlett Wang’s statement, mainstream American

parenting aims to form a slightly strict and give emotional support to their children.

While most Chinese mainstream parenting style form the particular reason for

circumstance that follows the Confucius’ inspiration to raise children with knowledge

to respect social relationships. In addition, the cross-cultural parenting also has an

effect on children’s development. The first generation of Chinese immigrant perform

better than the second generation of the “authoritarian” parenting style. First

generation children get a higher score, have a better academic performance and

interpersonal skills than the second generation (Chao, 1994, 2001; Shek, 1999, 2001;

Su & Hynie, 2011). Among numerous Chinese cross-cultural families, their income

impacts their level of stress. Usually, a higher income Chinese family has lower

pressure than lower income Chinese family. Chinese mother who has higher

accumulative pressure would lead children to have lower academic score than mother
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who has less accumulative stress (Cheah et al., 2009; Fung & Lau, 2010).

Conclusion

In the future, as the development of education and openness of Chinese students,

they will have a broader viewpoint of cultivating their child. There may develop a

different parenting style because of the need to conform the society. We can’t know

for sure, as we cannot determine the future results to be certain.

Works Cited
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Chan, Siu Mui, Jennifer Bowes, and Shirley Wyver. "Chinese parenting in Hong
Kong: Links among goals, beliefs and styles." Early Child Development and
Care 179.7 (2009): 849-862.

Xu, Yiyuan, et al. "Mainland Chinese parenting styles and parent-child

interaction." International Journal of Behavioral Development 29.6 (2005): 524-531.

“Debate: Chinese mothers”, China Daily, 2011,

https://images.app.goo.gl/Qp4rSdKqyA4s9ifv6

Scarlett Wang. “The “Tiger Mom”: stereotypes of Chinese parenting in the United
States”, APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY OPUS, https://wp.nyu.edu/steinhardt-
appsych_opus/the-tiger-mom-stereotypes-of-chinese-parenting-in-the-united-states/

Chao, R. K. (1994). Beyond parental control and authoritarian parenting style:

Understanding Chinese parenting through the cultural notion of training. Child
Development, 65(4), 1111-1119.

Shek, D. T. L. (1999). Assessment of global parenting style and specific parenting

behavior in a Chinese context. Psychologia: An International Journal of Psychology in
the Orient, 42(2), 69-79.