Dazed and confused at parenting crossroads

In traditional Chinese society, a child is seen as an extension of its parents. In a lenient Western family, the child is seen as a little adult. In Hong Kong, parents are caught between these extremes making them stressed as a result, says a social worker who has studied local parenting methods.

Mary Beyns arrived in Hong Kong from Belgium in 1963 and has been working with local youths and families since. A fluent Cantonese speaker, she has seen the bumpy transition from traditional Chinese values in parenting to values with more Western influences.

Whereas the Confucian values of filial piety, with a strict upbringing that treated people as children until they married, worked in close-knit families who spent much of their time at home, they did not work so well when both parents were working and children developed separate lives through school and friends.

'When I arrived, traditional parenting was working, it was relevant,' she said. 'It was very strict and spanking was part of it. But at that time it was not as stressed, so after a spanking parents would make up and hug the child. The situation changed when parents had to work more and became stressed.' Ms Beyns, who is childless, was especially struck by the strains on the parents she met while working for Hong Kong Child and Youth Services in the early 1990s.

Unfortunately, local social workers were armed mainly with Western textbooks for advice, she said. There were no gurus who had tapped into local parenting methods or reports of local studies.

So Ms Beyns, 63, decided to plug the gap. She began research for a doctorate on parenting in Hong Kong to find out what parents were thinking when they faced difficulties with their children and how it affected their parenting.