Maybe Freud was right: 'ordinary misery' is a part of life so, instead of aiming for unrealistic joy, parents should concentrate on teaching their children two deceptively simple things: to love and to work. Most cultures more or less agree. But how do they go about it? What distinguishes Chinese child-rearing practices, for instance, and how do they compare with western ones? The short answer is that Chinese parenting is generally more hands-on and traditional than the child-rearing methods of, say, the typical American. Chinese parenting is also probably too firmly embedded in a supporting web of cultural assumptions and social relations to be transportable. What fosters the famous academic and professional successes of Chinese-Americans, for instance, cannot be easily teased apart for use in other communities. Indeed, it is perhaps the contrast with broader American society of the more stable Chinese parenting style that partly explains Chinese-American achievements. Western parents often say that they just want their children to grow up happy. But, as Freud noted, subjective happiness is a slippery objective. In places like the US, individuals have an overwhelming choice as to where, with whom and how they live. It is, therefore, hard for parents to predict what values, attitudes and skills would best equip their children to be able to do what they want to do - with the presumed side-effect of contentment. In contrast, guiding beliefs inculcated by Chinese parents are more tightly prescribed by tradition, and emphasise duty over individual fulfilment. Chinese parents are just as keen to have happy children. But they put more faith in collective wisdom, including responsible, stable and lifelong interconnectedness, as a means to that end. A striking feature of mainland Chinese parenting styles, relative to North American ones, emerged in a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology. It focused on the role of three of the most influential and distinguishing aspects of parenting: warmth, control and indulgence. Chinese children aged 12-14, it turns out, have a very different view of their fathers compared with their western counterparts. To them, their fathers are as involved in parenting as their mothers, and just as indulgent. This echoes the views of David Ho Yau-fai, of the University of Hong Kong, in Fatherhood in Chinese Culture. In western research, fathers are typically less active in child-rearing, and emotionally removed during childhood and adolescence. On the other hand, the responsibility that Chinese fathers traditionally have for their children's academic and social accomplishments can go awry. Basically, strict control exacerbates the initial situation. A promising child excels when tightly monitored; the less well-adapted child gets worse. Excessive fatherly indulgence has a negative effect, too, while children who were indulged by their mothers flourished. Warmth from either parent appears to serve a protective function for children who had adjustment difficulties. Some of these findings ring true for all parents: the tough-tender balance is a delicate one the world over. But it is also clear that the meaning which Chinese children ascribe to parenting is bound up in the cultural suppositions they have internalised about the two parental roles. This is probably somewhat less the case in looser western cultures where society does shape parental roles but also allows for a greater degree of influence of the needs and desires of the individuals involved. What is certain is that there is no magic formula; what works in one cultural context may not necessarily have the same effect in another. Jean Nicol is a psychologist specialising in issues of cultural identity and change in an era of globalisation everydaypsychologist@yahoo.com
