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Singapore is an Asian society with a Western outlook.
Increasingly, the upbringing of kids here follows the western way. Some parents still look to caning as a way of discipling their children, many young parents are resorting to reasoning with their children when dealing with their disciplinary issues.
I want to write about what happens in my Traditional Asian Chinese family versus what goes on in other families who adopt the Westernised parenting approach.
In my Asian Chinese family...
Filial piety is of the utmost importance.
In my family, this means absolute obedience to what my parents say. You can never say No to them because saying No means being disrespectful to them. There is no room for open discussion and reasoning when there is a difference in thought between the parents and children. Parents do not have to give a reason to their children in order to cane them. It is always assumed that parents know things better and kids better listen to them or they will regret their whole lives.
In Asian families, parents sacrifice a lot, financial, mentally and emotionally, in order to push their children to achieve the greatest that they can. This, in itself, is not a wrong thing to do and in face, it looks very noble of them to do so. However, there's a catch. You must repay all that your parents gave to you. You owe your parents the hard work that they put in to raise you. You are forever indebted to them. Even when you become an adult, you are not allowed to have your own ideas and still must continue to obey all that they dictate to you. Any form of disobedience is unfilial.
In my family, my parents and relatives even take it to the extreme. I even owe my life to my parents. My uncle was explaining to me some time last year that if my mother wants to beat me or kill me, I must not run away. I must stay put and let myself be beaten or killed by her.
You see, it's not weird that he thinks this way because our parents owned our lives and we owe our lives to our parents.
So, I have disobeyed my mother and an labelled an "unfilial" child. When she asked me to jumped off the windows of our kitchen, I didn't do it. When I run away from home and now lives in a rented room outside, I receive threats from my uncle who told me that children are supposed to live with their parents and not stay alone by themselves outside the family. What I did is seriously unfilial, so unfilial that my uncle threatened to put me in jail should I continue to live outside.
However, they did give me one survival route. That is, if I give my parents $1 million, they will stop all their threats and will give me the freedom that I want and that is what makes me tick every morning, every night, and virtually every waking moment. I wanted to have my ideas and freedom more than any other in the world! So be it, I'm an unfilial kid.
I don't have a good opinion of holding on to filial piety after going through all the unhappiness associated with it.
See my previous post: Who Is The One With The Real Issue? Who Actually Has Fault?
Parents want to have "face".
That's why there are Tiger Moms. Parents want to brag about their children's achievements during Chinese New Year gatherings. By itself, there's nothing wrong. What can be wrong with wanting our next generation to become better their parents' generation? I was happy that in a Chinese family, if I want to learn something, my mother supports me without question.
But, as I grew up, I think parents should take the positive approach to achievement rather than the negative. For my mother, she would always compare me to others and tell me how much better others were compared to me. For example, she always talk about how our neighbour's son gave their parents so much allowance each month.
I don't like the way she did the comparison without realising our situation was different from theirs.
Taking this positively, she might want me to become a better person. But somehow, I felt it was more of she wanting to have more "face" in front of others. She wants to feel more superior than others.
This is another concept, apart from filial piety, that I don't really like to talk about at all. It didn't work for me and has made me feel utterly adequate of forever not meeting what my mother wants.
Strict adherence to family rank.
Parents have the ultimate say in their children's lives, even when they are adults (which I mean over 21 years old). Children will always be ranked below their parents and have no say in their lives.
I have been tutoring for over 10 years. I find it quite amusing in so many families that the parents always have to ask their children for permission to clean up their rooms or throw away their rubbish or what they would like to eat for dinner and lunch.
In my family, I was expected to eat anything that my mother cooked or bought. I was expected to praise that all the dishes that my mother cook were perfectly done. There was once I honestly told my mother that a dish was not nice and she flared up, scolding me for not being grateful to her and said that if I'm so good in my cooking skills, I could cook next time.
Many times, my mother just cleaned up my room and she would throw away my things without asking me, telling me later that I should thank her for keeping my room free of clutter. She had thrown away things that I wanted to keep and I still had to thank her.
You see, in her view, she was doing a great deed for her children by labouring to clean up the room and throwing out what she thought was unnecessary stuff. It didn't matter if the stuff are still important to the children. The fact is as a parent she had laboured hard and the children shouldn't and mustn't complain at all. Children have to no say in things.
In Western families...
I don't have the chance of seeing how a western family works. But from the many articles I read about, it seems that the following generally holds true:
At the end of the day, I feel there are advantages and disadvantages from both Asian and Western parenting methods. There are great men and women raised up from both cultures.
I think it is to your advantage if you can merge both the Asian and Western ways of parenting
I want to write about what happens in my Traditional Asian Chinese family versus what goes on in other families who adopt the Westernised parenting approach.
In my Asian Chinese family...
Filial piety is of the utmost importance.
In my family, this means absolute obedience to what my parents say. You can never say No to them because saying No means being disrespectful to them. There is no room for open discussion and reasoning when there is a difference in thought between the parents and children. Parents do not have to give a reason to their children in order to cane them. It is always assumed that parents know things better and kids better listen to them or they will regret their whole lives.
In Asian families, parents sacrifice a lot, financial, mentally and emotionally, in order to push their children to achieve the greatest that they can. This, in itself, is not a wrong thing to do and in face, it looks very noble of them to do so. However, there's a catch. You must repay all that your parents gave to you. You owe your parents the hard work that they put in to raise you. You are forever indebted to them. Even when you become an adult, you are not allowed to have your own ideas and still must continue to obey all that they dictate to you. Any form of disobedience is unfilial.
In my family, my parents and relatives even take it to the extreme. I even owe my life to my parents. My uncle was explaining to me some time last year that if my mother wants to beat me or kill me, I must not run away. I must stay put and let myself be beaten or killed by her.
You see, it's not weird that he thinks this way because our parents owned our lives and we owe our lives to our parents.
So, I have disobeyed my mother and an labelled an "unfilial" child. When she asked me to jumped off the windows of our kitchen, I didn't do it. When I run away from home and now lives in a rented room outside, I receive threats from my uncle who told me that children are supposed to live with their parents and not stay alone by themselves outside the family. What I did is seriously unfilial, so unfilial that my uncle threatened to put me in jail should I continue to live outside.
However, they did give me one survival route. That is, if I give my parents $1 million, they will stop all their threats and will give me the freedom that I want and that is what makes me tick every morning, every night, and virtually every waking moment. I wanted to have my ideas and freedom more than any other in the world! So be it, I'm an unfilial kid.
I don't have a good opinion of holding on to filial piety after going through all the unhappiness associated with it.
See my previous post: Who Is The One With The Real Issue? Who Actually Has Fault?
Parents want to have "face".
That's why there are Tiger Moms. Parents want to brag about their children's achievements during Chinese New Year gatherings. By itself, there's nothing wrong. What can be wrong with wanting our next generation to become better their parents' generation? I was happy that in a Chinese family, if I want to learn something, my mother supports me without question.
But, as I grew up, I think parents should take the positive approach to achievement rather than the negative. For my mother, she would always compare me to others and tell me how much better others were compared to me. For example, she always talk about how our neighbour's son gave their parents so much allowance each month.
I don't like the way she did the comparison without realising our situation was different from theirs.
Taking this positively, she might want me to become a better person. But somehow, I felt it was more of she wanting to have more "face" in front of others. She wants to feel more superior than others.
This is another concept, apart from filial piety, that I don't really like to talk about at all. It didn't work for me and has made me feel utterly adequate of forever not meeting what my mother wants.
Strict adherence to family rank.
Parents have the ultimate say in their children's lives, even when they are adults (which I mean over 21 years old). Children will always be ranked below their parents and have no say in their lives.
I have been tutoring for over 10 years. I find it quite amusing in so many families that the parents always have to ask their children for permission to clean up their rooms or throw away their rubbish or what they would like to eat for dinner and lunch.
In my family, I was expected to eat anything that my mother cooked or bought. I was expected to praise that all the dishes that my mother cook were perfectly done. There was once I honestly told my mother that a dish was not nice and she flared up, scolding me for not being grateful to her and said that if I'm so good in my cooking skills, I could cook next time.
Many times, my mother just cleaned up my room and she would throw away my things without asking me, telling me later that I should thank her for keeping my room free of clutter. She had thrown away things that I wanted to keep and I still had to thank her.
You see, in her view, she was doing a great deed for her children by labouring to clean up the room and throwing out what she thought was unnecessary stuff. It didn't matter if the stuff are still important to the children. The fact is as a parent she had laboured hard and the children shouldn't and mustn't complain at all. Children have to no say in things.
In Western families...
I don't have the chance of seeing how a western family works. But from the many articles I read about, it seems that the following generally holds true:
- Westerners favour love for parents rather than being nice to parents as a form of indebtedness.
- Westerners tend to reason with their children allowing two-way communication and mutual understanding instead of demanding the children to do things according to the parents' wishes without letting know the reasons.
- Westerners tend to treat children as equal, especially after they turn 18. Children can talk to their parents as equal and can have their own mind and express their own opinion.
At the end of the day, I feel there are advantages and disadvantages from both Asian and Western parenting methods. There are great men and women raised up from both cultures.
I think it is to your advantage if you can merge both the Asian and Western ways of parenting
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