Five Stages of Development in Parenting Practices: Tiger French Mom, Japanese Mom, and the U.S. Mom
The proposed 5 Stage model has numerous implications for parenting models employed across various cultures in raising children. There are undoubtedly merits to the blind trust and unquestioned loyalty of children in exchange for care and protection. However, the danger of typical parenting or leadership in the Authoritarian-Dependent stage resides in fostering children and subordinates who only say “yes” to top-down orders or directions from authorities. Here, authority figures can be a father, teacher, superior, doctor, older sibling, religious leader, political leader, or the captain of a commercial airplane[1]. An authoritarian father’s harsh punishment to discipline children at this stage behind an overly protective and dependent mother may increase the child’s “hostile destructiveness and brutality, much as did the Nazis” (West & Konner, 1976, as cited in Parens, 2014, p. 99). Children in these cultural contexts are considered akin to a family asset or possession and required to follow and obey the orders of an authoritarian leader in the family or school. The rest of Stage 1 societies, from company to government and military systems, operate in a similar top-down hierarchical fashion.
The predominant parenting strategy in pre-World War II Germany was to foster blind obedience in children by crushing “children’s sense of self and autonomy” and denying their “individualized self” (Parens,” 2014, p. 99). This form of discipline may have set the stage for children to follow orders unquestioningly, including from the authoritarian dictator Hitler, who himself harbored malignant hostility from past narcissistic injury (Parens, 2014). The blind loyalty demonstrated by 300 ‘innocent’ Korean high school students who went down with the ferry “Sewol,” following the captain’s order to stay calm during the ship’s sinking in 2014, is another clear example of blind loyalty that resulted in disaster and can be attributed to Stage 1 parenting.
Amy Chua’s (2011) book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, talks about the ‘Tiger Mom’ style of parenting, which stresses the importance of being tough in the parents’ role, forcing children to meet their expectations and broader societal expectations to achieve the desired results. Tiger Mom parenting tries to promote achievement in children, a value cherished in Stage 2, Counter-dependent, Competitive collectivist society. Parenting that favors force over reward qualifies this approach as Stage 1 parenting. This parenting style can be identified in many newly-industrializing societies that experience socio-cultural transitions from Stage 1, previously rooted in traditional Confucian cultural values, to Stage 2. At Stage 2, career-driven parents may employ either a negligent or overindulgent parenting style due to their busy schedules. However, stay-at-home parents may adopt the achievement-driven parenting style, stressing the importance of academic achievement that fosters competition for quick financial success and wealth accumulation.
The studies on Japanese and French mothers found that the parenting methods employed emphasize early parental intervention in social behaviors such as manners and even spanking (Druckerman, 2012). Japanese and French mothers criticize American parenting as being too child-centered and permissive. According to Freeman (2005), in Japan, mothers begin parenting “restraint, orderliness, self-control, propriety, and sensitivity to other people’s feelings” earlier than in Western cultures (p. 55). Children in Japan continue their “shared mother-and-child love affair with the world” well into their later life, prepared to accept the transient presence of their mother, as their parenting goal does not involve the pursuit of individualism (p. 56-57). It is interesting to note how the style of punishment can be geared towards emotional dependence or independence. For example, Lindholm (2007, p. 205) contrasted the Japanese punishment of forbidding children’s re-entrance into the family unit by sending them outside the house with the American style of ‘grounding,’ where children are prevented from leaving the house. To the Japanese, making children leave their parents prematurely is considered punishment, while to the Americans, it confines them to their houses.
According to Maldonado-Duran et al. (2002), cultures have three distinctive parental beliefs/views on children. The first, ‘the innocent child’ view, adopted by Asian, Native American, African, and Latin American parents, does not find a convincing rationale in following the goal of individuation to guarantee children’s healthy psychological well-being. The second view is ‘the perfectible child’ view, adopted by the Japanese, who encourage children to cooperate and behave in a socially adequate manner, discouraging their individualistic movement. The third view is ‘the intentional child’ view, adopted by Americans and Western Europeans, who believe in firm discipline from early on to correct undesirable behavior as soon as possible. According to Maldonado-Duran et al. (2002), parents adopting the innocent view tend to use threats and spanking in an out-of-control manner, which they regret later, while their children often equate parental outbursts with expressions of caring. Parents adopting the ‘perfectible child’ view tend to persuade and indirectly suggest using occasional shaming and teasing without confrontation (Kornadt, 2002, as cited in Maldonado-Duran et al., 2002). In contrast, parents with ‘the intentional child’ view tend to actively force or control children’s aberrant tendencies, employing various techniques such as “counting off,” “time-outs,” or saying “stop” or “no” (Maldonado-Duran et al., 2002; Stork, 1985, as cited in Maldonado-Duran et al., 2002).
The proposed 5-Stage Theory demonstrates that the best approach in parenting practice must be through empathy. I, therefore, propose a new parenting style called empathic parenting at Stage 5, which should be added to the existing parenting styles proposed by past theorists such as Baumrin (1966) and Maccoby and Martin (1983).
Baumrind’s (1966) three prototypes of parenting styles: authoritarian, permissive, and authoritative, based on two parenting dimensions of demandingness (or control) and responsiveness (or warmth), may approximately correspond to stages 1 and 4, and Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) negligent or uninvolved parenting style corresponds to stage 2 of the proposed model, respectively. Baumrind claimed that authoritative parenting is the best practice because it intends to find the balance between freedom and control, promoting “autonomous self-will and disciplined conformity” (p. 891). She explains,
“The authoritative parent attempts to direct the child’s activities rationally, issue-oriented manner. She encourages verbal give and take, shares with the child the reasoning behind her policy, and solicits his objections when he refuses to conform.” (p. 891)
However, as we witness through her statement, Baumrind’s dimension of responsiveness (or warmth) is more rational and issue-oriented than emotionally attuned.
Baumrind (1991) found that the authoritative parents were the most motivated, competent, and achievement-oriented. However, some critics argued that Baumrind’s research verifying her claim was sampled on a high-functioning two-parent middle-class European-American family (Sorkhabi & Mandara, 2013). Besides, her dimensions of demandingness (or control) and responsiveness (or warmth) seem to represent the levels of power enforcement toward conformity and support based only on rational ground. They may not capture all the critical dimensions of parenting from a different socio-cultural context (Power, 2013). For example, Baumrind’s dimensions do not capture children from different socio-cultural backgrounds, including delinquent children. They are based on power and reasoning, not considering the emotional component[1]. The emotionally injured children may resent the demandingness of the authority and the power difference they experience due to their early emotional injury for various reasons, such as trauma that may have happened in their helpless state. It is not surprising that there have been studies that doubt the universal applicability of the authoritative model without considering the socio-cultural context (Chao, 2001; Mandara & Murray, 2002; Sorkhabi & Mandara, 2013).
The proposed 5-Stage model doubts Baumrind’s claim that authoritative parenting is the best approach to real-world situations. Children who need extra discipline at school or at home may benefit from a more advanced approach, such as empathic understanding with boundary setting by parents and disciplinarians, as it has been employed as the best tool in psychotherapy dealing with emotionally injured patients. With the proposed 5-stage model, possible revisions can be made for demandingness with the firmness of boundaries and possible replacement of responsiveness with the emotional dimension of projective identification, sympathy, and empathy depending on the parent’s or the authority’s level of emotional capacity or readiness to support.
[1] Though Baumrind (1966, 1991) considered parental responsiveness as warmth, it does not involve any emotional component such as sympathy or empathy.
[1] Malcolm Gladwell (2008) in Outlier discussed this phenomenon through the examples of Korean and Columbian co-pilots who performed a passive role in the case of accidents.
References
Akhtar, S., & Parens, H. (Eds.). (2004). Real and imaginary fathers: Development, transference, and healing. Jason Aronson.
Atkinson, M. P., & Blackwelder, S. P. (1993). Fathering in the 20th century. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 55, 975-986. https://doi.org/10.2307/352777
Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of authoritative parental control on child behavior.Child Development, 37(4), 887-907.
Baumrind D. (1991). The Influence of parenting style on adolescent competence and substance use. Journal of Early Adolescence.11(1),56-95.
Blake, J. (2015, May 4). ‘Lord of the Flies’ comes to Baltimore. CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/02/us/lord-of-the-flies-baltimore/
Bergman, A. (2005). The experience of becoming and being a new father. In S Akhtar & H Parens (Eds.), Real and imaginary fathers: Development, transference, and healing (pp. 107-128). Jason Aronson.
Chua, A. (2011). Battle Hymn of the tiger mother. The Penguin Press.
Druckerman, P. (2012). French children don’t throw food. Black Swan.
Freeman, D. M. A. (2005). Join looking, shared experiencing, and verbalizing affects in the United States and Japan-discussion of Kitayama’s chapter “ Cross- cultural varieties in experiencing affects” In S. Akhtar & H. Blum (Eds.), The language of emotions: Development, psychology, and technique. Jason Aronson.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Back Bay Books.
Lindholm, C. (2007). An anthropology of emotion. In C. Casey & R. Edgerton
(Eds.), A Companion to psychological anthropology: modernity and psychocultural Change (pp. 30-47). Blackwell Publishing.
Maccoby, E. E., & Martin J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family: Parent-child interaction. In P. E. Mussen (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology, socialization, personality, and social development (vol. 4). Wiley.
Maldonado-Duran, M., Moro, M., & McLaughlin, G. B. (2012). Discipline in early childhood.
http://www.kaimh.org/Websites/kaimh/images/Documents/Discipline_in_Early_Childhood.pdf
Mandara, J., & Murray, C. B. (2002). Development of an empirical typology of African American family functioning. Journal of Family Psychology, 16(3), 318–337. https://doi.org/10.1037//0893-3200.16.3.318
Ogden, T. H. (1986). The matrix of the mind: Object relations and the psychoanalytic dialogue. Jason Aronson.
Parens, H. (2014). War is not inevitable: On the psychology of war and aggression. Lexington Books.
Power, T. (2013). Parenting dimensions and styles: A brief history and recommendations for future research. Child Obesity, 9(1), S14-S21.
Pruett, K. (2004). Fathers and young children: Longitudinal lessons on autonomy, gatekeeping, overnights, etc. In S Akhtar & H Parens (Eds.), Real and imaginary fathers: Development, transference, and healing (pp. 45-62). Jason Aronson.
Sorkhabi, N., & Mandara, J. (2013). Are the effects of Baumrind’s parenting styles culturally specific or culturally equivalent? In R. E. Larzelere, A. S. Morris, & A. W. Harrist (Eds.), Authoritative parenting: Synthesizing nurturance and discipline for optimal child development (pp. 113–135). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/13948-006