Preschoolers’ Parenting In China And America From The Perspectives Of Collectivism And Individualism

Parenting style is the reflection of culture; it is also significantly influenced byculture. Parents across different cultural backgrounds adopt different parenting beliefs,hold different parenting goals, and use different parenting practices. For all families,the cultural framework serves a critical role in shaping the parenting styles parentschoose to raise their children. Through parenting, culture is passed down from onegeneration to the next. Parenting is one of the most interesting fields in cross-culturestudy. China and the United States of America stand as the world‘s most powerfulcountries in the East and the West, both of which have exerted profound influenceinternationally. Many scholars domestic and abroad have studied China and Americaas the prototypes of Eastern and Western cultures. Confucianism is deeply rooted inevery aspect of Chinese culture. The importance of collectivism cannot beoveremphasized in Chinese society. In contrast, individualism is the core value inmainstream American culture, it has shaped the way Americans think, speak and live.With an increasing number of parents paying attention to parenting style‘s impactupon child outcomes in the past few decades, lots of comparative studies have beendone to analyze the similarities and differences in Chinese parenting style andAmerican parenting style. Chinese parenting is characterized by relatively high levelof parental control and interdependence, whereas American parenting is featured byrelatively high level of independence and acceptance.This thesis is designed to understand how different parenting practices affectvarious child outcomes in American and Chinese sociocultural contexts, and moreimportantly, the underlying reasons for the differences in parenting practices in thesetwo countries. The author will explore specific cultural values in these two countriesrespectively in the hope to correlate cultural reasons with certain parenting practices.Another purpose of the present study is to investigate how American and Chineseparentings have changed with globalization on the rise, especially how they haveinterchanged. The paper consists of seven parts. The Introduction displays the purpose and thegeneral background of this study. Chapter One is the literature review, which displaysthe existing studies. Some main classical studies are listed. In Chapter Two, therelations between culture and parenting are discussed. The important role of parentingis reviewed together with culture‘s influence on parenting. The author will also brieflyintroduce collectivism in China and individualism in the United States of America.Chapter Three is devoted to explaining the cultural reasons behind Chinese parentingstyle. The author will illustrate the main characteristics of Chinese parenting. Then,the author will analyze the cultural reasons from the perspective of collectivism.Chapter Four focuses on the cultural reasons behind American parenting style. Thefeatures of American parenting style will be reviewed as well as the cultural reasonsfrom the perspective of individualism. Chapter Five states the advantages anddisadvantages of both Chinese and American parentings. The author demonstrates thecurrent exchange between Chinese and American parentings. Finally, the thesis comesto a conclusion that studying cultural differences can help understand differences inparenting styles and the combination of the advantages in Chinese and Americanaparentings can form a better parenting style.