Cultural norms of Parenting

In this section of my blog will be about Parent-child relationships. I will be analyzing why and how are parent-child relationship plays a role in families life.

In class there was a video shown about how parents feed their children. It was interesting for me to see the differences between a Caucasian (White) family and people of color families feeding their children. In a White family, the parents let their children make a mess and eat with their hands however for People of Color it was more neat and children were being fed by their mothers. For fun, here’s a short video of me recording my baby sister around the age of two. It is also very different from how other Asian families have feed their babies and allowing them to stay neat. The conversation is me encouraging her in Hmong to eat neatly and to get the rice on her spoon. Please excuse the music in the background, this happened during dance practice.

 

Although I am not a parent I have been mistaken as her parent a couple of times at a grocery store and even at her school. Now that my baby sister isn’t two years old anymore, she tells me that I treat her like an evil step-mom like mother Gothel (jokingly of course). Jokes aside, I can see why she would put me in the same room as mother Gothel since she is very overprotective of her child.

According to Heath, parents have multiple reasons for being overprotective of their children’s such as “stress of modern life and heightened expectations for individual achievement” (37). Hey, I can’t help it if I am overprotective of my baby sister, I was raised this way by my parents. For as long as I can remember, my mom had taught my to always watch out for my younger siblings especially since I am the second oldest daughter in the family.

Although my parents were very protective of my me and my siblings they also had a traditional parenting pattern about racial socialization. This is similar to Clint’s Tedtalk call How to Raise a Black Son in America. People of color parents have to teach their children about racism and the hardships of how society will stereotype anyone that does not look like a white person. I remember coming home to my mom asking her what does “go back to where you came from” mean and wondering why it made me sad. She told me in Hmong to ignore those children since they do not know the resilience that my family holds. My mom told me stories about my grandparents sacrifice to come to America and how no one can take away my identity as a Hmong American women or make me feel less of a person because of my identity.  As overprotective as my parents were, there were situations where my parents showed me nothing but warmth without all the authoritarian.

 

References

Heath P.  Parenting Patterns and the Impact of Culture and Context. Chapter 2, 26-51

TEDtalksDirector. “How to Raise a Black Son in America | Clint Smith.” YouTube, YouTube, 23 Apr. 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us70DN2XSfM.

Walker, S. (2018). Cultural Differences in Child Feeding. Retrieved from University of Minnesota Twin Cities Parent-Child Relationships Canvas. https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/84538