Relationship Between Parents and Children in Chinese Family free essay sample

Meanwhile, Chinese parents, like the mother in Amy Tan’s article, have too much expectation to their children’s future career and give them painful stress. Certainly, this kind of parents mentioned above cannot form a benign relationship with their children, especially adolescents in the rebellious period. The point is the relationship between parents and children in Chinese family is conflicting from generation to generation because of different kinds of factors, and it causes a few serious problems such as smoking, drug use, and even suicide. Communication and interests can remit and finally figure out this terrible condition. The causes of conflicting relationship between parents and children can be summarized as painful stress, high expectation and overload love. These factors are extremely common in the majority of Chinese family due to same cultural background and strict policies. Chinese college entrance examination is one of the most important examinations, because Chinese people believe that adolescents who are not in the top class are able to change their destiny as long as being admitted to a top university by Chinese college entrance examination. The diploma of an outstanding university guarantees a high-paying job. In other words, to a certain extent, this examination after twelve years basic education can decide one’s later life. Based on this background, Chinese parents highly expect their child can do an excellent job in the Chinese college entrance examination. In addition, since one-child policy, under normal conditions, there is only one child in one Chinese family. All parents and even other family members’ attentions are paid to this child. In fact, the only child has become the unique hope of parents. As a result of having a single child, this single child is usually regarded as the continuing part and hope of parents’ lives. Because life of parent has almost been settled, they place their idea and expectation on their children and want them to their dream that they did not realize. In Amy Tan’s article, â€Å"Two Kinds†, with narrating of first person, Jing-Mei, the daughter in the article, has a conflicting relationship with her mother who grew up in China and is a traditional Chinese, because her mother extremely wants her to become a successful piano player and pushes her to practice a lot every day. However, the expectation of Jing-Mei’s mother is not what Jing-Mei wants in ordinary life. Gradually, she has fed up with playing piano and eventually quarrels with her mother after failure of a talent show. â€Å"Only two kinds of daughters,† She shouted in Chinese, â€Å"These who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter! † (84) These words show the normal thought from a traditional Chinese mother. She thinks that a daughter should do what parents ask to do because of parents’ sacrifice in form of money and efforts. It seems this kind of thought seldom works; on the contrary, children look forward to freedom instead of parents’ expectation. Actually, this conflicting relationship usually leads to some serious problems like smoking, alcohol drinking and drug use. Family is the place where people spend most time in daily life. Thus, if the family relationship is conflicting, it usually leads to the lack of family education because of no normal communication. Jing-Mei and her mother is an example of no normal communication but full quarrels. Definitely, family education plays a ignificant role in the growth of adolescent, and without family education, children are more likely to form bad habits like smoking, alcohol drinking and drug use. According to Sai-Yin Ho’s academic journal, Family structure, parent-child conversation time and substance use among Chinese adolescents, the author finds out the result that â€Å"Adolescent substance use progressively increased from intact to mate rnal, paternal and no-parent families consistently for current smoking (7. 9% to 18. 9%), weekly drinking (6. 1% to 21. 6%) and even drug use (6. 0% to 17. %) alike. † (10) Obviously, this study about non-intact family shows that incompletion of family, almost meaning the lack or negligence of family education, increases the probability of being involved in these unhealthy behaviors. Similarly, there are some common points between traditional Chinese family and non-intact family. Both of them pay less attention to psychological education of children. For the importance of Chinese college entrance examination, Chinese parents normally focus on the grades of the examinations rather than children’s daily behaviors. Particularly in family with conflicting relationship, they do not have the deeper communication to understand each other, like Jing-Mei’s family in Tan’s story. Children cannot get comfortable care and love from their parents, so many of them prefer to something different from what normal adolescents do, like smoking, alcohol drinking and drug use. On one hand, they try to escape from real life by indulging in alcohol and drugs. On the other hand, these children want to catch others attention through these uncommon behavior. What’s worse, some adolescent who cannot suffer from the painful stress and high requirement prefer to commit suicide. People commonly have their own methods to adjust the stress, however, if the stress is so huge that adjustment does not work anymore, they are afraid of facing the pressure and choose to escape or even commit suicide. The distance of high requirement of parents and low behavior of children in the exams can exacerbate the conflict of Chinese parents-adolescents relationship. In Sylvia Kwok’s academic paper, â€Å"Family Processes and Suicidal Ideation among Chinese Adolescent in Hong Kong†, it states â€Å"over conflict in the family, particularly parent-adolescent conflict would cause disturbance and stress to the adolescent, affecting their psychological well-being (e. g. , sense of hope, satisfaction with life), thus increasing their suicidal ideation. † (11) This statement shows that the anxiety and pressure caused by conflicting family relationship have the positive correlations with suicidal tendency, where the more anxiety and pressure children suffer from, the easier they will get the suicidal thoughts. Home, different from work place or school, is the last place to relax. However, the conflict relationship not only cannot provide a peaceful place to have a rest, but also need more attention than work or study. Indeed, Chinese adolescents are facing and suffering from both the pressure from the Chinese college entrance examination and high expectation from parents, especially the later one. Parents’ high expectation pushes students to work harder and harder and causes most of conflicts. Eventually, the great wish from parents forces children to the cliff, and tragedy happens. Solutions to these serious situations have been found out, increasing deep communication and building same interests. Communication has been mentioned several times as a necessary component among family members. Obviously, Communication is an effective path to ease the conflicting relationship and let parents and children understand each other. Connecting back to Amy Tan’s article, lacking the effective communication, Jing-Mei’s mother cannot show her direct love though the expectation, and, unfortunately, they do not understand each other until Jing-Mei sees her mother’s remains. If they could communicate with each other deeply rather than quarreling, the understanding should come earlier before Jing-Mei’s mother died. Communication can help parents and children know another’s minds and find a suitable solution to meet both sides’ need. Furthermore, according to Kwok’s academic paper, â€Å"Both correlation and regression analyses showed that a higher level of parents-adolescent communication was significantly related to a lower level of adolescent suicidal ideation. † (6) The result based on the research study directly tells the effect of communication to the prevention of this kind of horrible ideas. Talking face to face is the path to depth of heart. Therefore, supposing that parents are willing to spend a certain time communicating with their children every day, they will be aware of adolescents’ thoughts little by little and figure out the generation gap problem. On the other hand, children are able to understand care and love from their parents through communication, so that it is less likely to do extreme thing, like commit suicide. Equally important, parents and children can build same interests and spend time together to get a harmonious relationship. The same interests can make parents-children relationship close, almost like friendship. Take E. B. White’s article, Once More to the Lake, as an example. The author was fond of swimming in the lake. He took along his son, who had not swum before, to the lack during summertime. And then, the son also loved this water sport with his father. Hence, they spent almost whole summer around lake. In the essay, White’s â€Å"boy loved our rented outboard, and his great desire was to achieve single handed mastery over it. It shows that, based on the same habits, they formed a friendly relationship and got well along with each other. There is less pressure between White and his son. Although White is not a Chinese father, the way he deals with the relationship with his son is a successful example to consider and follow. Parents should not just pay all attention to exam grades, after all, time spent with child together is worthy, because it is able to ameliorate the conflicting r elationship. In the enjoyable hours with child, their opinions and values are going to approach similar gradually like White father and son. Conflicting parents-children relationship in Chinese family causes more serious problems on adolescents, like alcohol drinking, drug use, and commits suicide. With the development of society, fortunately, the common solutions, communication and joint time, are not a quite difficult methods to operate. The family relationship is important not only to children’s growth, but also to parents, because present parent-children relationship will decide the manner where children think of their parents when they are old. It is like a circle. Parents and children are two half sides of the circle, and the relationship in the circle is influencing similarly the approaches that parents and children treat each other in the long term. Reference Ho, Sai-Yin. â€Å"Family structure, parent-child conversation time and substance use among Chinese adolescents† (2010) Kwok, Sylvia â€Å"Family Processes and Suicidal Ideation among Chinese Adolescent in Hong Kong† (2011) Tan, Amy. â€Å"Two Kinds† White, E. B. â€Å"Once More to the Lake†