Eastern vs Western- which parenting style is better?

Background :-

• Parenting style refers to the ways of raising kids which affects their academic achievements, self-confidence, aggression, psychological strength and capacity to cope with real life challenges.
• Parenting seems to have some basic differences when compared between the Western and Eastern part of the globe. This could be due to the outlook, the culture, the requirements, available resources and many other things that affects parenting.
• Eastern style is seen to be more authoritarian, strict and demanding as opposed to the western style which seems lenient and permissive.

Eastern parenting :-

In Favor :-

• Eastern parenting is more protective and forms strong emotional bonding with children through affection and warmth.
• Eastern parents provide their children morality, cultural values and most importantly emotional support which acts as a backbone for a child in various stages of life.
• Eastern parents protects their children from problems and difficult situations and tries to provide them ideal environment according to them.
• Eastern parents makes most of the decisions for their children and choose what is right for the kids.
• They are ready to spend more time and money for their children’s education and take extra tuition classes for tutoring their kids. They are ready to sacrifice anything to get them to good college and obtain good grades. And in most cases kids do achieve good jobs.
• In Eastern parenting style, children are given everything they need and are expected to pay back by looking after them in old age.

Against :-

• Due to over protective environment, kids do not develop experiences which tends to make them optimistic and decisive and make them capable of overcoming greater challenges in life.
• Kids who are overprotected are unable to handle challenges to survive in real world.
• Many kids becomes prone to psychological problems and some even resort to suicide because of the unbearable pressure by parents.
• Eastern parents try to make kids as exact copies of themselves. As a result, child could not think independently when it comes to taking important decisions.
• Many children have mindsets to take assured paths with lesser risks due to less exposure to difficult situations.
• Some parents keep controlling and take decisions for their children even when they become adults. This causes a lot of tension in families.
• Eastern parents emphasis on the academics and skip arts and sports.
• They often give priority to achievement along with emotional and mental toughness over comfort.

Western parenting :-

In Favor :-

• Western parenting helps kids to grow up as a independent and creative people.
• In Western parenting, parents give importance to individuality and let children express their opinions openly. They emphasis on developing the skills of kids without forcing them to do so. Due to the free environment provided to them, kids are encouraged to think differently.
• Parents try to treat kids as adults and gives a lot of freedom to take the decisions for themselves.
• These decision making gives them first-hand experience and helps them to understand the consequences of actions.
• The kids choose careers not only in technology but every possible field, doing jobs of their own interest.
• The kids who are raised by western parents have freedom to express themselves freely and hence they tends to develop lesser psychological issues. They are also lot happier as they can do most of the things they want to.
• They worry about the children’s self esteem and tries to comfort them emotionally and mentally.
• They do not stop living their own life for the sake of the kids.

Against :-

• Kids who are not pushed by the parents are tends to be underachievers. They lags behind and perform low in exams.
• Kids are used to make their own decisions so they often don’t listen to their parents.
• Parents are sometimes too soft to their children due to which children becomes lazy.
• Children can become over confident and self-centered.
• If parents misunderstood the permissive parenting ,it can be quite dangerous and children can easily be prone to bad habits due to freedom they get. In such cases, children often mistook freedom.

Conclusion :-

Both parenting styles have good benefits to offer but they can also give rise to problems. So the best way is to enjoy benefits of both and avoid the problems associated with either by finding right balance between the two. Being permissive in some cases so that child learns from making mistakes and strict in some cases is helpful because parents could teach them that choosing right path is not an option but the default.

Both parenting styles are just the two paths to the same destination even if they are different radically. This has been proved by research conducted by several institutes. So we can’t really say that any one of them is good or bad. Also, not every child is same. Some things work fine for one kid which may not work for the other. So one must choose what is good for their own kid and family.

Afterwords :- Which parenting style is best according to you? Share your opinions in the comment section below.

This article is written by Vaishali Chaudhari. All rights reserved @ Group Discussion Ideas.