Parenting and Socialization - Essay Example

itarian parenting Emily is a twelve year old. She is the daughter of a working middle couple who have been married for five years. The husband, Jacob, is an Asian and the wife, Samantha is of European origin. Jacob is very hot-tempered and believes in making the children obey the rules. Samantha is pleasant and patient with her child but leaves final decisions to her husband when it comes to basic child rearing attitudes. Emily is a meek and submissive girl. Her school teacher has many times shared her apprehensions with Samantha saying that Emily was prone to be reclusive and reluctant to make new friends.

Emily has great difficulty communicating in social situations. An example of Jacob’s and Samantha’s parenting style is that they never permitted Emily to join a music class to which she wanted to get enrolled. The reason cited was that it would affect her academic performance. Jacob once insisted that she eat the oyster served on her plate, which was served by a relative in a family function not knowing that she was allergic to oyster. Her father made her eat the oyster though he knew she was allergic to it.

He thought this was a punishment for her for not staying alert about what was served on her plate and for wasting food. There was once an instance when Emily tried to cut the vein on her hand, when she got a mild reprimand for scoring low in her mathematics class. Emily has rarely attended the socializing occasions in her school and has stayed away citing not so convincing excuses. She is not very prosocial but is very obedient to her teachers. She has not shown any aggressive behavior but she has neither shown any originality in her creative assignments.

My conclusion is that it is the authoritarian parenting style that affected Emily into becoming withdrawn, meek, over-obedient and with very low self-esteem. Jacob is authoritarian and Samantha is not able to compensate his authoritarian style of parenting. My reason for this conclusion is that Belsky (2010) has said, making children obey strict rules always could “impair prosocial behavior” (p.208). Belsky (2010) has also observed that Asian parents are more authoritarian in the sense that they consider obedience as a virtue in children (p.203). As Emily’s teacher has noticed her socializing problems and been trying to help by talking to Samantha, there is a scope for Samantha to take up a more proactive role with the help of the teacher to positively influence Emily’s socializing skills.

Neglecting/rejecting parentingAdam is a nine year old. He lives with his single mother who has borderline personality disorder. The mother, Hannah, is of half-African half-Eurpoean descent. Hannah is living on the small pension that parents had left her when they died. This money is not sufficient to meet her and her child’s needs and added to this is Hannah’s habit of spending money on drinking sprees. Her approach to Adam is one of non-involvement but occasionally she would suffocate him with her own depressive and aggressive moods.

Hannah is always pre-occupied with her emotional tantrums. Adam has no friends at all. He spends most of his leisure time secluded in a room with the door and windows shut. In the school also, he is a complete loner. Once when a class mate from the neighborhood made fun of her mother’s regular quarrels with the neighbors, Adam became highly aggressive towards him. But when he came back home, he tore up the photos of his mother in the family album. Hannah would bring in new boyfriends to the house and ask Adam not to show up.

She never cooks the food that he loves to eat and not even know his tastes in this matter. One day, she asked Adam to run an errant for her new boyfriend, but then forgot that Adam had gone out, locking him outside for the whole night. Adam spent the night in the car porch. He usually walks in the streets with his head lowered and when somebody speaks to him never look into that person’s eyes. Hannah often tells Adam angrily that it was he who made her life, a hell. My inference is that Hannah is a neglecting/rejecting parent and this situation has made Adam to feel uncared for, isolated and angry.

Belsky (2010) has described this situation as resulting from minimum “involvement” with the child and as having a negative impact on the prosocial behavior of the child (p.201-203). As there is nobody present to intervene in a positive manner, the aggressiveness and seclusion of Adam is bound to increase as he grows up. As Belsky (2010) has opined, Adam would be unable to get caring friends as well just because he would keep himself isolated (p.209). ReferencesBelsky, J. (2010) Experiencing the lifespan (2nd ed.), New York: Worth Publishing.