The old ways versus the new undoubtedly has given rise to serious conversations all the way back to the days of Confucius. Likely as not, parents then were as wont as their 20th century counterparts to complain that things were "different" in the days of their youth.
Bringing up other people's children, if only by observation, is another diversion that continues to be a popular pursuit. So, with all the curiosity of a newcomer to China, and of one interested in youth, no matter what its nationality, the writer set out to discover something of how China raises its children. How do parents meet the constantly changing problems encountered in rearing their progeny? Do they follow the ancient and revered traditions of familial living? Do theory accept the new ideas in the care and feeding of their babies—or follow the old, time-tried practices? Do they enforce the strict code of filial respect and implicit obedience-or encourage the development of individual personality. How important a role does the elder generation play in the child's rearing. What about sibling rivalry, demand feedings, polio shots, toilet training?
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With adolescent children, do Chinese parents have behavior problems? How do they handle the problems of dating - with or without chaperones? How closely do most parents supervise their children's studies, their play, and social activities? What attempts do they make to provide moral guidance, counseling, example in questions of ethical concept?
These were only some of the questions that arose in a superficial sampling of opinion on how China rears its children. The subject is broad enough for a concentrated research program by students of human relations, as the writer discovered in talking with parents, teen-agers, educators; people of varying age, social and economic status, and educational background.
Conservative Viewpoint
Taiwan, the island capital of the Republic of China, produces about as many varieties of opinion on child rearing as any other place.
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There is the native-born Taiwanese who has lived all his life on the island and even now follows traditional ways despite increasing pressures of industrial, agricultural, economic, and social changes. He believes the way to rear children is the way he was reared, as his father and his father's father were reared, boys working the family farm or tending the small business; girls helping out with the farm work when needed, otherwise attending to household chores. Among these groups education is limited and specialized, of a nature calculated to further the family interests. Here all the old customs are retained; Oriental traditions of filial respect and family obligation continue to be the norm. Sons are more important than daughters; marriages most often are arranged; conformity is encouraged and individuality decried.
Differing somewhat in their opinions are the children of Taiwanese parents who, because of intermarriage with mainland or overseas Chinese, or as a result of improved educational opportunities, have been exposed to more modern practices of health, nutrition, and child psychology that have directly or subconsciously affected their ideas on childrearing.
A third segment comprises those young Chinese whose families fled the mainland, coming to Taiwan directly or after a brief sojourn in Hongkong or some other temporary refuge. This group tends to combine the old ways with a mild intermingling of new ideas, especially as they affect health and nutrition.
Still another group is made up of those mature parents who brought their babies and young children directly from the mainland to Taiwan, and whose practices are relatively unaffected by ideas or customs other than those absorbed in their earlier years in their native provinces. Many of these parents still adhere to the old customs, demanding the unquestioning obedience, filial respect, and familial solidarity that have characterized Chinese family life for centuries. In many of these families the old generation still plays a dominant role in the child's upbringing.
A somewhat different viewpoint is held by members of another group, the now-grown children of mainland parents. Now parents themselves, their ideas on child care have been formulated as a result of outside influences such as study abroad, association with or marriage to overseas Chinese or foreigners, or close contact with the many foreigners who live and work in Taiwan.
Foreign Influences
Civil servants, scholars, and others who travel abroad for extended periods of study and in-service training comprise still another group whose ideas strongly reflect the influence of European or American customs and practices, retaining little of the traditional Chinese attitudes.
Educators and psychologists provide yet another climate of opinion. Their beliefs and theories arise from their advanced studies at home and abroad, and their familiarity with educational and psychological advance on an international scale. These parents seem to adopt Western practices easily, although admitting the need for greater emphasis on a close family relationship as one of the deterrents to juvenile delinquency.
And the children themselves? Children today, in China as well as elsewhere, are extremely vocal in communicating their needs and wants. Adolescents have occasion and opportunity to think about and discuss theories of child-rearing as it applies to themselves. Discussion groups in schools and youth organizations encourage open expression of what the young people believe to be their most pressing problems and afford opportunity for the frank statement of what is sometimes a critical attitude toward the treatment they receive at the hands of their parents and other sectors of the adult community.
Even younger children, through their social studies and "democracy in action" projects, have their chance to express dissatisfaction with what they may consider unfair or unduly strict parental attitudes. These forward-thinking, uninhibited young people have no hesitancy in giving vent to criticisms of parents beliefs and behavior.
A study, in depth, of the many variations of opinion expressed by parents, educators, and children would, require a degree of application on the part of the writer and a degree of interest on the part of the reader that is beyond the range of non-professionals. The following examples present merely a cross-section of modern Chinese society: all are Chinese citizens, all parents, grandparents or prospective parents, educators, or young people. Here is what they think on the subject:
Mixed Customs
One family, small by Chinese standards, has two children, a boy almost five and a girl about three. The parents came from the mainland as teen-agers and completed their studies in Taiwan. The father, a writer, is a university graduate and the mother finished high school and trained as a statistician. While agreeing on the desirability of following modern practices of sanitation and nutrition, they do occasionally revert to the old customs, or more properly, old superstitions, especially in time of illness. For example, when the little boy had measles, they consulted a medical doctor and followed his instructions as far as medication and general care were concerned. Nevertheless, they followed the old custom of keeping the child in a darkened, closed room rather than accept the doctor's assurance that the child would recover more rapidly in a well ventilated room, and that it was necessary only to shield his eyes from the direct rays of the sun or from bright light.
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These same parents, although aware of the sibling rivalry that exists between the boy and his sister, make no overt attempt to convince the older child that he is not actually in danger of being displaced in their affections. They do recognize the fact that he is uncommonly aggressive toward the little girl, bullying her and demanding more of the parents' attention as well as more than his share of candy or other treats, and even accusing the father of loving the baby sister more than himself.
The family adheres to old Chinese ways of family closeness, and although the grandparents live apart from the family, the children visit the elders regularly, spending at least one day, usually Sunday, in the grandparents' home. The parents admit that the grandparents "spoil" the children, especially the boy, but although the resultant disruption of discipline causes some small difficulties in family relations, the parents think the grandparents' indulgence of the boy tends to compensate him for being displaced as the baby. Although this family has traveled little, it seems to be influenced by certain Western practices that are traditionally un-Chinese. For example, the father assists the mother in the physical care of the children, taking as his particular responsibility two of the scheduled feedings for the baby.
Follower of Spock
Unlike the traditional Chinese family where the father is the figure of authority and feared as the source of punishment, the roles are reversed. The mother acts as disciplinarian, even taxing the father with such leniency as to cause him to lose prestige with the children.
The greatest problems they have encountered are with the boy getting him to eat and overcoming his aggressive attitude toward his sister. The father believes that this aggressiveness stems from a natural male desire to be more important than the female. He explains his leniency by saying that he feels gentle persuasion is more effective at this age and he often shields the children from their mother's wrath.
The mother, like many of her Western counterparts, is a firm believer in Dr. Spock, whom she discovered just before the birth of her first child when she was given a Chinese translation of the doctor's famous manual on child care.
In this home, particular emphasis is given nutrition, preventive health measures, and modern medicine. The children receive balanced meals, although they are typically Chinese, with supplementary milk and vitamin rations, and the necessary inoculations and vaccinations: polio, typhoid, whooping cough, anti-tetanus, etc.
For recreation the family relies mostly on television programs, with occasional trips to the park. Favorite outing is to pack up a lunch and some toys and go to a nearby mountain picnic area where there are some temples to visit and plenty of space for the children to play. The family celebrates traditional family feasts in the old way, with ceremonial foods. But the children's toys, although locally made, are almost entirely Western in influence. Dolls and guns are the most treasured playthings.
A 32-year-old chemist who spent seven years studying in the United States, and his wife, a university graduate English major, 28, represent another point of view. He was born on the mainland, where his Taiwanese parents were studying. The family returned to Taiwan shortly after the island was restored to the Republic of China in 1945. The father, a retired officer of high rank, founded a business which has become one of the island's leading manufacturers of chemical products. The mother holds high elective position in the government and is an active social worker.
Student Life in U.S.
The young man, the eldest and the only son, enjoyed a comfortable, even luxurious life at home, with every advantage that indulgent, well-to-do parents could provide. In direct contrast with this was his life as a student in the United States, where he had to live within a limited budget and learn to do everything for himself. He considers these years an invaluable part of his experience, for not only did he learn to look after himself, live, and study on small means, but he learned to work and earn some money toward his expenses. He worked as tutor and baby sitter for a doctor, helping to care for the two young sons of the family, an experience he claims has helped him immeasurably in knowing how to handle his own young sons. During vacations he found work in a lumber company.
After his return to Taiwan and following his military service, he joined his father's company to learn the business, working as a factory hand in the beginning. He now heads the foreign department, handling contacts with customers and suppliers.
Although his parents were indulgent, the young man was brought up in the traditional Chinese fashion of filial respect and unquestioning obedience to parental authority. The disciplinarian in this case was the mother, who holds strong beliefs about behavior and discipline.
Well-Informed Parents
The wife's parents, Taiwanese, were by no means "average" people. The father studied medicine in Japan and is an eminent specialist in his field. The mother, coming from a family which believed in educating its daughters in the social graces and housewifely virtues, attended a private "finishing" school. She was, however, an avid reader of Japanese periodicals, especially those devoted to child care and homemaking, and was greatly influenced in her attitudes by progressive Japanese ideas. In this family of five boys and two girls, the discipline was enforced by the mother, although life at home was characterized by outside or foreign influences and was not overly strict or traditional in approach.
At present the young couple and their two sons, aged 4 and 2, live part of the time under the parental roof, where the young mother defers to her mother-in-law's wishes regarding the children's upbringing, even though she may not always agree with the older woman's ideas. The young people are well informed on current theories in child care in both the physical and the psychological aspects. She, too reads, and is a firm believer in Dr. Spock!
The young father, who incidentally believes in large families and would like to have several more children, feels that his own experience—what he learned from observation abroad plus an adaptation of what he considers the best features of Chinese traditional family practice—will enable him to tackle the problems to be encountered in raising children in the latter part of the 20th century. His wife, despite a progressive upbringing and advanced educational benefits, retains much of the traditional Chinese women's virtue of gentle acquiescence with her husband's wishes, and agrees with him completely!
Not at all typical is the family of a 38-year-old chemical engineer who left the mainland for the United States more than 16 years ago. Having received his master's degree from a large midwestern university, he was employed by a prominent firm in an east coast city, where he met and married his wife almost ten years ago while she was studying in a nearby university.
They have one child, a boy about three years old. Although the parents are extremely Western in their attitudes, the child is not being reared in an atmosphere devoid of Chinese influences for, in addition to visits made by the grandparents and other relatives, the boy was oared for by the maternal grandmother for the better part of his first two years. Later, the child was left in the grandparents' care in Taiwan while the parents made an extended trip, and their future plans include periodic returns here.
Emotional Tugging
These young people are unusually ambitious and plan to continue advanced studies to further their careers. At the same time they want their child to have the opportunity to absorb the culture of his ancestors as well as to enjoy the advantages of the country of his birth. For these reasons they plan to have the child spend as much time as possible in Taiwan.
The mother displays unusual commonsense and unemotional logic in her planning for the future of the child, yet acknowledges emotional pulls that make her want to please the grandparents by arranging for the child to spend much time with them. Reasoning purely intellectually, she recognizes that this will also give her the freedom to complete the work needed to obtain a higher degree in her chosen field, while following the old Chinese tradition of allowing the older generation to take over responsibility for the child.
In a world of much uncertainty, this mother fools it highly desirable that her child learn at an early age to be self-sufficient. This includes learning that he can be happy although separated from his parents. At the same time, the presence of a young child will, she believes, help keep the grandparents young, stimulating their feeling of usefulness and increasing their otherwise diminishing importance in the family structure. Discipline and the recognition of the rights of others have played a very strong part in the upbringing of this: child. He has been taught to respect the rights and possessions of the adults in the family; and mild physical punishment is invoked to enforce behavior regulations.
Pre-Natal Plans
Intelligent love, this mother believes, will help her raise the child through adolescence and the difficult teen-age years. Love, understanding, and gentle guidance rather than force; a recognition of his human frailties, his rights and needs, and confidence in his integrity will, she believes, provide an adequate guide for his character development, making of him the kind of adult who will enjoy his life fully, aware of his obligations to society.
Another interesting case is that of an engaged couple who, although their marriage is still a few years off, have some definite ideas about how they will rear their children. Both come from the same mainland province, although they were not acquainted there. He came to Taiwan 13 years ago when he was 16 with an elder brother, leaving parents and sisters behind. They were fortunate to have a maternal uncle and grandmother living here with whom to make their home. The young man's recollections of his extremely happy home and satisfactory childhood have made him keenly aware of the importance of a close an understanding relationship between child and parent.
His father, a university graduate, believed that education is important mainly to make a better man and a contributing citizen, and that scholastic records sought for their own value are of little consequence. The objectives of education, to him were the eventual development of a happy, well-rounded, healthy child into a man of intelligence and high moral character.
The parents of both young people were lenient, relying on mutual affection and filial respect to achieve desired behavior. Her family continued its already well-established family pattern after its transplantation here and remained a closely-knit unit. The parents were intelligent, simple people whose affectionate indulgence was characterized by a high regard for traditional customs and behavior. Discipline was enforced by gentle persuasion and example, the mother taking the initiative. Good manners and consideration for the rights of family members and others were held to be of major importance and infractions of this code were the only cause of parental displeasure and punishment. The children responded favorably, giving the desired respect and obedience from a desire to please rather than a fear of punishment. Modern methods of sanitation, nutrition, and prevention were followed.
Best of Both Ways
Although the young man himself sets considerable store by higher education (he will study abroad for several years working for a master's degree in economics; she will do the same for a doctorate in education), he very strongly reflects his father's somewhat Confucian philosophy. While he hopes: his children will be studious and anxious to be well-educated, he feels that health, personality and character development are of greatest consequence. In this his wife-to-be concurs. Despite extensive exposure to foreign cultures and the opportunities for higher education denied their parents, these young people strongly aver that there is little they would change in the traditional upbringing they enjoyed.
Among the more mature parents consulted was a quiet, soft-spoken man in his 40s who held some interesting and not entirely unorthodox opinions. He is a graduate of one of the mainland's finest universities and obtained a master's degree in one of the Western world's leading journalism schools. "We are not very particular about methods of raising our children," he said. (There are three: an almost teen-age son, a 10-year-old daughter, and a younger son.) "We combine old traditions and modern practices. Our children were fed on powdered milk, as most Taiwan children are, but now they eat standard Chinese meals at home with Western-style refreshments once in a while."
Reversion to Habit
He gives credit to the: school for teaching good health practices which are put into effect at home. The children, who have the best of preventive care in the way of inoculations and vaccinations, are seldom ill. When they are, a modern doctor is consulted. The father believes that few people consciously apply the old practices to their children's upbringing but, naturally desirous of teaching the children obedience to parents, respect for elders, politeness, and good table manners, they will more or less revert to traditional Chinese patterns of behavior and family life.
In this family, no conscious attempt was made to prepare the child for the advent of a rival for parental attention, and since maids gave the elder children good care, and relieved the mother of some of the care of the new infant, allowing her to devote some of her attention to the older child, there was no little serious dislocation caused by the arrival of siblings. The parents note some indication of rivalry today, but since we treat them all alike, the rivalry is not strong enough to cause any trouble."
Mother's Discipline
These parents have mixed opinions concerning the old system of pleasing the elders by allowing them to take over the training of the children. On the one hand, they feel that the elders in the past were often too indulgent and consequently spoiled the child, or treated the child as a plaything. On the other hand, they say that the elders, especially the scholarly type of grandfather, was often responsible for teaching the child many valuable lessons not ordinarily found in books but tremendously influential in character development. Since the old "large family under one roof" is gradually dying out, they feel the influence of grandparents is necessarily limited, especially as children today spend so many hours in school under the influence of a number of persons of varying personalities.
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He gives credit to the school for teaching—is handled by the mother, who is extremely particular about such things as behavior and good manners and does not hesitate to spank the children when necessary. The father admits: that he is too soft-hearted to apply such discipline and even tries to discourage his wife's application of "the rod"—unsuccessfully, he admits! This father has a deep understanding of the problems of his elder son and sympathizes with the difficulties the boy faces in school work and in adjusting himself to the requirements of an adult society. He deplores the burdensome "cramming" and the long hours of school work and home study necessary to obtain good grades, but also recognizes the necessity to conform to current demands in order to keep abreast of the increasingly high demands of scholarship imposed by the educational practice.
This family spends whatever time is available for recreation together. The children play games with friends or with each other; the parents read or go to a movie occasionally. They believe modern practices are more desirable in that they allow the children a better chance to mature naturally; the old ways demanded that children behave like grownups. Although the Chinese family system has been changing gradually, with big family yielding to small family, the spirit of close relationship still exists, or may even be intensified.
The conclusions to be drawn from these few cases are that in China today parents and children live in as complex a society as their counterparts in any European or American community—a society in which the cherished values of the past are fast becoming less valid criteria of behavior as the present intrudes its demands.
Time of Change
The pressures of modern society, the rapid development of mass communication media, the population increase, the lag in housing development, the urbanization of population, all combine to produce a situation in China that is not unlike that of the Western societies. This results in the division of the family, its separation into small basic units—very un-Chinese—with grandparents and older relatives no longer living under the same roof with the young family and therefore playing a greatly diminished role in the child's training. In this way are lost many of the ancient traditional customs and beliefs.
Economic need also has caused change in the traditional family way of life. In many families the mother works outside the home or pursues a career or profession that necessitates her surrendering the active supervision of the children's daily life to household help or to the care of elder children of the family.
Parents with a high degree of native intelligence or advanced education deviate greatly from traditional practices, particularly in physical and psychological routines. Expectant mothers seek prenatal care early and babies are brought to clinics or the family pediatrician for periodic examination. Diet formulae are carefully followed and a concern with nutrition gives the lie to early beliefs that "a healthy baby is a fat baby." Greater reliance is placed on preventive measures: shots and vaccinations are given as a matter of course, and in time of illness the child is promptly taken to a clinic or cared for by a doctor trained in Western medicine.
Need For Security
All but the most poorly educated parents are aware of certain psychological problems and some recognition is given to the need to enhance the child's feeling of security, even if it be only a natural or purely subconscious attempt to compensate the child displaced as "the baby" by the arrival of a sibling.
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In this connection it appears that grandparents once again play an important role, as in days past, assuaging the child's bruised ego and restoring his self-esteem, even though some parents good-naturedly complain that it takes a week of parental discipline to offset the "demoralizing" effect of a Sunday spent with the doting grandparents!
Greater liberty is allowed young adolescents, as far as their attendance at social functions, and most often the chaperone is dispensed with for anything but elaborate events.
Young students are allowed a great deal of freedom in social activities involving the opposite sex and, in general, parents seem to repose great trust in the commonsense and ethics of the teen-agers.
After a dozen or more conversations with family members, visits to their homes, and a concentrated appraisal of the activities of young people, the writer's conclusion is that China rears its children very much the same as the rest of the world!