Socialization: Media, Peers, and Culture

I find the varying relationships between children and their parents both interesting and frustrating. I have been recently thinking that despite all variations of child behavior, we all turn out relatively similar in attitudes and manners as adults, a thought that has changed because of this week's reading. This week has brought more examples to my attention about corresponding behavior from childhood and into adulthood and made me realize that perhaps the differences are still there but less apparent and more internalized.

Different parenting philosophies inevitably have strong influence on who a person will become. The most easily defined categories that parents fall into - authoritarian, lax/permissive, and authoritative - all differ tremendously in the adults they produce. Authoritarian parents make non-negotiable rules, have high expectations of their children, but can still be very affectionate. Lax/permissive parents have low expectations of their children, who end up making the rules and possibly set their own boundaries as adolescents because their parents fail to do so. These parents are warm and communicative and want to be their children's "friends". Authoritative parenting is currently the most accepted and applauded style because it is appropriately strict, promotes open communication, allows for the child to make decisions and be independent while providing appropriate support and assistance. There are many more categories but for the sake of simplicity and the fact that the others mostly fall within this spectrum, I will leave them out. As noted in class, most parents don't fit into one sole category but likely fulfill each category several times a day, depending on the situation.

I find our tendency to build entitled children interesting, both how we do it and what becomes of them later in their lives. I never thought about the consequences of praising children constantly and telling them they're good at everything. Giving a trophy to every child on the soccer team may be appreciated in the moment, but will only cause them grief when they're older. We are raising children to assume this praise and appreciation will come with everything they do, who become lost without it. Children who never fail or hurt themselves will only have a harder time when they do so as adults because they won't have experience in picking themselves back up. Even more interesting is the fact that these parents are truly trying to do best by their children. We don't realize that so much effort can have a negative affect because we've always been told the opposite. Universally, parents want their children to be happy. Parents will do what they think will best bring life-long happiness to their children and in this case it is ensuring them that they are unique, special and quite possibly the best at every activity known. Parents are so adamantly trying their best to make their kids' lives full of stimulation and comfort, that they are ill-preparing them for the "real world". Life contains discomfort, often a lot of it, and we need to be able to make good decisions to independently avoid it and get ourselves out of it. Since their lives were always so full of fun and ease, as adults they are constantly expecting life to return to how it once was and when it doesn't, they feel lost and sad. Here comes in our cultural habit of always wanting to be happier than we are. Even if we are happy, there is always something that would make us more happy. This is the mentality held by most Americans and is what contributes to our heavy rates of depression and the non-fulfillment at the end of our lives, because there is always more to have.  We believe that we must always do more to become happy, never reflect and acknowledge all things good in our lives and realize how happy we already are.