Child Rearing Within Different Cultures free essay sample

Every parent has their own way of raising a child, and there are many different ways to doing it especially within different cultures. In America everybody has the right to raise their children however they feel is best, usually parents follow the roles their own parents took when they themselves were raised. Today there are many cultures that have different ways of child rearing and there are many consequences that come along with the way the children are brought up. I will be writing about three different cultures, starting with Jamaica, then Bangladesh, and last the immigrants that reside in Australia, they all have different ways of raising children and I will show how their ways affect their children’s lives. In Jamaica they have a dominant Caribbean parenting style, (Smith, Mosby 2003) their parenting skills have been characterized as abusive, harsh, and extreme, their discipline has been known to be to the extreme of corporal punishment or other major violent punishments. Flogging is one of the popular punishments used by the Jamaican which is used on all children no matter the age, they also use sticks, belts, shoes or anything else they can find to show compliance. The kids are disciplined for lying, stealing, disobedience, or not completing their chores. (Smith, Mosby 2003) In my research they conducted a survey where 84% of mothers of preschool children admitted to beating their children. A Jamaican judge in a family court hearing advised a parent to spank his child to help correct his behavior. The culture there when it comes to child rearing is strongly believed that disciplining the children with physical punishment is the best way to keep them in line and assure themselves that they will grow up to be proper adults. In Bangladesh a child’s upbringing is affected because of the home environment and mother’s child rearing practices. The families are usually really poor with the father working at a low paying job or single mothers that have no education or formal training, the woman have to work to try to keep their families fed and clothes on their backs. This being a low income country young children are exposed to multiple developmental risk factors including poverty, malnutrition, poor stimulation at home and lack of care that affects their ability to develop to their potential. (Nahar, 2012) The mothers of these children go through so much to try and raise these kids that they become emotionless and less involved with the kids compared to mothers who are adequately sound to raise their children without restrictions. These kids are all mostly malnutritioned, this is one of the major health problems in children under five years of age. (Nahar, 2012) The main problem with the bad child rearing in countries with poverty is that they do not have the essentials to raise these poor children, these children are most of the time alone and not looked over, they receive no attention what so ever, these kids grow up to be problematic and insensitive because of the way that they are raised, they have nobody to teach them manners or to help them with school work, because of this lack of attention these kids become rebellious and act out. In Australia there are many immigrant families that come in and they have to adjust to the Australian way of life, that including the way the children are brought up to fit in in their new surroundings, as the text say’s â€Å" the immigrant families’ views on child rearing are accommodated within their new wider society† (Ebbeck, Cerna 2007) The immigrants believe that if the child is not well bred than he or she will not become a good citizen, so the immigrants feel like raising their children with morals and respect will turn them into good people in society, they are raised to know what is right and wrong. They rear the boys and girls differently from each other, the boys work with their fathers, they help him hunt for food, also they take care of outside chores like taking care of the animals. Girls work with their mothers, they do house work such as cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, and taking care of their younger siblings. When it comes to discipline they get swatted 5 times with a stick, this punishment is used when the child has received two to three warnings, and this punishment makes the child obey because of the fear of being beaten again. The understanding of punishment gets taught to the child when they turn five years of age, the mother also talks to the children and warns them verbally about their wrong doings before it is taken the extent of being beaten. Of course their child rearing ways are a bit different from their original cultures but they learn to adjust with the new culture and the kids do grow up to be respectful adults. After reading about the different cultures in Jamaica, Bangladesh, and Australia, you can see how there are many different ways of rearing children, every culture has their different ways of doing it but they do feel like they are doing the right thing. The way we raise children in the US is even different from other people who raise children in the US but they still want kids to grow up honest, and respectful, just like the immigrants in Australia they want to raise their children to become good citizens. Although I am not a parent yet I do feel like there are some things to learn from all the different culture all over the world and I hope to raise a child the best way I can to make them respectable citizens and of course an outstanding person.