The styles and roles I would use when I have kids would be that I would be the discipliner however; I would try to be as much open-minded as possible with my child taking into consideration that I was once the their age where rules seemed impossible to follow. I would punish my child by grounding he/she but not without hearing an explanation for their actions. I want to be a discipliner who is neither controlling nor permissive meaning I would give my child freedom with rules if the freedom given is taken for granted there will be punishments. I would show love for them but not to the point where they begin to think they can control me.
I would expect my kids to be attentive to the feelings of other and to realize that when they have done something wrong they should apologize even if it means hurting their pride. I would also expect them show respect to even those who don’t respect them because “good will shall follow” meaning people will always respect you and they will always get by in life.
Partners From A Different Background
Raising a Child together
Two persons from different cultural background can have different parenting styles this can be seen as cultural differences. Social backgrounds, family influences and the languages we speak can be some of the difficulties one can find in a relationship of two people from different backgrounds.
The social background that I was brought up in is different from my partners. And due to the fact that there were certain principles that I learned, for example in my culture you would shake someone’s hand to show respect when greeting others however, my husband came from culture where men were not expected to shake hands with girls if they were unmarried. In my culture it was unethical to use your fingers to eat while in my husband’s culture it was ethical to do so. Clearly you can see from these two examples that this changed our parenting styles because I had to compromised where our child was only allowed to eat with his fingers at home but not when in public unless it was an Indian gathering because even Canada a Mosaic country found that eating with your hands was unethical.
Family Influences was also a powerful factor in our parenting styles and our relationship. This was because he came from an Indian background where culture was a big thing his parents tried to instill all of their cultural believes in our child’s life. They strongly felt that their way was the right way and because I asked for their consent to marry their son they felt like it was their way or no way. And when our child told them that he chooses to follow both culture they found him not to be loyal and that he betrayed their family and disowned my husband and my child.
I believe that children from two cultural back rounds learn to appreciate things and people more. Seeing that our child was from a mixed cultural background he was fortunate to learn two different languages however, he spoke my language most of the time because I was around more that my husband. Raising our child with two different views and cultural backgrounds was hard because in my culture kids were able to stay out as late as they wanted and in my husband’s culture you were expected to be in by 12 pm so I had to compromise with my husband for a 1:00am curfew. Just remember that raising kids with someone of a different cultural background you have to learn to compromise.
By: Shavanese Francis
To: Ms. Taylor
