The "Right" and "Wrong" of Parenting

The subject of parenting in this course is something I’ve found to be particularly interesting. Probably the most intriguing aspect to me would be the differences found between the levels of shelteredness of parents of different cultures. Take the children of the film Babies, for example – I was personally shocked at the scene where the tiny Mongolian child was climbing onto trees and crawling around the feet of a cow with seemingly little supervision. I couldn’t imagine this happening in the Western world – if someone witnessed a situation like that in our culture, they would likely call child services. However, it seemed like something that was relatively normal to this culture.

As I watched this film and read the articles comparing parenting styles of different cultures, it made me wonder – do these cultures feel that being what we would consider “lax” toward the supervision and control of their children’s whereabouts beneficial in some sense? We may see at as irresponsible, but they could simply see it as a good way of teaching independence to their children. They may even see the way we raise our children as overprotective, as though we’re giving our children too much shelter from the realities of the world around us.

As I’ve been mulling over these questions, I seem to keep coming back to the same thought – what could truly be considered “overprotective”? What about “underprotective”? Is there a definite answer to this, or could it vary from culture to culture, or from family to family? These are definitely questions worth exploring further, but it doesn’t have to stop there. What about parenting in general? Is there a definite “right” or “wrong” way to raise your child?

I feel that this last question in particular is essential when studying human development across cultures. There are obviously things that should be avoided when raising children – abuse, malnourishment, homelessness, etc.  – but what about the endlessly varying aspects of parenting found within the customs different cultures? Could there be some cultures that raise their children more efficiently, or less so? This, to me, is why taking culture into account when studying human development is so important. If we study other cultures’ customs and traditions when it comes to parenting, we could find wonderful opportunities to learn from each other, and to be able to raise our children to the best of our abilities.