A Reflection of Parenting Styles and Impacts on Behaviors of Children in The Joy Luck Club

Abstract

This qualitative research was conducted with two objectives for this study: 1) to analyze parenting styles and the reasons of the parent characters for being parents of those styles in an Ami Tan’s famous novel named The Joy Luck Club and 2) to investigate the impacts of the parenting styles on behavior of the daughter characters in The Joy Luck Club. From the analysis based on the analysis framework which developed from Baumrind’s Theory of Parenting Styles and elaborated by Maccoby and Martin (1983), it was found that the parenting style in The Joy Luck Club was rather associated with authoritarian parenting style. The mother characters set rules and command their daughters to follow the rules. They physically and verbally punish their daughters. The daughters react aggressively. However, the personalities and behaviors of the children do not agree with those introduced in the theory. Although it was found that the mothers do not explain the real reasons for prohibiting some actions. This makes the daughters curious and confident to make decision on their own. The reason behind the mothers’ force is their desire to see their daughters’ happiness and success. They do not want their daughters to encounter bad experience and sufferings as they had in the past. A factor that makes the daughters feel uncomfortable with the mothers’ teaching is the conflict between the American culture in which the daughters grow outside their homes and the Chinese culture which their mothers are trying to implant into them.