International Teacher Education Conference 2014 1

International Teacher Education Conference 2014
Kilgo, & Christensen, 2012b; Ninh, 2011; Poon, 2011; Wang, 2011). Chua’s book is a memoir of her own
philosophy and practices of parenting raising two high achieving daughters. She placed great emphasis on her
children’s academic achievement. First, we focus on how adult-child interaction relates to children’s academic
achievement.
Based on Maccoby and Martin’s (1983) work, the two primary factors or dimensions to determine parenting
style are responsiveness and demandingness. Parental responsiveness refers to the degree parents respond to the
child’s needs. Parental demandingness or parental control is the degree of demands, control, or expectations
parents have toward children (Maccoby and Martin, 1983). Analyzed by these two factors, 6 different types of
parenting styles emerged (Baumrind, 1971; Maccoby and Martin, 1983). They are authoritative, authoritarian,
permissive, ethnic minority, indifferent, and inconsistent parenting styles. This typology of parenting styles is
commonly used to describe and examine parenting. In our analysis, we also look primarily at the
demandingness/ control dimension. Another dimension considered here is the extent parents support the
interests of children for it seems to be a distinguishing dimension between ethnic minority and authoritative
parenting style.
As we consider the literature on parenting styles, we primarily focus on three of the styles articulated in the
literature because of the way these three are related to achievement in children. The styles are authoritative,
authoritarian, and ethnic minority parenting styles. Based on the findings, the authoritative style is recognized as
related to high achievement, while authoritarian style relates to low achievement. Ethnic minority style is less
often considered in the literature but reached the public arena through Chua’s memoir (Baumrind, 1971;
Baumrind, 1987; Chau, 2001; Chua, 2011, Fuligni & Tseng, 1999; Giarrusso, Du, Silverstein, & Bengtson,
2001; Heath, 2012; Hsai & Scanzoni, 1996; McLoyd & Smith, 2002; Shek & Chen, 1999).
With the authoritative parenting style, the parent has reasonable control, uses reasoning with the children, is
responsive to the child’s needs and interests, and is strongly related to high achieving children (Baumrind,
1971; Chau, 2001; Garg, Levin, Urajnik, & Kauppi, 2005; Heath, 2012; McLoyd & Smith, 2002; Steinberg &
Levine, 1997). The authoritarian parenting style emphasizes the hierarchical relationships between adults and
children and uses this to maintain control, sometimes with forceful means, may restrict children’s autonomy and
even respect, and is related to low achieving children. The ethnic minority parent style as articulated by Heath
(2012) is less prominent in the literature of parenting styles, but we see coming to understand this style of
parent- child interactions as quite important since Asian parenting style seem to fit in this category. Ethnic
minority style has high demandingness or control and high responsiveness, but has a lower priority in supporting
the child’s interest. Ethic minority style differs from a strict authoritarian style in that it is highly responsive to
the child’s needs; Ethnic minority style differs from Authoritative style in that parents with this style have high
demandingness and do not place children’s interests as a priority. Ethnic minority parenting style, at least in
Asian American families, is related to high achievement as noted earlier. In this paper, we focus on
demandingness and high expectations of the ethnic minority parenting style and how these parenting style traits
may be influenced by Confucianism. Table 1 shows how parenting styles relates to the factors of
demandingness, responsiveness, interests and academic performance.
Table 1: Parenting style analysis
Demandingness
(control)
Responsiveness Interests Children’s academic
performance
Authoritative
Medium High High High
parenting
Authoritarian
High Low Low Low
parenting
Ethnic Minority
parenting
High High Low High
Confucianism and Asian Families
Though Confucianism was developed in China, the philosophy has influenced many countries in Asia. This
paper focuses on Asian Americans. Confucianism, developed by the greatest Chinese philosopher, Confucius, is
a philosophy which focuses on the conduct and practices of people in daily life. For nearly 2,000 years,
Confucianism has shaped the social, ethical and political aspect of Chinese cultures. It is a complex set of ethical
and moral rules that dictate how a person relates to others. The Confucianism philosophy and principles play a
key role in forming the norms of social morality which influence the culture in personal, familial, and social
relationships. Additionally, Confucianism has a significant influence on education and families’ educational
practices.
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