Face To Face Interview Paper

1. A face-to-face interview was conducted with two parents for the purpose of this paper. My first interviewee is a working mother of a 7-year old boy. For this paper, I will be giving the mother and son hypothetical names of Mrs. K and Alex respectively. Mrs. K described a common occurring situation in which Alex will pester her for the use of her iPad to play games when they were travelling in the family car which Mrs. K usually obliges. Recently, however, Alex has started to ask for the iPad at mealtimes and started throwing tantrums when Mrs. K rejected his demands which Mrs. K feels has crossed the line.
2. Mrs. K strictly rejected Alex’s demands no matter how strongly he cried for it. She also threatened him that she would not let him
My second interviewee is a working mother of a 6-year-old boy whom I will hypothetically name as Mrs. L. When I described the above situation to Mrs. L, Mrs. L said that she would just give the iPad to her son to stop him from crying in public. She added that she thinks it is alright for her child to use the iPad at mealtimes. When asked what she would do if her son was too engrossed in the game and would not eat his meals, Mrs. L actually said that she would feed him his food while he is still playing his game. Her rationale was that she could not bear for her son to cry and she would give him whatever he wants because he is her only child. Mrs. L’s response in this situation resembles a permissive parenting style as she is overindulgent towards her son, giving him anything that he demands for without setting appropriate restrictions (Berk, 2013). She further encourages such negative demanding behavior by feeding him while he is playing the game. She shows warmth towards her son as shown by her concern towards him not getting enough
I would argue that the research findings conducted in a Western context can be generalized to the Singaporean families for the authoritative parenting style but less so for the permissive parenting style. Chen, Dong & Zhou (2004) found that there was positive association between authoritative parenting and children’s later adjustment in an Asian context, suggesting that research findings in a Western context generalizable across cultures. With regards to permissive parenting style, the collectivistic family culture in Singapore (i.e. social environment of grandparents, relatives and community) as well as a holistic education system might cushion the possible negative impacts of the permissive parenting style on a child’s cognitive and psychosocial development (Berk, 2013). Research has found that the authoritarian parenting style actually correlates with higher academic achievement in the Chinese population (Lim & Lim, 2003). More research will have to be done in the local context to examine whether the four parenting styles coined by Baumrind (1991) can be fit into the local context and the implications of such parenting styles on Singaporean