My Mother and Me

Abstract

"Tiger Mother" Amy Chua provoked a culture clash with her claim that controlling parenting in Asian American (AA) contexts produces more successful children than permissive parenting in European American (EA) contexts. At the heart of this controversy is a difference in the normative models of self that guide behavior. Ideas and practices prevalent in AA contexts emphasize that the person is and should be interdependent with one's close others, especially one's mother. In contrast, EA contexts emphasize the person as independent, even from one's mother. We find that AA compared with EA high school students experience more interdependence with their mothers and pressure from them, but that the pressure does not strain their relationship with their mothers. Furthermore, following failure, AAs compared with EAs are more motivated by their mothers, and AAs are particularly motivated by pressure from their mothers when it conveys interdependence.

Annual review of Asian American Psychology, 2014.

“…Most studies focused on children ( n = 4; e.g., E. H. Lee et al, 2014) and adolescents ( n = 8; e.g., Fu & Markus, 2014), with a few focusing on adults ( n = 3; e.g., Campos, Ullman, Aguilera, & Dunkel Schetter, 2014). Studies employed quantitative-experimental designs (E.…”

“…H. Lee et al, 2014) and longitudinal designs (Luo, Tamis-LeMonda, Kuchirko, F. Ng, & Liang, 2014; Y. Shen et al, 2014), qualitative designs (interview, n = 5; e.g., Meschke & Juang, 2014), and mixed methods (Fu & Markus, 2014). Data analyses used mainly structural equation modeling ( n = 6; e.g., Campos et al, 2014) and analysis of variance (Jensen & Dost-Gözkan, 2014; Luo et al, 2014).…”

Personality and Family Context in Explaining Grit of Taiwanese High School Students

“…Fu and Markus (2014) noted that Asian and European American descent have distinct ways of perceiving family influence. Teenagers of Asian Americans perceived strong family influence (high interdependency) from their mothers, and they also received more pressure and support from their mothers with respect to pursuing their goals.…”

“…In a collectivistic family context, a high school student perceives strong family influence and can be provided with not only abundant psychological and social support, but also pressure and expectations when facing various academic or nonacademic short-term or long-term goals. This family profile can facilitate perseverance (Fu and Markus 2014). In contrast, in an individualistic family context a high school student can be provided with abundant autonomy with which to nurture selfaccomplishment and experience.…”

“…To more fully understand the nature of Grit, and the relationship between Grit and the BigFive personality traits would provide a meaningful reference for educators and researchers. Additionally, the family environment (e.g., parenting style) shapes profoundly the personality of adolescents (Brand, Hatzinger, Beck, and Holsboer-Trachsler 2009;Fu and Markus 2014). This study examined the extent to which the Big-Five personality traits and two family context variables, namely perceived family influence and democratic parenting style, can predict the characteristics of Grit.…”