Adult Tolerance Is Created in Childhood
“What is the role of culture, traditions, and customs in the life of society and each individual, judging by the results of your research? How does culture influence man and how is this influence expressed?”
“It is common knowledge that the family plays a crucial role in shaping a person as the representative of a certain culture. It is in the family that cultural values are handed down from one generation to another, thus ensuring cultural heredity. Moreover, in every specific case, it is not culture in general, culture in the abstract, that is being handed down — it is ethnic culture, the culture of a certain nation. This, so to speak, automatically preserves the ethnic group. Can you find a society where children are not loved, cared for, or punished? These elements of rearing are typical of all nations without exception. The difference lies in what is meant by control and love, and in ethnic traditions and customs. From the viewpoint of a German or an American, to love a child means to grant him or her freedom of action, from that of the Koreans, Thais, and Indians it means to control and look after a child as much as possible. Significantly, while German and American children treat control over them as parental disaffection and enmity, a Korean child by contrast will interpret the noninterference of his or her parents as indifference and an absence of love.”
“What has caused such differences in the relationship between parents and children in various cultures?”
“The crux of the matter is what is considered a norm in a given society, what personal traits, qualities, and behavior are or are not considered desirable and socially positive. An interesting example was given by famous American anthropologist Margaret Mead, who studied aboriginal tribes from Sepik Island. An Arapesh tribe father said, boasting of his little son, ‘He fell and hurt himself badly, but never cried. He is as strong as I am.’ In the Mundugumor tribe, a father also said proudly of his son, ‘He badly cut his finger and bellowed at the top of his voice so he could be heard at the opposite end of the village. He is as strong as I am.’ To understand what parents strive for in raising their children in a certain culture and what means they use to do so, one must find out the importance of certain features in a that given society. According to prominent anthropologists Child and Bacon, all cultures can be divided into those oriented toward teaching obedience and those oriented toward teaching the desire for independence and self-reliance. These researchers think that the style of family upbringing depends on this orientation.”
“What national child-raising traditions have developed in Ukraine?”
“In Ukrainian families, both mothers and fathers show more condescension toward boys, irrespective of their age, they are treated as younger children, they are less admonished and punished. The attitude toward girls is much stricter and more demanding.
“Ukrainian families resort to punishments more seldom than others do. What is encouraged in children is moderation, kindness, and carefulness, which instills more supposedly feminine properties in their character.
“In the Ukrainian family, it is the mother who decides who has what duties, exercises control, and sets various restrictions. Mothers are likely to restrict the independence of and overprotect a child to a greater extent than fathers are. Besides, pampering ignores what children really need. And although children are more rarely punished here than in other countries, when it is done, the mothers usually do it. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the father is a considerate and liberal educator.
“Scholars explain this by the fact that the Ukrainian family, and culture as a whole, is dominated by the mothering woman. From times immemorial, the father can be said to have been in charge of the family’s external policy, he has dealt with economic planning and maintained links with the community, while the mother has been in charge of the household, everyday life and internal family relations. This is the reason why the mother is closer to children than the father is.
“In Crimean Tatar families, both parents are less demanding of girls and more indulgent toward them. Girls and boys are taught the pronounced feminine and masculine qualities respectively. This may be explained by the fact that the Crimean Tatars have largely preserved patriarchal traditions expressed in different male and female behavior. Girls are raised in the spirit of acquiescence and meekness. So the attitude toward them is more indulgent. Boys, by contrast, are considered active and restless, so they should be controlled and disciplined more strictly. In the overwhelming majority of Crimean Tatar families, the father is traditionally considered the head. He makes decisions, exercises control, and metes out punishment. Family relations are based on the subjugation of children, and all family members to the father. Here, everything is based on controlling the child’s independence, with great attention being paid to increasing personal responsibility and respect for one’s elders, to fostering the ties with not only the close but also the most distant relatives. Children know from the earliest age that they are responsible for parents until their death, as well as for the whole clan.
“The years of deportation also had a major effect on the traditions of Crimean Tatar family upbringing. Very few people, a little over half, survived the conditions of uncustomary climate, starvation, hard labor and a stiff barracks discipline of special settlements. Families had a chance to survive only if the relationship of its members rested on strict internal discipline, coordinated action, and mutual aid and assistance not only to relatives but also to compatriots who found themselves in peril. Clearly, under these conditions, the aspiration to save the child went hand in hand with the desire to restrict his/her personal freedom in order to ensure the child’s safety and survival.
“As classified by Eidenmiller, a style of upbringing, whereby a high level of care, protection, and indulgence is combined with equally stringent demands, various prohibitions, sanctions, and restrictions, is referred to the type of increased moral responsibility.
“Russian families present a somewhat different picture. Child- raising is oriented here toward independence and self-reliance. Parents are not inclined to overprotect or pamper their children. On the contrary, they take into account, more than anywhere else, their true age-related requirements. Children become self-reliant and independent early in life, and their freedom is restricted much less. Emotionally, parents and children maintain more restrained and distanced relationships. There is no excessive indulgence or restrictions here, with educational approaches to boys and girls being practically the same. Yet, mothers do indulge their daughters very much, while fathers try to be stern with them.
“Researchers believe that this tendency has been caused by the urbanization of society and industrial development. In other words, the gap between masculine and feminine activities is being bridged. This, naturally, impacts on child-raising. We can surmise that minimal restriction of freedom and a somewhat distanced relationship between parents and children result from a cultural tradition that features a domineering rational idea, weaker emotional ties, and greater expansive mobility of the ethnic group.”
“You have told us about the national specifics of family-based child-rearing, but these features are subject to certain changes over time. Thus, to understand the specifics of parental attitudes, one must track its evolution in combination with the history of social development. Did you monitor such changes in your research?”
“Of course, the conditions of life in any society change sooner or later. Among the most varied factors that influence them are industrialization, information explosion, cultural globalization, etc. Nevertheless, the customs, traditions, self-identification and lifestyle that an ethnic group has carefully remained in its historical memory for centuries are deeply seated in the subconscious of every mother and every father. They can be said to consolidate the parental guidelines making it possible to preserve and hand down this heritage to the generations to come. Every individual is the bearer of a certain culture. Ignorance of and disrespect for other people’s culture brings East and West into conflict, for every individual is not a thing apart; he/she represents a culture with its own value system, its own idea of how the world should appear. If you ignore other people’s ideas, you will encounter misunderstanding and rejection. I conducted my research to help people of different ethnicity better understand each other and avoid the interethnic conflicts we see today. Every culture has traditions of its own which came into being long ago under different historical conditions. It is difficult to decide today which traditions we should take with us to the future and which we should abandon, but what is crystal clear is that representatives of different cultures must learn to cooperate.”
