Intercultural Parenting: The Struggle to Get the Best of Both Worlds

All parents want to bring up their children in the best way possible, and they are naturally interested in exploring and borrowing good parenting practices from other families and cultures. With parents’ increased international exposure, intercultural referencing of parenting practices is on the rise. Reported in this study is an autoethnographic exploration of two Chinese Canadian parents in their efforts to understand and apply the best parenting practices from both Chinese and Canadian cultures. The study breaks the limitations of existing constructs of authoritarian parenting vs indulgent parenting to describe Eastern and Western parenting styles. It highlights the importance of balance and hybridity of parenting styles in order to get the best of both worlds. It also highlights the importance of examining deeper social, economic, and demographic factors in the larger national contexts to understand observable parenting behaviors.