Sweden's Chinese immigrant parents' view on corporal punishment of children

Abstract

Sweden is the first country that explicitly banned all forms of corporal punishment of children in 1979. While Chinese immigrant parents have particular disciplinary methods in child rearing under Chinese traditional values and believes. Through the interview of eleven Chinese immigrant parents from six families, this study aims to investigate the attitude of Chinese immigrant parents in Sweden to corporal punishment of children at home. It also attempts to learn how parents educate their children with the Chinese cultural perspective and the changes of parents influenced by the Swedish society for child rearing. Moreover, it also aims to find the challenge that parents faced in cross-cultural context. The findings show that the Chinese immigrant parents define the corporal punishment unclearly compares with the Swedish wide public recognition. Influenced by the traditional Chinese culture values and believes, the Chinese immigrant parents remain a certain degree of authoritarian style raising children. It leads to their believing that corporal punishment of children is an effective way in child rearing. However, during the process of acculturation, the changes of parental practices influenced by the Swedish culture have gradually appeared. Chinese immigrant parents also face challenge of how to bring up their children in the cross-cultural context. The different parenting styles of Swedish and Chinese result in dissimilar way of discipline way to their children. In addition, Chinese immigrant parents concern that the increased cultural gap between parents and children would be a big challenge for them on child rearing.