Me as a toddler in my father’s basketball singlet

My parent’s different backgrounds have also heavily influenced their parenting styles. As a middle-income family, my parents have always strived for, what Annette Lareau in her 2011 novel Unequal Childhoods, describes as concerted cultivation. This push to be busy all the time comes perhaps surprisingly from my father. Growing up, my father was always doing something productive with his time, and most of the time that was trying to make money. With my family being in what he would consider a very privileged position nowadays, he is always making sure that we are making the most out of the opportunities that he never got.

Dad teaching me life skills before I was even one years old

My brother and I have been enrolled in almost too many sports over the course of our childhood as well as other activities like choir, piano lessons and guitar lessons. Every day after school we were rushed off to practice and every weekend was filled with running between different sporting games. Unlike my father, my mother grew up in the countryside in a much more relaxed environment in a middle-class family. She enjoys putting my brother and I into numerous activities. However, she is also content to take a break more often than my father. Now that my brother and I are older and I have moved away, I think that there is almost a partial sense of relief because she now has her week nights and weekends free of constantly running us to sports.

My grandfather and I, when I was a toddler

These two distinctive personalities have also carried over into other parts of my life, specifically when regarding my safety and security. While I would not call either one of my parents over-bearing, my father takes the safety of my brother and I very seriously. His parenting style is what I would deem as a ‘Protective Authoritative’ parent. Dad does not consider himself very strict either, unless “it concerns your safety”. Growing up, my father witnessed things that no person, let alone a child, should see. This has transferred over to his parenting style by making sure that my brother and I are extremely cautious all the time. We have both been enrolled in Tae Kwon Do since we were very little and we both have our black belts. While some parents encourage their kids to take public transport, my father never wanted this for me. I very rarely took public transport anywhere until I was 18, and if I ever told my parents that I needed to take it, my father would always offer to drive me instead. Some may consider this as sheltering me too much from the real world, however, my father never failed to make me very aware of the dangers of the real world.

Comparatively, my mother grew up in a very sheltered environment. Her parenting style is fundamentally similar, however, she is much more relaxed, and thus I have deemed her as a ‘Laid-back Authoritative’ parent. Growing up in the country, she was free to run-around outside and leave the house whenever she wanted. She often brings up the memory of her father telling her to go play on the train tracks that were next to her house. Nowadays, living in an urban city, she is much more cautious and has also instilled safety measures in us. However overall, it was my father who was the most protective and cautious of my brother and I because of his own upbringing.

My nanna reading to my brother and I

People criticize this style of parenting, particularly the concerted cultivation style, for the negative consequences like a large sense of entitlement and potentially disrespectful behavior. However, I have found this to be almost the opposite in my case. Every family situation is evidently completely different, however, concerted cultivation cannot have these negative impacts if parents instill the right morals into their children. My father stated in his interview that “my parents always taught us how to respect people. That’s the thing that I’ve tried to bring up with my kids – to respect others”. My father has always made it a priority to teach respect to my brother and I, and this value is one that evidently comes from his background. He continually engrains in our minds just how lucky we are to have what we have and above all, to be kind to everyone because you have no idea what people have been through. Thus, the potential negative side effects of concerted cultivation were most definitely avoided in my family, simply because of my parents upbringings. Everyday I am thankful for the opportunities I encounter and for the family that I was born into.

Helping around the house since I was a toddler!