Culture Clash Wednesday #13 Blending Parenting Styles
Today, is our 13th Culture Clash Wednesday in the series! How exciting is that? I love sharing these moments with all of you because I hope it reminds you that you're not alone. We are all experiencing culture clash moments in our relationships. All of our inter-cultural relationships (which means every single relationship out there) go through moments where your culture and your significant other's culture will come together and refuse to agree. They both think they're way of doing something is better. However, like all of you know by now... the only way you can have a healthy inter-cultural relationship or family is if you blend your cultures together. One of the culture clash moments my husband and I are always facing is parenting styles. While we both grew up with moderately strict parents, the ways we were corrected and parented was very different. My husband lived in India for a few years as a child. His mother was finishing up nursing school so he went to live with his Pinnis (aunts), Umamma (grandma), and Thathaya (grandpa). They all joined together to raise him for the two years he was there. When his mom completed her degree, he came back to the US. Here, he lived with his parents, but was raised by them and the rest of his mother's family that lived here. I'm sure you've all heard, the village raises the child saying before. That is definitely the case in my husband's family.My mom raised my brothers and I very differently. For the first ten years in my life, my mom was a single mom. She was an incredibly hard working woman who provided for my brother and I. While my family helped her a lot, the actual parenting was solely her. She later remarried and my dad partnered with her to raise us. The same can be said for everyone in my family, the parents are responsible for parenting.While both ways are very different, I don't see one being better than the other. My parents raised my brothers and I to hold the same values and respect as my husband's family did with him and his siblings. We always joke that it would have been easier if one family produced the good kids and the other side produced the duds. Then we could easily decide how we would parent our children. Instead, we have had to look at both families and pull from them. We look at what we loved and helped us the most as children. Then we blend them together in our little family. If you'd like to hear more about how we do this, join me and three other amazing women who are blending two cultures in their own families.