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In The Joy Luck Club, the debut of Chinese American writer Amy Tan, there are totally sixteen stories of four Chinese-immigrant women and their American-born daughters. This brilliant novel hit the world after published in 1988. Its advent opened the door of the United States mainstream literary circles for Chinese literary works. Not only did it become one of the four best sellers in US in 1988, but it ranked first on the lists of the New York Times even lasted for nine months. Moreover, it won a number of awards and was adapted into a film. With no doubt, this new novel got mixed notices.
There are a large amount of scholars showing a great deal of interests in various themes contained in The Joy Luck Club, studying a very wide range. They survive from the plight of Chinese-American women to write, talking about their difficulties and hardships while living abroad, to explore from the relationship between mothers and daughters as well as analyze differences between Chinese and American culture. However, compared with the topic of culture, multi-culture, researchers who stress the education especially family education are not so many. Therefore, this time I will study The Joy Luck Club from the conflicts and blending from the perspective of family education, as well as conflicts and the hidden factors of these conflicts existing between mothers and daughters. In addition, how they resolve the conflicts gradually in the end is included.
The conflicts between mother and daughter can be seen almost everywhere in The Joy Luck Club, and these conflicts are analyzed in detail. Combined with cultural differences between China and America, this thesis analyses the difference of family education between China and America reflected in the novel. In essence, the conflicts between mother and daughter are the conflicts between Chinese family education and American family education. Then from the historical background and social environment of Chinese family education and American one, it analyses the causes contributing to the differences and influences. At last, it is time to have some discussion and give suggestions. What can we learn from American family education model? Changing concepts, enhancing the quality of parents, creating equal, democratic family atmosphere and so on are all our inspirations.
In order to have a more complete picture about the issues I am to study, I decide first to do a state-of-the-art type of study, and then see what has happened in the past years at home and abroad. The largest expectation of American parents is to encourage their children to be a social man. “Social man” is not a utopian idea, but a requirement which is practical and easy to achieve. “They realize money is not easily earned by all kinds of practice. Thus, they get into a habit of thrift. In a word, the outstanding characteristics for American children are their great abilities and the adaption to the society smoothly.” (Kathleen 63) Westerners believe that children should be allowed to be stubborn, because there might be persistent. Children should be allowed to be disobedient, because there might be created. It seems that American family education prefers challenge to easy life. In American families, parents mainly use an equal way to educate their children. They pay much attention to train their children’s independent ability. They respect their children’s personality and rights. Children, in the family, are treated as independent inpiduals. Parents and children are equal.
Nevertheless, China is a strong uncertainty avoidance society. Most Chinese families consider uncertainty is a threat with high stress. They prefer routine than deviance and innovation. According to Hofstede, uncertainty avoidance can determine the proper amount of structure in teaching process. He also claimed that when uncertainty avoidance is relatively strong, both students and teachers prefer structured learning situations. Chinese parents believe that children’s future is uncertain if they don’t pay all their attention to study, thus the priority of children is to study under structured system. This is an important reason that why Chinese education is examination-oriented, including both family education and school education. In almost Chinese families, parents consider it right to help children choose a stable job or even decide by themselves for their children. This situation is quite a commonplace in the Chinese families in which there is only a daughter. Moreover, in china, many parents only care about whether the children have a promising future, a good job, a good life or not. (Ailing 78) If a woman becomes a widow, her family has the responsibility to take care of her. If a child becomes an orphaned, family to take him up. If a guy becomes unemployed, family to offer food and shelter. Most importantly, when a person gets old, he can enjoy a comfortable and respected life smoothly as well as steadily, without worrying about economic deprivation. In China, this is really common. Chinese family education is aimed to cultivate a thoughtful and conscientious man full of filial piety. Parents consider less about their inpidual development. So children suffer a lot. Although children may have high marks, they may not adapt the society, which would eventually disappointment their parents. Just to most Chinese parents, the aim is to expect their children to be a “dragon”, which is “Wang zi cheng long” in Chinese, but American parents take hoping the child to be a man of ability as their aim. This is the difference.