English Education

Cultural Psychology Final Paper

        Differences of Educational Attainment in China and The United States

Long has there been stereotypes about Asian families and how they are "different" from American families. There has been a variety of literature that has been written about the subject, such as that in Asian families there is a belief in self-efficacy and/or that there is something that is inherently wrong with our own culture's lack of self-discipline. Looking at the dynamics of family life in both China and the United States, I have found that there are differences in gender education from the parents that effect whether children find that they are encouraged to academic achievement. In families that have had children that have gone on to graduate school, the importance has been that mother has focused more on domestic life versus the educational attainment of mothers being more important in the United States. In my paper, I hope to raise what may be a future discussion at looking at gender dynamics in Asian and Western countries, looking at what might necessitate some changes in the overall spectrum of both cultures.

The first dissertation that I look at was A study of factors affecting educational attainment aspiration for selected students in China by Joy Qian Zhao. She studies children and their families in Xinjian Uyghur Autonomous region, of which there are many families in poverty, to see if the educational attainment in these families is hindered by the lack of wealth. Two scholars named Yuan and Yang found the "role of social capital as a family resource, in shaping student's future plans and aspirations" (Zhao 29) – that the families that desire a higher education have more of a relation to their environment. Since China is a collectivist society, it only makes sense then that a rich network of support around individual families would encourage self-efficacy and the desire to obtain a higher education. The results they have found is ninety-five of these students wanted to pursue higher education and sixty-two wanted to attend graduate school.

A fact that may be particularly surprising to Westerners about Zhao's study is that "more fathers obtained college and graduate degrees than mothers; mothers had more high school and middle school" (Zhao 45). The implications of this mean that in China – a mother focusing more on her family life and less on educational attainment for the self is statistically more likely to have children that are going off to college. This implication is confirmed by another aspect of this study, that students "had lowest aspiration within the group of fathers with graduate or higher levels of education, and those from the group of with mothers that had only middle school displayed higher aspiration" (Zhao 79). Zhao believes that this means that families from poorer backgrounds have more educational desires, but it could also be inferred that there is an inherent pressure to confirm to traditional gender roles in order to have a successful future family life. It must be explored then the families that do not conform to the societal norms of China.

Jun Chen, Yan Gu, and Cui Chen study single mothers in their article Family Resource Management Style and life Adjustment of Low-Income Single Mothers in China. The researchers are mostly convinced that "economic reform and western ideas" (959) have led to the "increase in divorce rate and higher educational levels among women" (960). Already, the implication of the study is clear – women who are single in China are seen as unacceptable in Chinse culture (967) and have the pressure on themselves to manage their own family resources (963) without the added benefit of interaction past their immediate relatives (960). It is concluded, rather harshly through their reference to scholar McAdoo, that "the lower their education level, the better life adjustment" (968). One is left with the feeling that single mothers are a cast out lot – with little that can be expected out of them that little can be done but to manage their resources, live simply, and to work once-more on "feminine" qualities that would enable them in finding a new mate.

The Effects of Parental Education and Family Income on Mother-Child Relationships, Father-Child Relationships, and Family-Environment in the People's Republic of China by Xiao Zhang tells us that gender roles are not just applicable as a means of family dynamics in a child's sense of self, but also as a contributor of resources via the family that increase educational attainment. The researchers studied the effects of socioeconomic status (parent's education and family income), children's relationships with the father and mother, and family recreational environments. They found that the father's higher education has led to family cohesion and "intellectual-cultural / active – relational environments" (Zhang, but that also the mother's higher education leads to conflict in mother-child relationships. However, Zhang admits that the mother's higher education also leads to closeness in mother-child relationships, family cohesion, and intellectual-recreational environments. This could perhaps imply that women are still better off in China when they are high in educational attainment, rather than blindly following gender roles.