Power Distance In The Chinese And American Family

The trace of power can be seen in every stage of the development ofhuman society. In the different era, the distribution of power in different rank isdifferent either. We can still find the unequal phenomenon exists even to themodern society. Peoples’ acceptance of the unequal power distribution is quitedifferent due to the different historical and cultural background. As a result,some scholars put forward the concept of power distance.Family, as a vital cell to constitute the society, is a very significantcomponent to the whole society; an organization, group even a country’s stableprosperity largely depends on the harmony of the family. The parent–childrelationship is the core part of a family. Since the1940s, many scholars havefocused on the study of the parent-child relationship, but most of the researchesare under the context of education and psychology, there is only a small part ofstudies on the basis of the cultural background.This thesis takes parent-child relationship as a research object, combinedwith power distance theory (which is put forward by Geert Hofstede in CulturalDimension) to have a comparative analysis of the differences on power distancebetween Chinese and American family. First of all, the author summarize themain reason of the two countries differences—the cultural backgrounddifferences, then focus on several important dimensions of parent-child relation(including parent-child communication, parenting-style as well as the intimacybetween parent and child), to compare the parent-child relationship differencesbetween the two countries by typical example（the tiger mother and so on）and large number of data (which is collected and sorted out from the core journalsChild TRENDS of America) under the different power distance influence.In summary, this thesis uses case study and comparative analysis of adialectical method, and its findings are as follows: China is still a high powerdistance country; there is a quite different comparison with America, which is atypical low power distance country. The differences are mainly embodied inchildren’s equality, opinion and independent awareness; but the influence ofpower distance is diminishing in Chinese family, and the parenting-style ischanging from authoritarian style to authoritative style gradually. We shouldkeep dialectical eyesight on power distance and retain our own nationaladvantages and characters. Finally, by comparing and analyzing the differencesbetween the American and Chinese family on parent-child relation, this paperattempts to make some suggestions and inspiration on building a harmonioussociety.