"Parenthood" is a movie about the ways the Buckman families communicate with their children and their parenting style. The movie focus more on families of Frank's children, which is Gil, Helen, Susan and Larry. These four families use different parenting style towards their children, however, I will just compare two families, which are Gil and Susan's families.
Gil had an unpleasant childhood memories, where his father always left him to an usher when he was brought to see baseball game. It was shown in the beginning of the scene, where he talked to his amalgam, a combination of several ushers that his dad had left him over the years. Gil said that he was raised up without a positive male influences and his father was taught that child-raising is kind of job, a burden rather than a playground. Due to all these unpleasant memories, Gil swore that he will not treat his children like that, he want them to be happy, strong and confident, not like him himself. So when he grew up and married, he had three children, which is Kevin, Taylor and Justin.
Gil is a good father that willing to do anything for his children. His parenting style is kind of permissive style. He always being supportive to his children. No matter what they did, he always support them and allow them to do what they want to do. However, Gil is the kind of parent that over supportive to his children. Overly supportive had brought some consequences to his children. In Kevin's case, Kevin has an emotional problems in school. According to his school teacher, he is a sweet, sensitive and tense little boy who needs special attention from his teacher. He always get teased and blamed by his classmates and in Little League. He has no confidence in himself and scared to face the reality.
For example, when Gil brought the whole family to play, some kid took Kevin's money, but he do not dare to say and just want to go home. He do not fight for his own rights and Gil did not even fight for him, but rather let Kevin to decide what to do. In this case, it is not the right way that Gil showed his supportive to Kevin, because he needs to teach Kevin about his rights and know what is right and wrong, rather than support him to not face the reality.
For Justin, Gil's youngest son, who is a very active boy but likes to butt his head to things. But Gil know that but just let it be because he wants his children to do what they want to do. It is not an appropriate way of supportive here though, because if Gil does not try to stop Justin's behavior, it might get worse.
Despite the negative consequences, there still have positive consequences too. In order to help Kevin in his emotional problems, Gil spend more time with him by coaching in the Little League and held a birthday party for him. He even pretend to be a cowboy in Kevin's birthday party and try his best to make the children laugh so that Kevin will not be disappoint of the absence of Cowboy Dan. Moreover, no matter how Kevin was teased by his classmates, he always cheer him up.
However, unlike Gil's family, Susan's family is totally opposite from Gil. In Susan's family, the parenting style that they use is kind of authoritative style. Nathan, Susan's husband is a very commanding person. He has high expectation to his daughter and also his wife as well. Despite the fact that his daughter, Patty is a small kid who age between 4-5 years old, he treat Patty like an adult. She studies Maths, Geography, Spanish and so on. Patty do not learn how to have fun in her age, but to study hard as much as she can.
In Nathan's point of view, he thinks that children are more capable of retaining and absorbing information that the adults are, that is why he keeps on push Patty to study as much as she can. He even plan a study program for her too. However, he did not teach Patty to socialized with people because he thinks that it is not the right age for Patty to be socially activated now. That is why I think that Patty is quite a sad character in this movie, because she cannot enjoy the fun that she should has in her age and has no abilities to communicate or relate with other children too.
For example in Kevin's birthday party, when Gil showed his thumb trick to the children, the children were excited except Patty. She was kind of shocked and started to scream as soon as she saw the trick. She also cannot understand why Justin was spinning around and do not think that it is a fun thing to do too. In Nathan's family, I think that Nathan put too much stress to Patty consider her age and also too protective from environmental influences. Nathan only teaches Patty to study, to gain knowledge. He wants her daughter to be perfect. In one of the Chinese idioms, there are saying that, "Failure is the key to success". However, what Nathan is doing now to Patty might cause negative consequences later where Patty do not know what is failure and will refuse to accept failure too, if she happen to face failure in the future. Moreover, she had no good and fun childhood memories too besides studying.
Too compare both Gil and Susan's family, I think both families are in an extreme style of parenting. Extremely over protective and over pushing to their children. If both of these families can learn from each other, share their stories and apply it in their family, it might be a good mixed parenting style to their children. For example, if Gil could have a little expectation to their children, they might learn and try to reach it, rather than just overly let them to do what they want to do. And for Nathan, if only he could allow Patty to express her thoughts, allow her to socialize with children and allow her to have fun, it might help Patty to be more like human being rather than like a robot who just know how to study. For me, it is important that a person knows how to study well and also play well. If Nathan willing to change a bit, Patty might become a person that not only study well, but also play well too.
Therefore, it is also a challenge to Gil and Nathan to change their perspective in raising their children. For Gil, he is the kind of person that does not like changes and has a lot of worries. He worries that other might treat Kevin differently because of his emotional problems and do not want to admit the problem that Kevin is encountering. He worries that he cannot handle the fourth kid that Karen is bearing with.
He even worry about Kevin's problem when he is making love with Karen. Plus, he wants things to just like how it be now and refuse any changes. That is why in one of the scene where Gil's grandma describe him as a merry go round, where it just go around and nothing change. Luckily after going through the argument with his wife and for the sake of his children, he finally change his perspective a bit. He is willing to change and accept the reality too. For Nathan, he is the kind of commanding person. Maybe because of his career, he is also quite commanding in his family and wants perfection in his family too.
The challenge to Nathan is also change because he refuse to change the style that he is using now to his daughter. However, due to his love to Susan, he actually do willing to change himself a little bit because when Susan left the home, he went to the school where Susan is teaching and sang her their wedding song to persuade her to go back his side.
Overall, this is quite an interesting movie that talks about parenting style and fortunately everyone is in a happy ending. I think that the director is quite smart to use a lot of humorous ways and jokes to present this movie. But unfortunately, I cannot really understand the jokes that present in the movie, maybe because I did not watch English movies or dramas that often. However, looking others laughing at the jokes, I felt that the director did a great job. At least the movie is not a boring movie. This movie also allows a lot of people to be prepare or cautious to their parenting styles, no matter in the present or in the future. It is not only a movie, but a movie that educate people too.
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