The Background of Anson’s Parents Abuse Him

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1. The Background of Anson’s Parents Abuse Him

Anson is the oldest brother. His parents have high expectation to him. Moreover, his parents have ambition to generate the proper child rearing system. The child rearing system applied by his parents changes his personality. Therefore, in this novel Anson is portrayed as round character. His character in this story can make the readers surprised. His ambitions to get freedom and his experience in the childhood have changed him. He is warm and kind person. However, his childhood experience has changed his personality development. He can bring himself to do criminality and even brings his heart to hurt his brother and kills his parents. Berk states that there are four types of parents. Those are “authorative parent, authoritarian parent, permissive parent, and uninvolved parent” 606. Related to Anson’s experience, his parents can be categorized as the authoritarian parents. In his childhood, Anson’s parents always control and demand him. They have high expectation to their children achievement. In their opinion, learning room is the proper tool to optimize the children’s achievement. However, they limit their children to express and to build their imagination. His parents, both Daniel and Kathy have good education background. They are the doctors of behavioral psychology. Anson’s father has ambition to generate a method of child rearing. Therefore, he is very strict and has strong view to choose the appropriate method in rearing his children. Mitch’s Parents were both doctors of behavioral psychology, tenured professors at UCI. Those in their social circle were mostly from what academic types recently had begun to call the human sciences, largely to avoid the term soft science. 106 42 Kathy, Anson’s mother does not have resolute attitude, because she only follows her husband, she does not have firm opinion in rearing child and she wants to know whether the method applied by her husband will bear fruit or not. As a mother, she does not try to think about her children development but she more focuses on the method’s result. As a young man, Dr. Daniel Rafferty had held strong views about proper child-rearing. Kathy had no firm opinions on the subject, but she had been intrigued by Daniel’s unconventional theories and curious to see if they would prove successful. 107 Educationally, Kathy has good achievement. However, as the mother she does not have sensibility through the children’s need. She is unresponsive to her children. In this novel, she is described as a mother who displays little commitment to her role as caregiver. For all her academic achievements, Kathy was clueless about the needs of children and the bonds of motherhood. She believed in the cause-and- effect principle of human interaction, the need to reward desired behavior, but the rewards were always materialistic. 114-115 Family should be the place which provides the foundation in building children’s characteristics. Emotionally, the parents should give emotional support to their children and foster them a sense of commitment. Therefore, the parents have main role in giving attention and giving emotional support to their children. Abuse happened to Anson is begun by his parents ambition to give proper rearing child method to their children. 43

2. The Kinds of The Parental Abuse toward Anson