Given all the author’s points of view on the subject, I am particularly in favor of the author’s positive portrayal of today’s teenagers and the highlights of good parenting during the teen years, but I am not ready to accept the assertion that the teens living in the dirt poor areas could also succeed academically and socially with just nominal …show more content…
What the author actually means is that parents should practice proactive parenting, instead of passive parental controls. Based on my own experience, I fully agree with the author on this point. I remember vividly that I once was becoming increasingly defiant and impatient with my parents as I was gradually stepping into the years of adolescence. Back then for my parents, what I truly wanted was kind of ambiguous or ambivalent. Sometimes, I acted out against my parents, intentionally or unintentionally, and at other times, I just sulked all day long. Deep inside my mind, I was so eager to break free and be on my own. Just about what one could expect, my eagerness was eventually constrained by either my own inabilities or realistic reckoning. Right now, I have realized that all I wanted during those adolescent years could be just some degree of privacy, a little independence for decision making and meaningful personal freedom. In retrospect, maybe my childish desires were something my parents could not afford to accommodate in consideration of the Chinese culture of parental hegemony or something they just could not figure out how to share in an appropriate way. If my parents had known how to