Cultural Differences in Chinese and American Family Education: Situational Narratives in The Pursuit of Happiness and Growing Pain

Abstract

The family is the first socialized unit that a person comes into contact with after birth, and the educational activities of the family begin at birth and end at death. The cultivation of a person\u27s character and the formation of values are closely related to the moral education he receives from the family.There are many differences between China and the United States in terms of cultural traditions, conceptual awareness, lifestyles, and social customs. The reason for analyzing the difference in family education between the two countries is that we correctly borrow the premise of the advanced education concept of the United States. Finding the best combination among these differences and learning from the reasonable family education methods in the United States will help improve China\u27s family education. This article selects two works for comparison, one is the inspirational movie The Pursuit of Happiness that swept around the United States at the end of this century and the beginning of the last century, and a well-known TV series Growing Pain in China. These two works were chosen because they are very famous in both countries and the family education concepts in them highlight the family education styles of the United States and China respectively, which are very representative. This paper adopts the comparative analysis and the literature research method to compare the commonalities and differences of family education in China and the United States. Through the comparison of situational narrative (comparison of narrative sections, comparison of narrative techniques and comparison of narrative rhetoric) and comparison of family education models (comparison of ideas, parent-child activities and difficulty solving) of the two works, the advanced experience of American family education is summarized,such as paying attention to children\u27s independence, paying attention to cultivating a sense of equality, respecting children and so on. Its essence is refined and absorbed, which has good reference significance for the improvement of Chinese family education