0;Mrs. Sorci was shouting and crying, You stupid girl, you almost gave me a heart attack. And Teresa was yelling back, I coulda been killed, I almost fell and broke my neck. And then I heard them laughing and crying, crying and laughing, shouting with love.” (Tan 115) Is how Lena St. Clair described the fighting of a mother and daughter after the daughter had ran away. As a parent, being able to just listen- hearing and respecting your child’s opinions, priorities, and desires is an important aspect of empowerment. All experiences strengthen your children’s perception that they can influence the course of their lives, which is, in the truest sense, what empowerment is all about. (Bluestein 79)Children need security- to know that their calls for food will be answered. Security gives children confidence. (Worth 41) “Your mother was a very strong woman, a good mother. She loved you very much, more than her own life,” (Tan 39) Auntie Lin tells Jing Mei Woo. Parents may not be able to meet their children’s needs every time, but there are lots of ways to empower children and establish win-win in their family. (Bluestein 79)Parents have always been the most important agents of socialization of their children. Parental influence occurs not in a vacuum, however, but within the framework of the larger society, with which the parents identify. Your child’s basic temperate- whether impulsive or reflective, sunny or withdrawn- is partially determined by inherited traits, some of which yield more to molding by environmental factors than others. Many scientists believe that at least half of a child’s personality is shaped by hereditary. (Time-Life 26) Mothers raise daughters to confirm to the strictures of the conventional female life as defined by men. (Shannon 56) “I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people’s misery, to eat my own bitt...
