21 Up Documentary Analysis

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“21 Up” is a documentary that followed the lives of 7 year old children, in this case from Japan and the U.S., spanning to 21 years old. The children were selected to represent the range of socio-economic backgrounds with the obvious assumption that each child’s social class predetermines their future. One of the individuals, Louis, is a Hispanic male that is from the upper east side of New York. As an adolescents he was living in a homeless shelter with 11 family members. He then became enlisted into U.S. coast guard where he worked as a handy man. Takako is a middle classed Asian female from Tokyo. She is a flight attendant living with her parents and older brother. Between the two individuals there is a great amount of cross cultural differences. …show more content…
According to our lecture, parenting styles are a vital dimension of caregiving. When Louis was 7 years old his mother developed a drug addiction. During this hard time his father left the family. As timed past by Louis started taking full responsibility of his siblings. Once Louis got older his mother could no longer take care of the children, so Louis was sent to live with his father. His mother came back from rehabilitation, but unfortunately she wasn’t able to take care of the children so Louis took over his parent’s role once again. Not to mention his father had a drinking problem which tended to disrupt the parenting. This type of parenting style is called uninvolved parents. The text book defines uninvolved parents as a style of parenting in which parents are often too absorbed in their own lives to respond appropriately to their children and may seem indifferent to them. Louis parents took this parenting style to the extreme, which was neglect. According to our lecture on uninvolved parenting style is the worst type of parenting styles. As an adolescents, parenting is one of the biggest aspects of life. Parenting can provide motivation, guidance, and even warmth for the children when growing up. According to the uninvolved style, the predicted outcome for Louis isn’t suitable for a good