Parenting styles in John Hughes’ The Ship of Dreams

ABSTRACT

Parents are the first source to explore many things for their children. The way they take care their children will give effect to their children’s development until they grow up and become adolescents. The ways in taking care of children are different from one parent to another. That is why in this study I analyze role of parents to adolescents’ development in John Hughes play’s The Ship of Dreams. I analyze the role of Tom’s parents to his development and use Diana Baumrind’s parenting styles.

The purposes of this study are to know the parenting style used by Tom’s parents and the effect of parenting style to the attachment between Tom and his parents. This study is literary criticism and use psychological approach. It is a study that analyzes the development of the main character in a literary work from psychological view. It employs literary criticism because I conduct an analysis of literary work which is related with the role of parents to their adolescents’ development in The Ship of Dreams. The data are taken from the drama text The Ship of Dreams by John Hughes that was published by The Macmillan Company in 1962.

From the data that have been analyzed, I can conclude that both Tom’s father and mother use different kinds of parenting styles. His mother is authoritative parent. She is supportive and protective to him. She also allows him to share with her about many things. And his father is authoritarian parent. He is a tough person. He forces Tom to follow his direction and to respect work and effort. He is also high in demandingness and low in responsiveness. He does not allow his son to share with him. Because of these different kinds of parenting styles, the effects to attachment are different, too. Tom feels secure toward his mother. He feels safe and comfort beside her. However, he feels insecure toward his father. He is afraid to his father and it brings bad effect to Tom’s development. Because of his father’s influence is much more than his mother’s influence. His development is not really good. He becomes a mousy boy and always afraid toward his father.