Analyzing Adichie's Thoughts on Parenting

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses the short stories from her novel The Thing Around Your Neck as a medium for her to express her thoughts on certain subject matter/issues. One of the issues that she addresses quite a few times is parenting. Rather than giving her outright opinion on such a controversial topic, she uses the plot of her short stories to do so for her. In Cell One, the parents of the spoiled boys who were in gangs and causing chaos in the college town openly wondered what could possibly be causing so many problems. These parents were so over-indulgent that their kids had grown up to believe that they could do whatever they wanted, and their parents were too naive to think that their own children were criminals (mainly because of the lack of discipline instilled in them). The other end of the parenting spectrum is shown in the short story On Monday of Last Week. We see through the eyes of a Nigerian nanny how over-protective a white Jewish man named Neil is of his son Josh. Neil reads scientific books that contradict each other on what would be the exact healthiest diet possible and has him study for and participate in academic competitions, acting as an overbearing presence in his son's life and leaving him not even a sliver of independence. Through these short stories, Adichie shows the two extremes of parenting: spoiling one's kids too much and not teaching them discipline and respect, and micromanaging one's kids and not allowing them to fully enjoy their childhood.

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