Raff Hitler And The Boy In The Striped Pajamas

A few years ago, the psychologist “Baumrind” came up with four different parenting styles that discuss the Warmth-Control relationship between parents and their children. The four parenting styles are; Authoritarian parenting, Authoritative parenting, Permissive parenting and Uninvolved parenting. The next paragraph will demonstrate the relationship of a parent “Ralf Hitler” and his son “Bruno” through a story that is taken from a movie called “The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas”. Additionally, this story was studied in order to understand the parent’s action and the child’s reaction, and predictably, match and compare the result with what Baumrind assumed.

Indeed, every parent has different views in bringing up children and different ways in treating them whether the children were well treated or bad. In the story of Ralf Hitler and his son Bruno, the style applied seems more like to be Authoritarian Parenting style, in which “Parent shows high levels of control and low levels of warmth toward his child” (Baumrind, 1975, 1991, p.250).

For example, in the movie, he always tried to get his son close to him; he once hugged him when he saw him sitting alone. In addition, he brought him a tutor to teach him.

Nevertheless, his children were highly controlled. For instance, at the beginning of the movie he forced his children to move out from Berlin to another city. Once they settled down in the other city, Ralf had to move again, so he opened a discussion with his children to ask them if they want to move or not, and when Bruno refused, Ralf asked him to stop it. Bruno immediately said “But dad!” he shouted at him to stop