Interesting thing I read in Travel Guide about coddling. -

[Pikimon]

I was reading an old travel guide from a few years ago about visiting and living in Japan, and one of the chapters focused on the family unit of the basic Japanese family. In the section dedicated in describing the roles of the mother in a Japanese household, it went into great detail explaining how Japanese mothers will purposely coddle and make their child dependent on them to strengthen the bond between child and mother and make sure that they never go without relying on their family.

Now I am not saying that Barb has the cultural knowledge of the subtle nuances of Japanese social structures, but do you think that Barb could have possibly coddled Chris all these years to keep him dependent on her, so that she may never leave him?

 

[Count groudon]

Pretty much. But it's less "coddling" as it is "hoarding". Barb kept Chris locked up in the house with her every chance she could get. Bob was the one who encouraged him to get out and go to places.
Barb pretty much forced him to be dependant on her, constantly saying things about how she doesn't want him to have a sweetheart because she thought he wouldn't spend time with her.
To her, Chris is just an object for her to add to her pile, and she made sure he's gonna stay ther.

 

[Fibonacci]

Pretty much. But it's less "coddling" as it is "hoarding". Barb kept Chris locked up in the house with her every chance she could get. Bob was the one who encouraged him to get out and go to places.
Barb pretty much forced him to be dependant on her, constantly saying things about how she doesn't want him to have a sweetheart because she thought he wouldn't spend time with her.
To her, Chris is just an object for her to add to her pile, and she made sure he's gonna stay ther.

Or discouraging his independence by threatening to change the locks.

 

[Himawari]

I know first-hand that Japanese travel guides are full of total bullshit - when I was in Tokyo my friend and I had to collaborate by picking out what we learned by trial and error was correct from our two different travel guides (and not much was correct) in order to come up with something accurate and helpful - but I digress.

That sounds like a very over-simplified description of the Japanese family. Japanese culture has a very, very strong work ethic (to the point of it negatively affecting birth rates now), and parents would absolutely not coddle a child to the point of making him unable to function in society; on the contrary, a child who ends up being unable to make something of himself would bring shame to the family. What the family does do, I believe, is care for the child to such an extent that he or she would be able to/feel obligated to care for and treat the parents equally well when it comes time that the parents become dependant on the child (as life expectancy is very high in Japan).

I don't think that's what Barb was going for, she just wanted to coddle and protect her special snowflake son.

Disclaimer: I dropped out of the East Asian Studies major, I am not really an expert on Japanese culture.

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

I lived in Japan for a semester in college. My homestay family never did this to their children, at least not where I could see it, although they did have an annoying tendency to infantilize me. My first day with them, they took me to a children's museum. I was nearly 20 at the time and writing a thesis about the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army during their occupation of Nanking.

Japanese mothers do have a tendency to baby their boys, but there's a cultural bias and then there's Barb.

 

[Himawari]

My homestay family never did this to their children, at least not where I could see it, although they did have an annoying tendency to infantilize me. My first day with them, they took me to a children's museum. I was nearly 20 at the time and writing a thesis about the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army during their occupation of Nanking.

I visited a game studio in Tokyo when I was 23 and had been studying Japanese for nearly a decade and the people I spoke to there were absolutely, completely floored when they learned I could read katakana.

My best friend's mom, who is Japanese, was very impressed that I knew how to hold chopsticks.

Overall there's just this "foreigner = absolutely dumb to anything Japanese" bias.

 

[Pikimon]

Eh the book was outdated and I took it with a grain of salt, glad to know to throw away that piece of rubbish. I think the biggest flaw in the book was how it described how the Japanese treat foreigners.

I just read it and thought "Maybe barb purposedly spoiled Chris so that he'd always be dependent on her"

Heres the book http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1558680713

 

[DangDirtyTrolls]

I was nearly 20 at the time and writing a thesis about the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army during their occupation of Nanking.

I'll bet they loved you

 

[Christ-Chan]

For a parent to witness a flaw in her child is to discover a flaw in herself. If you're too proud and too much of a narcissist you will never acknowledge your own faults, and so your children will appear perfect in your eyes.

 

[The Mass Debater]

I don't think Barb was intentionally hoarding Chris until Bob died. Before that point she did coddle him but it was more to bolster her 'Mah boy has autism everyone is out to get us' persecution complex. After Bob though, she's done everything she can to prevent Chris moving on in life and keep him dependant on mommy dearest.

 

[CatParty]

She just kept him on a short leash and spoiled him because he was her special little retard.

 

[Hyperion]

I hear the Japanese treat any unpleasantness in their history as if it never happened. There was no Rape of Nanking, there was no Unite 731, there was no Pearl Harbor, there was no invasion of the Philipines, the Japanese never destroyed Indonesian society, they never invaded Korea and outlawed the Korean language, and the Atomic attacks were completely out of the blue and due only to American aggression, in a war in which they had played no part.

Or maybe thats the Japanese need to be steadfastly polite, and to never speak out of turn.

 

[Caddchef]

I hear the Japanese treat any unpleasantness in their history as if it never happened. There was no Rape of Nanking, there was no Unite 731, there was no Pearl Harbor, there was no invasion of the Philipines, the Japanese never destroyed Indonesian society, they never invaded Korea and outlawed the Korean language, and the Atomic attacks were completely out of the blue and due only to American aggression, in a war in which they had played no part.

Or maybe thats the Japanese need to be steadfastly polite, and to never speak out of turn.

To be fair to the Japanese most nations are guilty of aggrandizing their victories and forgetting the murkier parts of their history.

Mine definitely is.

 

[Hyperion]

To be fair to the Japanese most nations are guilty of aggrandizing their victories and forgetting the murkier parts of their history.

Mine definitely is.

 

[Kosher Dill]

I hear the Japanese treat any unpleasantness in their history as if it never happened. There was no Rape of Nanking, there was no Unite 731, there was no Pearl Harbor, there was no invasion of the Philipines, the Japanese never destroyed Indonesian society, they never invaded Korea and outlawed the Korean language, and the Atomic attacks were completely out of the blue and due only to American aggression, in a war in which they had played no part.

IGNORE ALL GOOGLE RESULTS

 

[JimReynolds]

Considering that Barb probably accepted early on in Chris' life that he would never be able to be independent, that explains the early coddling of Chris. Once Chris showed signs that he indeed had the capability of potentially being independent, Barb decided to guilt Chris into helping her out instead. Hence the ass bandages.
Also, it seems that given Chris' Twitter ramblings to Cole, it seems that Barb does not have any family members besides Chris who are willing to help her.

 

[Metagross]

That sounds like borderline Munchausen by proxy syndrome, which I think is a little too extreme, and takes a little too much thought for Barb to spend her energy on. I think when Bob was alive she desperately clung on to and depended on him, but now that he's gone Chris is the replacement. Sort of like some parasites, once one host is dead it moves on to another. Except in a much more miserable and depressive fashion.

 

[Anchuent Christory]

I honestly don't think it's anything that deep personally, all I see is sheer pig-headed selfishness on Barbs part.
What kind of fucked up mother denies their 31 year old son the right to the most basic privacy?

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

I was nearly 20 at the time and writing a thesis about the atrocities committed by the Japanese Army during their occupation of Nanking.

I'll bet they loved you

It was a little awkward for me over there, so I didn't tell a whole lot of people about my research. I visited lots and lots of museums in Osaka and Tokyo, though. The thing that blew my mind was that the Osaka Museum of History was a seven-floor building, but the exhibits ended on the third floor--chronologically, right before World War II started.

The Peace Museum at Hiroshima was depressing, but the ground floor had one amusing moment. Obviously, the museum had to explain why the US just kind of showed up one day packing nukes. Their explanation via a text box? "In 1941, the Axis Powers attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, hurtling Japan into the Second World War." I still have a picture of it somewhere.

Years later, I wrote to my homestay family. This was back in 2004, when the Chinese were protesting the Japanese government due to their failure to pay reparations for Chinese "comfort women" forced into military prostitution. They had been planning a trip to Hong Kong that they had to cancel because of the protests--and they honestly had no idea why the Chinese were upset.

 

[Chairman Meow]

Their explanation via a text box? "In 1941, the Axis Powers attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, hurtling Japan into the Second World War."

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? HELL NO!