How children are raised in Mongolia.

Girl = Boy

I would not say that parents impose patriarchal stereotypes on their sons. Yes, sometimes phrases slip through, such as “you are a man - don’t cry, hold on”, for example, if the son fell, hurt his knee and his father wants to cheer him up. But in the process of education, the emphasis on the fact that boys are somehow better than girls or surpass them in something is not done.

Girls are taught to be neat, to help with housework, but these qualities and skills are equally instilled in boys. City children mainly help to clean the apartment, learn to take care of their things and toys. And in the villages, children also look after the animals. In general, grazing cattle is the responsibility of the boys, since the herds are kept large and there the shepherds must have special skills, for example, to ride. But I know that in families where there are no sons, girls learn to ride and manage cattle, and if there are no daughters in the family, then all the housework is on the sons. And this is considered normal. There is no clear division between "male" and "female" duties.

The severity of parents and the gentleness of grandmothers

In Japan, South Korea, China, children under the age of five are allowed to behave as they like, but in Mongolia they are not brought up like that. If a child behaves inappropriately, they explain to him that this is not the way to do it. But if it is impossible to explain, then he is punished. Parents adhere to such strict principles of upbringing, but grandparents cherish children and almost never punish them. In general, we teach children to respect their elders, but without fanaticism.

It also instills an understanding that a person must live and work for the sake of the family. We can say that this is a stereotype, but not so bad. It originates from ancient times, when families lived in large communities and the clan was a cult. But in the modern world, everything is changing very quickly, and if even 100 years ago in Mongolia a cult was made of the family, now family values are not promoted so clearly.

Pre-school and school education in Mongolia

Among the advantages, the following can be singled out: now children from foreign languages are learning English everywhere (previously, Russian was taught in many schools, now there is no such policy); Mongolian writing is gradually returning - in schools, children learn to write in hieroglyphs. We hope that someday every Mongol will own a hieroglyphic script, state documentation will be maintained with its help, and so on. But at the moment, many people are not familiar with the Mongolian characters, so they still use the Cyrillic alphabet.

In their free time from school, children are interested in a little bit of everything. The first place, of course, is occupied by gadgets - laptops, phones, tablets. We do not impose hobbies on children - they themselves choose what they want to do outside of school.