#/ but when ur up against an entire social view of smth it's. real fuckin hard

[ofdetonation]

I think a lot of people perceive the Bakugou family dynamic as unhealthy, and some people have even claimed abuse (on the scale of Endeavor, which, umm, where did that come from?). My overall perception is this: they are two new parents trying to raise a single child together with no context on parenting. On top of that, Katsuki developed a powerful Quirk in a society where powerful Quirks are praised, and there is an environmental influence of which can easily be overlooked in favour of analysing the household influence.

Thus, I think it's important to look at every aspect of childhood development to determine the impact of multiple things.

A lot of this has to deal with nature vs. nurture: whether it is the parents' fault or the environment's. Often there is a sort of fault from both, but in these cases, there will always be a stronger fault on one side or the other. So, in the case of Katsuki, which one was more at fault?

THE NURTURE VIEW.

From what we've seen, Mitsuki is much like her son - brash, unyielding, and very firm in herself, willing to fight for what she believes in. In contrast, Masaru is more on the sensitive side, tends to shy away from conflict (or avoids them altogether), and is a lot more passive than his wife and son combined. Mitsuki leads the household, based on this distinction, and her parenting style reflects her personality. That is pretty much the same for Masaru.

From what I've been able to discern, Mitsuki relies on both authoritative and authoritarian parenting - in contrast, in my point of view, Masaru is a strong mix of permissive and authoritative parenting.

Now what in the fuck do they mean, you might ask? No stress! I have answers in the form of what I could understand from my educational psychology classes. I also definitely recommend researching them further yourself!

An authoritative parenting style is a happy medium that parents generally aim for. It's relatively open communication with their child, taking in their opinions, and giving them an understanding of action and consequence. There are high expectations for their child, but they are aware that their child is... Well, human. In terms of responsiveness and demand, they have a balance of both.

It's practically impossible to stay authoritative though, and there sure as hell ain't a book on parenting that tells you how. So yeah, I reckon Mitsuki and Masaru have the authoritative approach, but they do have their own approaches too:

An authoritarian approach is something pretty commonly seen in Asian culture and customs, and its meaning varies based on Western vs. Eastern standards. The main idea is that this parenting style is very parent-driven. There's a strong level of strictness, they rely on discipline, and generally speaking, they have more demand and less responsiveness - meaning that the child should listen because the parent knows better, or "because I said so". In Western views, this is generally disregarding of the child, almost "helicopter parent"-like, and are even considered nasty or mean.

Asian customs are less likely to view this so negatively. It is generally associated with a trust that the parent is doing this out of a place of concern and/or love; and, with some studies, an authoritarian approach with Asian-ethnic children has proved to carry positive effects similarly to authoritative parenting. (This wouldn't necessarily apply if Katsuki was born and raised outside of Japan - say, in Europe or the Americas.)

Meanwhile, permissive parenting is low demand, high response. These kinds of parents struggle to enforce rules and regulations, but are more emotionally in-tune with their children. They also tend to find ways to avoid conflict.

Sound familiar?

On top of an understanding of defined parenting styles, the Bakugou household is pretty stereotypical of an Asian household - heard of a tiger parent? It's a term to explain an extremely strict parenting style that seeks to create a high-achieving child, and it has a basis in Asian culture and custom. It can be one parent or both, and its origin is from an Asian-American professor with Chinese heritage, Amy Chua. (The phrase actually derives from her book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother"; it's definitely... Something. There's a reason it was both positively and [very negatively] received when initially published in America.)

Understanding the commonality of the overall household dynamic is one thing. Furthermore, understanding that Horikoshi likely played on the concept and made it more extravagant in the name of humour is another.

The more unconventional part of their dynamic is Mitsuki and Masaru's overall perception of Katsuki's emotional needs - the authoritative (or in Masaru's case, the permissive) approach. Katsuki needed a sense of accomplishment, safety, and community; some people would probably consider sending Katsuki to live on the dorms after his kidnapping reckless or inconsiderate, considering that the school failed to keep Katsuki safe, but I believe they were thinking of meeting Katsuki's emotional needs. I mean, how else to tick off all three boxes?

The U.A. dorms provided a room of his own - a safety bubble. It meant that he could get a taste of living away from home - a sense of accomplishment - and being around his class more often would give him a greater sense of community, something he wouldn't have achieved otherwise. It's pretty likely he tried to isolate himself out of school, so this was kind of like... An encouragement.

We don't have nearly as much context of Katsuki's home life as we do for Shouto, for example, but I am inclined to believe that Mitsuki and Masaru were able to work as a team to provide for Katsuki the best they could. The reason I think both took on the ideal authoritative approach is because Mitsuki would have the discipline while Masaru would have the emotional understanding - with the two on opposing sides of the coin, they ultimately were able to strike a balance by working together. If either were absent, it's likely that Katsuki would've been much worse than he was. And it should be expected that they weren't perfect; Katsuki is an only child, after all.

While keeping the parenting styles in mind, we move on to...

THE NATURE VIEW.

Our context of Katsuki's interaction with his environment is much higher than our context of the Bakugou family dynamic. We see him interacting with his environment a lot more than his parents; on top of this, we also have a lot more contextual clues on what Katsuki's environment was, which helps determine its influence on Katsuki as a whole.

There are four environments that factor into a child's development: the physical, social, emotional, and economic environments. The presence - or lack thereof - these environments can determine how a child reacts further in life.

A physical environment is where they grew up in and their neighbourhood. We know that Katsuki is lucky to have grown up in a spacious house, thanks to Mitsuki being a successful model and Masaru being a successful fashion designer - not only that, but Katsuki frequently had access to trails and other nature-based areas, limiting the exposure to pollution in more densely populated areas. The neighbourhood that he grew up in, however... That would be of more debate.

Katsuki's neighbourhood influence bleeds into his social environment, which is the social circles he's been exposed to and how they ultimately influence his relationships. Having both parents there helped, of course, but Katsuki's exposure to some of the other boys in the neighbourhood and his growing popularity during preschool / primary school / middle school meant that Katsuki developed an understanding based on his peers.

This bit is crucial to remember; Katsuki had teachers and other children both praise him for a powerful, hero-like Quirk. Top that with the fact that Quirks are present in 80% of society for his generation, alongside people saying how powerful and amazing he'd be, and it's no surprise that Katsuki developed a strong sense of superiority among others. We have no indication that his parents treated him in the same way - if anything, the context suggests they were fighting against this - but we have some contextual support to indicate that everyone else put Katsuki on a pedestal.

It's likely this heavy appraisal of Quirks, and specifically his, that helped spur Katsuki into bullying Izuku for his Quirklessness. We know that wasn't his only reason; it's just not a stretch to assume that the social environmental influence meant that it would become something easy to target.

The emotional environment is very reliant on whether emotional needs are being met at home or not. As discussed in the nurture point of view, Mitsuki and Masaru were not perfect parents and did not always fulfil Katsuki's emotional needs at first, but it's safe to assume that they did their best as first-time parents - having Mitsuki and Masaru as oppositional in terms of disciplinary vs. emotionally in-tune would likely contribute to their ability to accommodate to Katsuki's needs.

Finally, the economic environment is the financial situation they've been raised in. We know that Katsuki comes from a fairly wealthy background - not only did he grow up in a two-story house in JAPAN, but he was able to give Kirishima a massive sum of money to repay him for the night vision goggles. It's obvious that his economic environment isn't a problem.

NATURE VS. NURTURE.

So it boils down to this: which impacted Katsuki more?

It's safe for us to determine that it's a clash of his parents' parenting style vs. his physical and social environment. It would ultimately be a deliberation between Mitsuki's authoritarian and Masaru's conflicting permissive approaches (alongside their combined authoritative approach), vs. the neighbourhood Katsuki was exposed to and the social circles that he grew up with. It's not to say that one didn't impact Katsuki at all; there was definitely some impact there on both sides, but if I had to choose...

The environmental influence wins all the way.

We have no contextual clues on Katsuki's upbringing, so we have to make assumptions based on the evidence we have - from what we know, Katsuki had a lot of freedom growing up. He would be allowed to go out for extended periods of time without his parents, whether it be to go into town or to visit forested areas (for bug catching, which we've seen a glimpse of, or the log incident). It would be safe to assume that 1) Mitsuki and Masaru knew that Katsuki would be capable of protecting himself when he developed his Quirk, and 2) there were likely rules set in place with reasonable consequence if Katsuki didn't listen. It's why I lean towards his parents being authoritative when they work together. Katsuki has been fortunate in the fact that his parents trust him with having freedom.

What we know of the neighbourhood and social environment is not nearly as ideal. Remember: Izuku was exposed to the same environment, seeing as they shared the same neighbourhood, and his context plays a vital aspect of understanding just how the environment influenced Katsuki as a whole.

Katsuki was never so bad before his Quirk. He teased, he was a bit nasty, but he was never malicious and treated Izuku as someone who would inevitably develop a Quirk like the rest of his generation. Furthermore, he was an extremely confident child. The problems arose the moment he developed his Explosion Quirk; developing his Quirk in school with others to witness it has been the most unfortunate part of his upbringing. As I've mentioned before, in the BNHA universe, Quirks are upheld as something that is now part of the norm. On top of that, powerful Quirks are appraised as hero-like - which, in Katsuki's context where he's always wanted to be a hero like All Might, only reaffirmed his stance and fed into his confidence. The confidence turned to egoism, and then into superiority. Contrast that with what we know about views of Quirklessness in that same generation...

Mitsuki mentions, during the home visits (in dub), that people were fawning over Katsuki for his Quirk and it didn't help anything - especially because he was already good at what he puts his mind to. In the sub, Mitsuki even mentions he "kept getting praised for shallow stuff". This is pretty telling that the environment and the people surrounding Katsuki played a heavy hand into how he turned out as a teenager; and, in going to U.A., Katsuki wasn't so exposed to these kinds of people, and the teachers actually understood Katsuki better than what most people do.

Of course it's important to address Mitsuki's approach to handling Katsuki, but bear in mind that Katsuki was not an easy child to handle with an environment that was actively working against his parents. They aren't the kind to ignore that he had an amazing Quirk, but they assumingly knew Katsuki's confidence would soar the moment his Explosion became a focal point.

Ignoring that the home visit scene was likely played for humour directed at a Japanese audience, Mitsuki only enacted firm discipline when Katsuki acted out of line. Think about it. She thwacked him upside the head, and then firmly disciplined him when he showed no manners towards his teachers and herself, not to mention she had a go at Katsuki for getting snappy with Masaru - even though she did the same thing. Otherwise, she showed a deep care for her son, an awareness of how he developed, an understanding of how the teachers viewed him (especially Aizawa), and the benefits of sending him into the dorm system.

Another bit of context is the importance of manners and courtesy in Japan. It's real easy to step out of line in Japan, and thus upholding certain mannerisms is vital to be viewed properly by others. Katsuki has never really cared, hence why he's such a delinquent when you first know him... But it's not a stretch to determine that Mitsuki and Masaru want to abide by manners and courtesy. Imagine trying to rein in your unruly child in front of very important figures which culturally expect good manners. (In contrast, to try and give a bit of insight for Western vs. Eastern culture, Aussies... Don't stake a huge importance on this. I've had casual conversations with mentors before, and generally, we'll take more offence to being called buddy or champ before a swear word.)

Of course, everyone interprets Katsuki's influences differently. Some people may determine that the parents were at a stronger fault for Katsuki's upbringing, others may say it was a balance of both. I think that in a general context, however, the social environment that Katsuki was exposed to growing up shaped him into who he is, but with no way for his parents to sufficiently fight this, they were kind of... Doomed from the start.

#long post / #/ i just pulled 2.5k words outta fuckin nowhere for this kfjvnjdn #/ i feel like i went off the rails a bit but basically they did what they could #/ but when ur up against an entire social view of smth it's. real fuckin hard #/ i also just really love the b.kg family #/ i'll do hcs of em eventually #💥 | ARROGANT BOY‚ CALM LIKE A BOMB. ╱ hc.