RE: In Defense of "Permissive" Parenting; Children are Human Too
Interesting. The first of yours where I see something I disagree with, good!
This is due to people thinking there is something wrong or vicious about "permissive" parenting. There is absolutely nothing wrong with treating children with tenderness, care, and compassion, instead of as vile little wretches who need to be put in their place.
Hold on there. Even authoritarian parenting styles (misguided as we agree they are) do not imply parents' hatred or disgust towards their children. That's painting with a very broad brush, and imo intellectually lazy.
More important, to me: Permissive parenting, as defined in any place I've seen it defined, includes the characteristic of lacking clear and consistently enforced boundaries. To me this is the very important.
Permissive vs authoritarian parenting is a false dichotomy.
A parent can be loving, attentive, compassionate towards a child and provide the 'bootstrap' of clear and firm boundaries that prevent a child feeling confused and fearful of its own power. I've seen this third way get called respectful parenting. Here's a post about it.
http://www.janetlansbury.com/2012/09/respectful-parenting-is-not-passive-parenting/
Thanks for the response. Let me see if I can reply.
I would say that authoritarian parenting styles do imply disgust toward children, because that parent rules over the child with an iron fist and employs corporal punishment when necessary. I don't how any other word to describe this relationship, although it is true that authoritarian parents oftentimes still claim to love their children. But I don't think anyone should conflate love with authoritarianism.
Next, I clarified the issue with permissive parenting in the piece, and described the idea that parents could use approaches like "radical unschooling" in the same vein, and those approaches would Incorporated the boundaries as you rightfully pointed out.
Good thoughts on boundaries. I should have mentioned something about that for clarity.
I certainly agree with you that authoritarianism is not the way to go. But I think it's important to bear in mind that there can be different motivations for authoritarianism. These motivations need not include feelings of disgust or hatred towards a child.
That doesn't necessarily imply disgust. It's also possible that the parent may simply believe (mistakenly, imo) that this approach is in the long-term interest of the child.
I disagree here too, in the sense that I believe their clearly are circumstances linked to the developmental immaturity of children in which the right thing to do is assert your will over their own.
An extreme example to make the point: A child wants to climb down onto the rail track to urgently retrieve a dropped toy - the compassionate parent will physically restrain them if necessary: asserting their own will at the expense of the child's ability to exercise his own.
My question is why did the parent allow that situation to exist in the first place. For me that parent has already failed. Also, If you had be practicing what I like to call peaceful parenting, your child should already have enough respect for you to listen to your guidance without you having to restrain them. Finally, temporarily restraining someone who may not be aware of impending danger is not being authoritarian and would be a considered a compassionate thing to do whether that person is a child or an adult.
No. Peaceful parenting certainly doesn't guarantee obedience. That's just not how it works.
Please pay closer attention to the conversation you're stepping into. I haven't made that claim.