provide standards — usually high standards — for their children. But they’re nurturing, responsive and loving. I call them the nurturing, loving, rule-setting parents.”1 Children raised by authoritative parents consistently have the best outcomes on a wide range of measures.2
In fact, as noted by the American College of Pediatricians, authoritative parenting is a specific style recognized by pediatricians and child psychologists as being the ideal.3 By contrast, permissive parents are reluctant to set rules and standards, while authoritarian parents are demanding, lack warmth, and are unresponsive to their children.
Anderson believes that as children learn to respect the authority of their parents, they learn to respect authority in society. More importantly, if children don’t acknowledge the authority of their parents, why should they believe that God has authority over them?
Just Can’t Say “No!”
William Doherty is director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota. In his book, Take Back Your Kids: Confident Parenting in Turbulent Times, he talks about the disrespect and general coarseness common among the children and teenagers with whom he works. A big part of the problem is the unwillingness of parents to put limits on their children. He writes that the best research indicates that “children need both love and limits, they need confident rather than insecure parents.”4
Part of the discomfort the present parenting culture has with authority is rooted in what Doherty calls “therapeutic parenting.” He writes that starting with the publication in the 1970s of Thomas Gordon’s Parent Effectiveness Training: The Tested New Way to Raise Responsible Children, parents have been repeatedly told to behave like therapists with their children. Among other things, this means being non-judgmental and constantly attentive. A therapeutic culture of parenting will distort parents’ interactions with their child, presuming that a child’s psyche must be treated gingerly, and can lead to what Doherty calls “timid parent syndrome.”5 When Johnny kicks Mommy, Mommy tries to use it as a “teachable moment.” When Johnny’s teacher is unhappy with his behavior or school performance, Mommy acts as if it’s the teacher’s fault. Child psychologist Ron Taffel describes the plight of a mother he once counseled: When her six-year-old son hit her and screamed at her in a store, she wasn’t sure whether she should “smack him on the spot or let him get his feelings off of his chest so they wouldn’t fester.”6 Doherty recounts treating a family in therapy whose ten-year-old had begun calling his mother a “bitch.” He believes issues such as these are due to the widespread blurring of the boundaries between parents and children.
Another expectation put on modern parents is that they shouldn’t interfere with their children’s desire to express themselves. “The parents who don’t say no to their children will tell you they don’t want to stifle the child’s creativity. But that’s exactly what they’re doing by not saying no,” Dr. Anderson told me. “Unless a child has experienced someone saying no, that child does not have to think creatively or problem solve.”7
Besides ceding the role of authority figures, modern parenting has changed in other ways. For one thing, children are catered to in a way they were not in previous generations. “You see it with the hyper-praising of kids, particularly middle-class kids, who are given the message that every time they breathe they’re a little genius. Parents will bend over backwards,” Doherty told me in an interview for Salvo magazine, “to make sure their kids have the most special birthday party, for example.”8 As a result, children develop an inflated sense of entitlement beginning in their early years.
It reminds me of the story Texas mom Kay Wills Wyma tells in her book, Cleaning House: A Mom’s 12-Month Experiment to Rid Her Home of Youth Entitlement. Her moment of truth came while driving her fourteen-year-old son to school. Pointing out two luxury cars nearby, he asked her which one she thought he’d look better in. Taken aback, she thought to herself, “Who’s raising this kid?” She realized that her children had no real responsibilities, no appreciation for hard work, and an outsized sense of entitlement. And it was her doing. Her children expected their beds to be made for them, their dirty laundry to be washed, dinner to be on the table every night — and yet they didn’t know how to do any of those things themselves. She spent the next year redefining her approach to raising her five children by giving each of them regular responsibilities and assigning them specific chores.
Like children, parents are not immune from peer pressure. Doherty tells the story of a four-year-old who suddenly demanded that her mother hang her coat up after arriving at preschool one day. “The girl had never done this before, but had obviously seen other kids treat their parents as servants.” The mother firmly told her child to hang it up herself. Later a teacher remarked that she was the first parent who’d handled such a situation that way.9
Letting the Kids Decide
Dr. Leonard Sax, a pediatrician and psychologist with years of hands-on experience and loads of research conducted all over the world, has weighed in on the topic of parental authority. For him, it’s not just a matter of parents abdicating their authority. He believes that “letting the kids decide” has become the new mantra of what’s considered “good” parenting, especially in the U.S.
In his book, The Collapse of Parenting: How We Hurt Our Kids When We Treat Them Like Grown-Ups, Sax writes that basic parental functions, such as teaching right from wrong, are often ignored. Sax believes that part of the problem is that parents used to be able to count on schools to help in this area. Early childhood educators have shifted their focus away from teaching life lessons about good and bad behavior in exchange for a focus on academics. For one thing, as Sax notes, schools avoid controversy when they teach straightforward subjects like math and stay away from instruction about right and wrong. Another part of the problem, Sax asserts, is when winning their children’s love and affection becomes the primary focus of the parents. “Too often, parents today allow their desire to please their child to govern their parenting.” Children need parents with the confidence and authority to teach right from wrong, to make rules, and to enforce them, says Sax.10
Cautionary Tales
Taffel uses the phrase “the new anger” to describe an upsurge in outrageous behavior by children, and he reports that in his experience it’s “becoming the norm in ordinary families.”11 In his book Childhood Unbound, he tells the story of “Jessica,” who has been told by her mother to turn off the TV and clean up the table. “‘Not now,’ Jessica says, without bothering to look up. ‘No, Jessica, I mean this minute,’ her mother says sharply. ‘Later,’ Jessica responds, almost absent-mindedly. Mom stiffens and threatens: ‘Stop it now, or there won’t be TV tonight.’ Finally, she’s got her daughter’s attention. Jessica looks her mother squarely in the face and says, ‘F--- you, Mommy!’ Jessica is eight years old.”12
In addition to lack of respect, there are behaviors that were unthinkable only a few years ago. Another story Taffel recounts is that of “Margaret” and her daughter, “Lauren.”13 Margaret considered herself the kind of mom Lauren could talk to, unlike her own parents. And Lauren obliged, telling her mother stories about her friends, while Margaret shared tales of her strict upbringing. “Then one day she came home and found her fourteen-year-old daughter in the bathtub having sex with two boys,” Taffel writes. The savvy Lauren maintained her cool, telling her mother she must have imagined they were having sex because of her own strict parents. “Besides, there were bubbles in the tub — how could you know what was really going on?” Taffel reports that for a split-second Margaret almost bought it. Then, coming to her senses, she screamed at her daughter, “What do you think I am — a damn fool?” “Yes,” Lauren answered flatly.
During
