Not everyone can pull off authoritative parenting
In the modern world, authoritative parenting yields the best results on virtually every metric - but we should stop pretending it's easy.
As I browsed the ‘Mummy Wars’ section of my local library earlier this week, two volumes caught my eye. John Locke’s ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’ (1693) advocated for a child-centred approach to character formation through experiential learning. Locke didn’t actually tag anyone in the post, but I think he was responding to the original primal mama, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and his 1762 treatise ‘Émile’ which argued children should be left to develop without the corrupting influence of society. A lot of people at the time thought Rousseau was just shitposting to make other mums feel guilty about using car seats. But it got me thinking: is it possible that topics like ‘the development of a healthy body’ and ‘the formation of a virtuous character’ in children and adolescents have always captivated thinkers? Could it be that these topics are only considered a bit frivolous now that they’re primarily explored by actual mothers?
Anyway, here is the promised deep-dive on parenting styles and behaviour management, exploring yet another question which for some reason makes everyone really aggressive: can you really ‘just tell your kids what to do’ or do you need to accept that your ‘strong willed’ child will sometimes refuse to brush their teeth, choosing instead to scream for 20 minutes? I’ll kick off this article by slicing through the modern jargon and taking us back to the original framework of parenting styles, outlining the pros and cons of each style, and explaining why I’m so confident in advocating for ‘authoritative’ parenting. I’ll proceed to infuriate many people by arguing that, yes, it is possible to elicit pretty consistent cooperation from all children and adolescents. But—and this is a very big ‘but’— it is a soft skill which rides on levels of experience, energy, confidence and community support that many modern parents struggle to access. I’ll also suggest some stuff we can all do to be more authoritative in our parenting.
As ever, I wrote this mainly to answer some of my own questions, and I hope it is a useful resource for parents who aren’t 100% sure where to position themselves on the ‘authoritativeness’ spectrum, or those who have a clear vision, but struggle with execution. It will hopefully also be of interest to readers who aren’t currently raising kids, but might occasionally find themselves on a plane, wondering: will the parents eventually tell this kid to shut up or must I listen to his screeching for the next 3 hours? It is a valid question, and one I hope to answer. Let’s get into it!
