Permissive parenting may create monsters
Saying no, it turns out, can be good for your children
My five-year-old is extravagantly furious at being thwarted. I have infringed her human rights by mildly suggesting that she turn off the television and put some clothes on.
I can see the dark storm clouds gathering on her brow, her eyes narrowing, mouth pursed in Shakespearean displeasure as she reaches for the most hurtful ingratitude she can think of: “You’re not my friend any more!”
I reply, swift as Lady Macbeth’s dagger: “I never was your friend in the first place, darling.”
Tough love, maybe. But love nonetheless. Mine is an oldfashioned, British brand of child rearing that could soon be coming back in vogue in Scandinavia, of all places.
Those very countries that once prided themselves on their enlightened, child-centred parenting style are having second thoughts.
A bestselling Swedish academic has concluded permissive parenting is creating a generation of arrogant young adults who lack social empathy, personal resilience and, after a childhood of pampering, are destined to be bitterly disappointed in life.
“Saying ‘no’ to a child is not the same as beating a child. Parents should act like parents, not best friends,” says David Eberhard, psychiatrist, father of six and author of How Children Took Power.
Saying ‘no’ to a child is not the same as beating a child.
PSYCHIATRIST DAVID EBERHARD
“They should prepare their kids for adult life by teaching them how to behave, not treat them like princes or princesses. In Sweden, they think that any form of intervention against the child is a sort of molesting.
“The so-called experts think that parents should negotiate, rather than punish. They have misunderstood the concept of parenting. Children are not as fragile as they think.”
Eberhard points to a breakdown of discipline in schools, plummeting grades and a worrying rise in suicide attempts among teenagers as evidence that allowing children to be boss has failed.
There has been much to admire about the freedoms Scandinavian children enjoy, in that they spend much of their time outdoors and are encouraged to physically push themselves to their limits.
But while the values of social democracy might work for the economy, they have been a disaster on the domestic front.
“What strikes me as the most disturbing feature of Swedish society is the voluntary abdication of adult authority,” says Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent and author of Paranoid Parenting.
“It began with stigmatizing the punishment of children and mutated into a fear of disciplining them, which is what parents are supposed to do. The area for concern isn’t what happens to them as children, but what happens to them as they grow up.”
Eberhard points to growing social problems in school, where Swedish pupils refuse to follow teachers’ instructions, and later in what he views as their unfulfilled young adulthood.
“International educational comparisons show there is a huge discrepancy between what they achieve and what they think of themselves,” he says.
I will readily admit that I don’t always get it right. I’m not even sure I mostly get it right, but it doesn’t stop me trying. I may not be my daughters’ friend, but I hope I’m something much more enduring. Firmness and fairness aren’t incompatible with fun.