“[P]arents do not ‘need to be advised to manipulate their children with guilt, implied threats, and bribes’—they do this anyway. But they do need to be reassured that it is OK, and therefore that it is OK for them progressively to expunge the opposite impulses from their minds.”
– David Deutsch
From the archives: Posted on 12th January 1999
“Although I’m not yet familiar with Taking Children Seriously parenting, is as much as continuum parenting is concerned, I believe that Barbara Coloroso is very adept at combining what needs to be done, with respecting people’s needs and wants. Instead of telling her child ‘Take the garbage out.’ She will say, ‘The garbage needs to be taken out before dinner.’ She gives the child information and then allows the child to make his own decision, within certain limits, ie: before supper. She expects her children to take part in the household chores as productive members of her household, and expresses this expectation quite respectfully, I believe. I really like her line: ‘You may go outside, as soon as your bed is made.”
I really hate it.
It’s imprisonment, forced labour, and a double bind, all dressed up in empty self-justification. Parenting books are full of that junk, because parents lap it up.
Someone else commented:
“Do parents actually need to be advised to manipulate their children with guilt, implied threats, and bribes?
I think this is reassuring news. Maybe most parents start out nice. Unless they start out nasty, and over time mellow and become devious.”
I think that they usually start out nice, with mostly good intentions, but also with many false ideas, bad attitudes and goals in their minds which, in certain situations, cause nasty behaviour. This causes painful conflicts in the parents’ own minds. One of the ways in which they seek relief is to obtain reassurance from other people—authorities, or people whom they respect—that the winning impulses (the ones that are actually informing their behaviour) are in fact right and good.
Thus you are right that parents do not “need to be advised to manipulate their children with guilt, implied threats, and bribes”—they do this anyway. But they do need to be reassured that it is OK, and therefore that it is OK for them progressively to expunge the opposite impulses from their minds.
The same is true of Taking Children Seriously parents, BTW, the other way round.
I am not saying that all advice giving and taking, and all explicit reasoning, about things like child rearing are a sham. (On the contrary, this is exactly what is going to save the world, via Taking Children Seriously!) It’s just that like all learning, this is something that is done by the learner, or advice taker, not by the advice giver. One can never literally transmit a theory to people. The most one can do is change the environment under which their own theories are evolving.
See also:
- What about instilling values like freedom, fallibilism and the idea of taking children seriously?
- Are children being taken seriously good at detecting coercion?
- Surely coercion is ok when the parent is right and the child is wrong?
David Deutsch, 1999, ‘Advice to parents’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/advice-to-parents