“Can one be taking children seriously if one defines ‘a good relationship’ in a way that is independent of how the children feel about it at the time?”
– David Deutsch
From the archives: Posted on 4th August 2000
Poster 1 wrote:
“The point is that parents taking their children seriously want a good relationship with their kids, and coercion is almost certain to cause a bad relationship.”
Poster 2 wrote:
“Really? Do you think that most people in the world (not taking children seriously) have bad relationships? I was coerced as a child (assigned chores, etc), but have fabulous relationship with my parents. Am I misunderstanding something?”
I think so. I think that Poster 1 meant that parents taking their children seriously want a good relationship with their children at the time. Can one be taking children seriously if one defines ‘a good relationship’ in a way that is independent of how the children feel about it at the time?
To have a good relationship with one’s children once they are no longer dependent on their parents is quite a different thing. The condition for achieving it is, I think, quite straightforward: that the parents and children at that time share basic values.
Two rather opposite types of parent can have a good chance of ending up sharing most of their values with their grown-up children. There are parents who pass on a fixed set of values that change little from generation to generation. This can only be done if the family faithfully enacts the traditions of a static culture, and thereby protects the values from change by permanently disabling the children’s capacity to criticise them or deviate from them. And then there are families in which the parents’ and children’s values evolve jointly towards values that they both prefer. These are Taking Children Seriously families of course.
Most families are between these two extremes. In addition to risking estrangement between parents and older children (which is, to answer Poster 2’s question, extremely common but by no means universal), they suffer from all sorts of instabilities and inefficiencies. This is because they are trying to achieve two things (impose fixed values and reach common preferences; suppress creativity and rely on creativity) each of which has a powerful tendency to prevent the other from happening.
See also:
- How do you determine what food to give your children?
- The can-do attitude versus the can’t-do attitude
- Limiting your children’s screen time?
David Deutsch, 2000, ‘How they feel about the coercion at the time’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/how-they-feel-about-the-coercion-at-the-time