“Merely desisting from coercion would be unworkable. What is called for is the building of family institutions based on consent, and there is no recipe for creativity. Non-coercion is a necessary but not sufficient condition. We have to be working together to find real solutions to problems, not merely avoiding forcing our views on each other.”
– Sarah Fitz-Claridge
From the archives: The original post was posted on 3rd January 1996
“It’s not clear to me, however, exactly what is meant by non-coercion. I think the problem stems from identifying the coercive parenting style designed to inculcate obedience, then saying, essentially, ‘I’m NOT doing that’.”
Steve Graham answered:
“That’s not really an accurate picture. The proto-typical non-coercive parenting (NCP) approach, as espoused by Sarah, is both clearer and considerably more radical. In a nutshell—any form of coercion is inimical to learning, and thus all coercion is to be avoided.”
But that is not enough. Whilst one could in principle merely desist from coercion, that in itself would be unworkable. What is called for is the building of family institutions based on consent, and that is a very positive thing. The problem is, this is a creative act, and one can’t as it were prescribe creativity mechanically. Non-coercion is a necessary but not sufficient condition. The family has to be working together to create rational institutions; they have to be looking for solutions to problems, not merely avoiding forcing their views on each other.
“Rejecting one parenting style doesn’t answer the question of what you are going to do, or what it’s based on. This is why the ‘what happens when the toddler wants to play in the street?’ question just will not go away. There is no answer to this from the basis of simply taking a coercive parenting style and reversing it. Non-coercion is only half a theory. This discussion won’t ever be settled until someone comes up with a notion of what this parenting style is rather than what it isn’t (and the name for it won’t begin with ‘non-’).”
If you are saying that I have not done this, it seems to me that you are asking for the recipe for creativity, and there is no such thing. “Non-coercion” is a bit like “academic freedom” for research departments, or “the free market” for productive economies: it is as though you are saying “It’s no good talking about academic freedom. The absence of academic constraints is a negative thing. What we need to know is what will you discover?” Or “The absence of government interference in the market is a negative idea. What we want to know is, if we have a free market what will be produced?”
As I said before: to ask what a non-coercive parent would do if her child did Awful Thing X is a bit like someone in Eastern Europe asking about the free market: “What if no one ever opens any food shops and everyone starves to death?” The point is that this sort of mis-allocation of resources is characteristic of centrally planned economies and is caused by central planning. This problem simply never arises in a market economy.
In fact there’s more to this misunderstanding than that. Non-coercion is not defined by the answer to the question “what happens if a child does X” any more than the free market is defined by “what happens if no supermarkets are opened.” The very question “what mechanical response does the parent have to such-and-such behaviour?” is meaningful only in coercive child rearing, just as a question like “what laws are there to ensure that there will be enough supermarkets?” is characteristic of a centrally planned economy.
See also:
- Punishing children using so-called natural consequences
- Question or command?
- A chat about Taking Children Seriously
Sarah Fitz-Claridge, 1996, ‘Merely desisting from coercion is not enough’, https://takingchildrenseriously.com/merely-desisting-from-coercion-is-not-enough