Why does parenting feel so hard?

What most parents think they need to do as parents—moulding and shaping their children—is an impossible task. No wonder parenting is a nightmare for so many parents! But there is an alternative!

How would you like it?

Imagine if your husband denied you dinner because you had not yet completed the chores he had decided you must do before dinner…

“There are some issues on which I am authoritarian”

Coercion is stressful because it conflicts with most people’s wider ideas about morality, human relationships, and how to run a society, etc. Unless one mentions children or parenting, everyone agrees that consent-based solutions are better that coercion every time. That theory is held on some level by most people. They just suppress it in their parenting.

“Natural authority”?

How does the alleged parent’ right of authority justify behaviours we would in other circumstances regard as barbaric, immoral, or at the very least unpleasant?

Mistakes and what to do about them

When, despite having had the benefit of our best arguments, our children don’t agree, that is when we should start questioning our own arguments, not just assuming it is the child’s that is wrong.

Singling out children

If adults sometimes make bad decisions just like children to, why treat children differently?