Children And Parents Are Not Equal

A parent educator in Tabor City, N.C., recently wrote a letter to the Myrtle Beach Sun News taking me to task for taking Thomas Gordon (“Parent Effectiveness Training,” David McKay, $12.95) and Dorothy Briggs (“Your Child’s Self-Esteem,” Doubleday, $10.95) to task for encouraging American parents to become wimps. No, Gordon and Briggs didn’t say, “Hey, parents! You should be wimps!” That’s my editorial take on the end result of their nouveau advice, which became the “party line” of parenting psychology in the ‘70s and ‘80s and hangs on to this day.

The letter writer says he can’t believe I really, in my heart of hearts, disagree with most of the advice Gordon and Briggs dispensed in their best-sellers. He’s right. I don’t disagree with most of what Gordon and Briggs and their followers say; I disagree with all of it!

Gordon and Briggs maintain the parent-child relationship should be conducted as if the parties are equals or, more precisely, because they are equals. In “Parent Effectiveness Training,” for example, Gordon says parents should treat children much as “we treat friends or a spouse. (His method) feels so good to children because they like so much to be treated as an equal (sic).” In short, children like it; therefore, adults should do it.

Along the same lines, Briggs says that parents and children should “share power,” meaning “children have an equal part in working out limits.” How, I ask, does one give a child an equal part in working out a limit when the limit in question is, “You may not, period?”

Again in “P.E.T.,” Gordon writes that the use of power and authority by parents is “immoral.” He criticizes parents who “believe in restricting, setting limits, demanding certain behaviors, giving commands, and expecting obedience.” No, I’m not making this up, nor am I taking it out of context.

I could cite dozens of similar passages from Gordon’s and Briggs’ writings, but space does not allow. Suffice to say, they and I are poles apart. I believe children need parents who are self-confident enough to make unilateral decisions and follow through with them in the face of the most histrionic of objections from their children. I believe it is healthy for children to frequently feel their parents are “mean” and “unfair.” I believe the more objection a child has to a parent’s decision, the more likely it is the decision is a good one. Gordon and Briggs think my oldfashioned attitudes are psychologically damaging to children. In his latest book, “Teaching Children Self-Esteem” (Random House, $17.95), Gordon even says that when parents stop using power and authority with their children, there will be less violence in the world! Apparently he doesn’t know that since American parents began using his advice, the teenage violent crime rate has tripled (almost irrespective of socio-economic background) as has the rate of teen depression.

Gordon and Briggs were enormously influential, but so were Marx and Engels. Throughout history, a lot of enormously popular ideas have ultimately been judged lacking.

I am confident that my old-fashioned ideas - which are really not mine at all, but those of the parenting mainstream of previous generations - appeal to the overwhelming majority of today’s parents. By and large these are parents who, having tried the “democratic” approach and fallen flat on their proverbial faces, are delighted that professionals such as myself and Dr. James Dobson (“The New Dare to Discipline,” Tyndale, $8.99) have the gumption to vandalize the tower of nouveau parenting babble built by the likes of Gordon and Briggs; or, to mix my metaphors, to say out loud that the emperor has no clothes.

I am equally confident that my oldfashioned ideas do not appeal to the majority of mental health professionals. That is why I titled the introduction to my latest book, “A Family of Value,” “I, Heretic.” In short, I am guilty as charged, and I will never repent.

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