Parental Experiment Is A Disaster

In a letter to the Birmingham (Ala.) News, psychologist Caroline Hopkins-Baker says that I am “reprehensible” to advocate a laid-back style of child rearing.

She writes, “Were America producing emotionally stable people by the score, we wouldn’t need to evaluate our parenting styles. However, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. With pronounced depression, drug abuse and violence escalating in today’s youth, it’s time to do something different.”

My sentiments exactly, although I think Hopkins-Baker and I are poles apart when it comes to a solution.

A generation or so ago, American parents were persuaded to “do something different” concerning the rearing of children. They were told by psychologists and other mental health professionals that the parenting style that had typified American child rearing to that time was bad for children - it damaged them psychologically.

There was no science done to support this claim, nor has any reputable science ever been done to support it. Nonetheless, mental health professionals did an admirable sales job on the American public, and America’s child-rearing practices underwent extensive overhaul.

In previous generations, the emphasis in child rearing was on character development. At the behest of “experts,” the emphasis shifted toward psychological development.

One did not need a psychologist to determine whether a child’s character was developing properly. That was fairly obvious, reflected for all to see in the child’s social behavior. But psychological development was an unknown, or “known” only to a small elite of intellectually anointed professionals. And thus did the mystification of parenting begin.

Parents were told that the exercise of authority in a child’s life was stifling (see, for example, the writings of Thomas Gordon, author of “Parent Effectiveness Training,” the best-selling parenting tome of the ‘70s), that they should create “child-centered” families, establish “democratic” relationships with their children, and eschew punishment when it came to discipline.

Since America took this sharp left turn in its parenting practices, every single indicator of positive mental health in children has been in a state of precipitous decline. Violent crimes committed by juveniles have increased sixfold, violence on the part of children toward their teachers and parents - something almost unheard of 40 years ago - has become a serious problem, the rate of births to unmarried teens has increased 200 percent, teen suicide has tripled, teen depression has become epidemic, and learning problems and childhood behavior problems have soared.

The conclusion, all of which belie professional propaganda to the contrary, are inescapable: The predominant family of the 1950s, while not perfect, was a far healthier place for children than is the confusion of families they grow up in today; the typical baby boomer was far more secure than his/her child is likely to be; when adults were secure in their authority, children were more well-behaved.

It would be absurd to propose that nouveau parenting is entirely to blame for America’s child and family crisis, but it would be worse than naive to deny that it has made a significant contribution.

Indeed, it’s time we did something “different” in our child rearing. Actually, it’s time we owned up to the fact that the professionally driven parenting experiment we’ve indulged in over the past 30 or 40 years has been a near disaster.

I happen to think that a good part of our cultural rehabilitation lies in admitting that very error and correcting it. The correction requires that we re-embrace tradition in the rearing of children. The attitudes and practices of mainstream parents of previous generations were not perfect, but they were far more functional than the psychological correctness that passes for child rearing today.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Rosemond Charlotte Observer