Every child is a miraculous creature and is not only capable of living a creative, productive and personally fulfilling life but also of transforming the world around him so that others can live creatively, productively and happily.
Why, then, do we have a world in which some children grow up to have a positive impact on the world while others grow up to engage in murder, theft and rape? Is there a way to raise a child so that he grows up not to do such unspeakably coercive things?
I think there is — it is to raise children, irrespective of gender, without coercion. My parenting philosophy is based on Taking Children Seriously, a view which rejects the traditional one of children needing to be coercively moulded and shaped for their own (or others’) good. Instead, it advocates a creative, non-coercive approach to family life.
What’s the problem with coercive parenting?
Coercion has some major, different but connected, effects. First, it assumes that the parent is right, while, in fact, the parent may be, and often is, mistaken. When the novel was invented, parents didn’t allow children to read because it was seen as a bourgeois pastime that took children away from spending wholesome time outdoors. To us now, this may seem ridiculous — “Reading is good! Children need to do more reading!” But those parents honestly thought they were right and coerced their children accordingly. Parents today do not worry that their children are spending too much time reading books, but they do worry about “screen time”. Will people in the future look back and find the current screen-time coercion a mistake like we find past parents’ concerns about books?
Second, coercion blocks error correction. Error correction is critical for any kind of progress, be it civilisational or personal. Things should be discussed and argued, not settled with authority and force. With the latter, and more generally with coercion, errors are entrenched and not corrected. As an example, when our child was younger (pre-verbal), we would change his diaper as soon as he pooped even if doing so distressed him. In our mind, we were doing the right thing because we feared diaper rash. We assumed, mistakenly, that our son’s reasons for not wanting his diaper changed were bad, such as being rebellious. One day, we decided to wait and it turned out that he, in fact, was not done pooping! And once he was done, he indicated that he wanted it changed. So we had been coercing our child for mistaken reasons, and until we desisted from that coercion, we were preventing ourselves from discovering that error.
The effects of coercion are unpredictable. This is the third point. While many children seem to thrive despite it, some children develop emotional issues or grow up feeling entitled to coerce others — in some cases, with horrific results. Because we view children as a different kind of human being, we tend to control them with coercion and we don’t think about how it would feel to be treated that way or what bad effects it might have. Being controlled is a wholly unpleasant and unfulfilling way to live. It causes many children to “misbehave” when the going gets tough or when they have the slightest bit of freedom. This “misbehaviour” is then seen as “evidence” that even more coercion is needed.
Imagine being in a relationship in which you are coercively controlled by your partner. When you react badly, they conclude that more coercion is needed to enforce their will. Now imagine that you have been thus controlled for your entire life. How do people fare when they have never had a chance to learn how to live freely? The result is that by the time children are let loose from their homes at 18 years of age, many have no idea how to deal with not being controlled or how to relate to others without coercion. So when they have children, they, in turn, raise them coercively, not knowing that there could be a better way of relating.
What, then, is the alternative? It all comes down to creative problem-solving. Instead of coercing a child to do your bidding, do something that both of you like. You may not always think of a good solution in the moment, but if the thrust of your parenting philosophy points roughly in the direction of consent and creativity, it makes for a joyful and fun-filled experience rather than one in which you are constantly butting heads with your child over little things.
A child raised without coercion, who is guided instead of forced, learns, among other things, that problems can be solved with creativity and fun. They also learn that consent is of utmost importance.
This is how we are raising our son. We recognise that he is a person like us, that his wishes are as important as ours, that problems must be solved with creativity and not force, that disagreements are to be discussed and argued, that authority is not in possession of truth, and that, above all, we can and are wrong all the time about all kinds of things.
Ali is the author of Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction
