Kids need parents, not "pals"

Betsy links to an article in the Star Tribune (free registration required) about how our current crop of kids gets along better with their parents than previous generations. She takes this as good news, but I strongly suspect this is a negative trend.

A parent's primary job isn't to be a pal or to be "cool." It is to raise good kids who become responsible members of society. It's not hard to get kids to like and "relate" to you as a "pal." Simply abdicate authority. Let them have their way. Treat them as an "equal."

It's much harder to be liked while actually being a parent. Start demanding that your kid get good grades, observe a curfew, earn his privileges, respect authority, be responsible, and adhere to behavioral standards, and you'll see how much tougher it is. You're more apt to be considered The Enforcer than a "pal" or an "equal."

I respect Betsy, and from what I can tell she's done a great job with her kids. I have no doubt that she's raised them responsibly and has a wonderful relationship with them. But she's greatly misled in thinking this is the norm in these "parent as best friend" households. As the article itself observes:

[T]he notion that a teenager could consider a parent "cool" raises the eyebrows of many parents and experts in adolescent development. Being a "buddy parent" can render an adult insecure in his or her leadership, they caution, leaving parents afraid to crack down when their kid messes up. And children of buddy parents can become directionless young adults, experts say.

"What happens is, they lose a sense of authority with the kids, [and] the kids feel like they're equals in the family. What has happened with these kids is they become very overindulged," said Edina family psychologist Andrea Johnson.

"I've had clients that have gotten $200 a week allowance and they don't do anything for that. So these kids are growing up with no sense of responsibility, no sense of respect for authority, and no sense for how the outside world really works. They have this sense of entitlement."

…

These young people don't make good employees, Johnson said, because they have little respect for bosses, chafe at authority in the workplace and resent that they have to work at all. "They've been able to manipulate parents in a way that they can't manipulate outside," Johnson said.

As someone who lives with a teacher, and as a former teacher myself, I'm confident that this is exactly so. The number of kids who have no respect for authority—be it parents, teachers, or administrators--is astounding. I recall a recent survey that indicated that the number one complaint of teachers is not salary or class size or any of the "usual" complaints. It is the inability to actually teach, because so much time has to be spent on discipline and classroom management. This problem is severely compounded by a lack of support in these areas from administrators, many of which are incompetent, fearful of lawsuits, or who buy into the "buddy approach" themselves.

We've locked ourselves into a society that has replaced standards with feelings, and studies indicating a shift to kids viewing parents as "pals" and "equals" are not something to celebrate. Ask the parents you know if they would rather their kids like them or be good people and I suspect you'll find it's become more desirable to be a "pal" than a parent.

One of the big problems in our society is that we treat children as adults, which produces adults who act like children.