Parenting Blog

"She’s just like me, I thought, compulsively cruel. 'You are a terrible daughter,' I said aloud.
“ I know – I’m not what you want – I’m not Chinese! I don’t want to be Chinese. Why can’t you get that through your head? I hate the violin! I HATE my life! I HATE you, and I HATE this family! I’m going to take this glass and smash it!'
“Do it,” I dared.
Lulu grabbed a glass from the table and threw it on the ground. Water and shards went flying, and some guests gasped. I felt all eyes on us, a gross spectacle. I’d made a career out of spurning the kind of Western parents who can’t control their kids. Now I had the most disrespectful, rude, violent, out-of-control kid of all. Lulu  was trembling with rage, and there were tears in her eyes. ''I'll smash more if you don’t leave me alone,' she cried."   -- Amy Chua

Awful, right?  Clearly this mother hasn't been listening to her daughter, so things have escalated.

But wait -- this 13 year old is screaming and smashing glasses in a restaurant?  Shouldn't there be some severe consequences immediately?  Shouldn't the parents teach this out-of-control child a lesson by cracking down?

I think much of the furor over Chua's book stems from our own anxiety about being strict versus permissive.  We're terrified that we're bad parents. We don't want to be mean, of course. So we compromise all the time on what we'd really like (straight A's, for instance, and two hours of music practice daily, as Chua demanded from her girls.)  Didn't Chua's oldest daughter play the piano at Carnegie Hall?  Maybe if we were a bit tougher, not as bad as Chua, of course, but definitely more strict than we've been.....We certainly won't put up with any more rudeness and disrespect -- look at what might happen when they're teens!

Except...Chua was really strict, right?  And the result was smashing glasses in the restaurant?

No wonder we're confused.  How do we find the sweet spot between permissive and strict?

It's easier to find than you might think.

We've been confused because we're missing half the picture.  Stay with me here, I promise this is worth taking a minute to understand.  It completely sorts out the question about how strict to be.

If strictness and permissiveness are on a continuum, imagine them as a horizontal line (which, in the chart below, is called "Demandingness.")  Now, add a vertical line.  This one is the continuum of Responsiveness, meaning support, empathy and connection.  So you end up with this:

What does it mean?  It means that deciding how strict to be (how demanding) is only half the battle.  You also have to decide how responsive to be.  Diana Baumrind, who came up with this chart many years ago, labeled the parenting styles as follows:

High Strictness/Low Responsiveness = Authoritarian

Low Strictness/High Responsiveness = Permissive

Low Strictness/Low Responsiveness = Uninvolved

High Strictness/High Responsiveness = Authoritative

We've had decades to study these parenting styles, and here's what child development researchers have discovered about the results of each:

Authoritarian- This, of course, would be Amy Chua's style. These are parents who have high expectations of their kids, which is a good thing, research shows.  That’s how kids get good grades, learn to manage themselves responsibly, and stay out of trouble.  There are two problems with these parents.  First, they are very controlling, which makes kids rebel.  Second, they don’t offer their kids much support.  It’s pull up your socks, straighten up and fly right, my way or the highway.  The kids are left on their own to learn to regulate their emotions, so these households usually have anger-management issues.  These parents were usually parented this way themselves, and think they came out fine, but psychologists would call them "defended."  Research shows these kids often end up looking for love in all the wrong places.  Not surprisingly, many kids who get arrested fit this profile.

Permissive-  These are parents who offer their kids lots of support, which is terrific.  Their problem is that they don’t also have high expectations.  Some of them believe that’s a good thing – they wouldn’t want to get in the way of their child’s natural development.  Others just can’t bear to have their child face something difficult even for a moment, so they make a lot of excuses for their kid.  Most of these parents are trying hard not to repeat their own parents’ tough-love parenting style, so they go overboard in the other direction.  Don’t get me wrong – you can never offer your child too much respect and empathy.  But if you let your child walk all over you or other people, what are you teaching him about relationships?  We all need the experience of being loved through our disappointments and coming out stronger on the other side. While letting kids discover their own passions is terrific, kids often need help in structuring themselves to explore those passions, or they become discouraged and give up.  Kids WANT to please, and they WANT to achieve -- depending on how that's defined -- but they need parental help to learn the internal discipline to accomplish their goals. These kids often become self-centered and "spoiled," or vaguely unhappy and insecure. Amy Chua would say that most American parents fall into this category. (I would disagree.)

Uninvolved- There have always been parents who can’t give their kids the love and attention they need, either because of alcoholism, narcissism, or just external pressures like needing to work two jobs to support the family.  But these parents seem to me to be even more prevalent today, at least in some communities, where we rationalize thrusting kids into daycare at ever earlier ages for ever-longer hours, and then as they grow up we push them into the arms of their peer group, so that we have little or no influence on them by the time they’re teenagers.  These parents sometimes vanish into drug addiction or abandon the family, but there are plenty of seemingly normal families where the parents are too focused on their own work or social lives to engage deeply with their kids.  It’s not unusual to see these parents lavish money on their kids instead of attention.  This is always a message to the child that he isn’t worth loving, and if both parents are uninvolved, you can pretty much count on the kid having substance abuse or other major issues.

Authoritative parents offer their kids lots of love and support, like the permissive parents.  But they also hold high expectations, like the authoritarian parents.  Age-appropriate expectations, of course – they aren’t expecting a three year old to clean up her room by herself.  But they may well be working with that three year old to help her clean up, making it fun, over and over and over, so that by six she really can clean up her room herself.  These parents are involved -- even demanding.  They expect family dinners, lots of discussion straight through high school, good grades, responsible behavior.  But they aren't controlling, meaning that they let the child do it his way, and they give lots of freedom beyond their specific rules.  They listen, and they look for win/win solutions that work for kids as well as adults.  They also offer their kids complete support to learn how to achieve these expectations. Because the parents are comfortable with their emotions and able to regulate them, these kids learn early to regulate their own emotions and thus are more open to guidance.  Not surprisingly, these kids stay close to their parents,  often describing a parent as the person they would most trust to talk to about a problem.  These kids are usually high achievers in school, and they’re also the ones that teachers describe as responsible and well-liked; simply nice, considerate kids who are a pleasure to have around.  This parenting style, is, of course, the one that research shows raises the best-adjusted kids.

Amy Chua said "Take any teenage household, tell me there is not yelling and conflict.”   I have a fifteen year old and a nineteen year old, and we never have yelling.  Really.  Disagreements, of course -- accompanied by humor and compassion, from the teenagers as much as from us.  But never yelling.  That's a key difference between Authoritative and Authoritarian homes. 

Are you having an Aha! Moment?   Most parents think the best parenting course is the middle ground in strictness and demands.  But that means they settle for reduced expectations.  What we can learn from Amy Chua is that it's fine to set limits and have high expectations. Because what best serves our kids, what is often called the Authoritative style, has just as high expectations as the Authoritarian style.  There’s no permissiveness, no compromise, no middle ground, in our expectations.  Why would you compromise on the values that are really important to you, such as how people in your house speak to each other, or whether they do their homework before they Facebook?

But -- and this is a big but --  kids only accept the high expectations of authoritative parents because of the support they get.  That means that along with limits, these kids get tremendous empathy, and step by step help in learning to manage themselves. They also experience respect, which means their parents listen to what's important to them and find win-win solutions. (That's one of ways you keep them from needing to humiliate you in restaurants to get you to listen.)

The difference between Authoritarian and Authoritative -- the difference between Amy Chua and me -- is the understanding and respect offered to the child. The difference between Permissive and Authoritative -- between many American parents and me -- is the high expectations.  And the difference in parental involvement should be obvious – the authoritative parents are the most involved of any of the parenting styles.  Which is probably why they’re happier parents.

So Chua got it half right.  High expectations, but also high support, is what helps kids thrive.

Of course, this begs the question of exactly what kind of expectations produce a child you'll be proud to have raised.  Chua focused on good grades and musical prowess.  That's a fine start, but what about WHO the child is inside?  Kindness, compassion, respect, forgiveness, acceptance of our human imperfections... As all of us know who are still learning to love ourselves, that's where the real work is.  More on that tomorrow:  Why Amy Chua is half right about children and self-esteem.