For a lasting relationship

Don’t be authoritarian, power is a bad foundation

Babies start their lives from a singularly weak and vulnerable position. They start out with an extremely skewed power balance in favor of the adults around them. Under such circumstances it is very easy for a parent to slide into the trap of relying on power to manage the relationship with their child. The power we have over children blinds us to such an extent that it is hard for us to recognize many of our actions as despotic and authoritarian. We routinely treat children in ways that are disrespectful that would not be tolerated by adults, all the while convinced that we have the best intentions towards our kids. It would be very instructive to frequently stop and ask ourselves as parents whether the way we are dealing with the child in specific situations would be appropriate if there was an adult on the other side that we wish to respect. If the answer is no, we should ask ourselves if there is no better way to handle that situation or ask ourselves how we would handle the situation if there was an adult on the other side and we wanted to be respectful. In almost all cases, if we just have the will to stop and think about it, we would find that there is a better way.

Power is in any case a very bad foundation on which to base a lifelong relationship with your child. From the moment of the birth of the child until the moment of death of the parent the balance of power continuously shifts from the adult towards the child. The child begins life vulnerable and weak, but the adult often ends life that way. An authoritarian relationship with a child, based on power, is therefore doomed from the start.

It is not surprising that the periods of childhood where the child develops most and gains most power relative to the parent are commonly considered the most problematic in terms of the parent child relationship (and since the parent child relationship is foundational to the child, these problems often spill to other areas of the child’s life). These periods include what is often termed the ‘terrible twos’, when the child rapidly gains more independence through better mobility, physical and cognitive capacities, and later on the teenage years when the child quickly matures into an adult, and in some cultures we might add the college years when middle class kids first gain more freedom and independence from their parents. These things happen at these times because the balance of power changes significantly and the adult in the situation fails to recognize it and to make the required adjustments. People are generally reluctant to relinquish power.

The child will not easily forget the authoritarian use of power over them when they were weak and helpless; being in such a position of weakness leaves a strong imprint on the emotional memory, consciously or subconsciously, which is hard to erase; and this will sully your relationship with your child for life. It is the true source of many damaged parent child relationships. Once they are grown up it is very difficult to undo this damage because the power balance has changed and the opportunity to make amends and to have done things differently is gone.

An authoritarian power-based relationship not only damages the parent-child relationship for life, it also serves as a bad example to the child, who absorbs at the deepest level that relating to people through power is the way to go. Later on these children grow and apply this outlook in their own families, work places, companies, organizations and states. I would venture to conjecture that there are no dictators or oppressors who enjoyed a loving and respectful relationship with their parents as children. I also would venture to conjecture that there is a tight connection between aggression wars and oppression, and the way the generation that perpetrates them was brought up.

The appropriate relationship that should exist between parents and their children is not that of despots, owners, bosses or managers, not even that of guides, teachers, mentors or benefactors. If we want a healthy life long relationship with our children the ideal relationship with them, right from the very beginning, is that of friendship. We should relate to our kids from the very beginning the way we would a very good friend. Friendship implies, besides caring, a measure of equality and respect, and ideally also fun. The caring part is mostly taken care of by our biological instincts; we instinctively care for our kids. However the respect and equality aspects require extra work and thought on our part due to our immense power over them which blinds us.

This is the reason why punishment is never appropriate, and should never be used in or be a part of the parent child relationship. Punishment is based on the idea of power, and the use of power in the relationship. It is incompatible with friendship and sends all the wrong messages to the child, that will unfortunately reverberate through their relationship with their own kids as well as with others.

Friendship relationship also requires that no side in the relationship assumes a superior or patronizing attitude towards the other. That would damage or even end the friendship. This doesn’t mean that friends cannot compliment and offer each other different benefits in some kind of (equal) give and take. Both the child and the parent should feel that they are a team, always on the same side, having each other's backs and navigating the world together. A trust that these tenets of friendship are always there is essential for that relationship.

Unsolicited advice or guidance is a major hindrance to a true friendship with your child; for it assumes some kind of patronizing and superior position relative to your child, and friendship assumes equality. If you want to have candid and ongoing conversations with your children, you should try to avoid these attitudes. This is sometimes hard since parents do tend to care a lot about their kids, but you should strive to have the kind of caring that a good friend would have, one that does not imply some sort of ownership.

What can a little child bring to that equal friendship relationship? Joy, fun, purpose, emotional engagement, camaraderie, shared memories, the list is long and includes all the reasons why people may want to have kids. Just remember, you brought the child into the world for a reason (assuming you wanted that child), and this reason was not the good of the child, it was for your own reasons. If you want a healthy, positive lifelong relationship with them, it cannot be exploitive, it needs to be equal, based on respect in addition to love.