Expectations of Parents and Children

There are a number of expectations of parents and children in the United States.⁴ These expectations are articulated both in legislative statutes that define child abuse and neglect and in the judicial oversight of parent-child relationships by courts in divorce and child abuse and neglect cases. Parents are expected:

To provide a place of residence that legitimizes a child's identity in a community.
To provide sufficient income for a child's clothing, shelter, education, health care, social, and recreational activities.
To provide the love, security, and emotional support necessary for the emotional development of a child.
To foster the intellectual, social, and moral development of a child.
To socialize a child by setting limits and encouraging socially acceptable behavior.
To protect a child from physical, emotional, and social harm.
To maintain family interaction on a stable, satisfying basis through communication, problem solving, and responding to individual needs.

At the same time, our society expects children to reciprocate these parental responsibilities. Children need to learn how to respond to the expectations of others in order to interact comfortably and effectively with others. Without this ability, they remain self-centered and insensitive to the expectations of others. Children are expected:

To learn the appropriate attitudes and values of our society and to act in accordance with them.
To accept parental discipline and to behave in ways acceptable to the community.
To meet the appropriate emotional needs of parents by responding affectionately to them, confiding in them, and respecting them.
To cooperate with their parents in protecting themselves from danger and in meeting their own physical, emotional, and educational needs.
To help maintain family unity and reduce family tensions by cooperating and sharing with other members of the family and by showing loyalty to the family group.
To perform appropriate tasks and to care for the material objects provided for them.

Much of the contemporary stress in families could be relieved by the clear articulation of these expectations of parents and children. If society expects parents to do these things, then society must value parenting. Placing an appropriate value on parenthood would enhance the likelihood of developing business and public policies that support parenting.

A new kind of work force composed of more parents than ever before requires new kinds of workplaces and work schedules. Job requirements, both from the point of view of hours and opportunities, should accommodate child- rearing. There is growing recognition that family leaves, flexible hours, part-time positions, shared jobs, working at home, complementary working hours, and other strategies can allow mothers and fathers to spend more time with their children and can also improve productivity in the workplace.

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Strong Families

A number of efforts have been made to describe families in which parents and children meet their societal and cultural responsibilities to each other. When family life is a mutual growth experience for both parents and children, the results are strong families that contribute not only to the development of their members but to the development of their communities and society as well.

A study of strong families revealed mutual respect between family members who have coherent positive views of life expressed through overt displays of affection and open communication between family members.⁵ In these families individuals are valued explicitly for what they are rather than for their achievements. Realistic expectations are held of family members, so that children learn what is acceptable and what is unacceptable with opportunities for both parents and children to correct their errors. The parents give clear directions and enforce reasonable limits by emphasizing the positives rather than the negatives.

In strong families parents encourage each other's growth both as individuals and as marital partners. They are not totally enmeshed in their children's lives. As a result their children have self-esteem, a sense of autonomy, and well-developed self-concepts. The parents have clear senses of morality that are demonstrated through their words and actions. They respect others and value service to those less fortunate. They have a sense of meaning and purpose in life often related to a spiritual orientation with a trusting, optimistic outlook on life. They treat their children courteously and with respect. Most importantly, they acknowledge their errors and imperfections and the importance of forgiveness.

Strong family members perceive their family to be a worthy group and are proud to be a part of it. They treasure their family legends and traditions. They view themselves as links between the past and the future by honoring their elders and welcoming their babies. They are able to change their power structure, role relationships, and rules in response to changing situations. They are able to share power and decision making among their members. They communicate their feelings, concerns, and interests and listen and respond to what others have to say. Their styles of communication are clear and open, and individuals are encouraged to take responsibility for their feelings, thoughts, and actions. They spend time together but also value individual privacy and pursue independent interests.

Strong families also belong to community networks and are interested in the world in which they live. They have altruistic attitudes toward each other and toward others outside of their families.

A likely member of a strong family wrote the following letter to Ann Landers signed "Love My Folks:"

So many times while reading your columns these past several years, I have thought about the things I missed from my own parents. Here are a few of the things they did NOT do for me.

They didn't let me do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted -- until I was old enough to handle my life.

They didn't shower me with things, things, and more things. For some reason, they didn't believe it served any useful purpose.

They didn't pass up an opportunity to teach me the value of money and the benefits (both physical and moral) of hard work.

They didn't try to tell me what friends to choose or which career to follow. They decided I was the best judge of that.

They never failed to listen to me when I had a problem, nor did they refuse to give me sound advice when I asked. And when I DIDN'T want advice or help, they didn't offer it.

They didn't try to spare me the pain of making mistakes when I was trying to grow up. At the same time, they left no doubt about their love for me.

So often when I read the sad letters in your column from confused, unhappy, overindulged kids, I end up wishing more parents wouldn't do for their kids what my parent didn't do for me. God bless 'em.

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Parental Authority

As the foregoing description of strong families suggests, their underlying characteristic is a clear distinction between the roles of parents and children.

The responsibilities of parents to their children in exercising authority are essentially twofold. The first is to recognize that from the time they are born, our children are individuals with valid needs and feelings. The second is to model effective living for our children, who are influenced by what we actually do more than by what we say.

In order to become mature adults with hopeful visions for the future and with desires to contribute to the world in which they live, children need love, limits, and belief systems.

Through the love they receive from their parents children develop a basic trust in others and in themselves. The attachment bonds that develop between parents and children form the foundations for loving relationships with other people in later life. Through the limit setting they receive children develop respect for other persons. They also learn how to postpone gratification and to tolerate frustration. Through beliefs in hopeful visions for the future, children learn how to surmount obstacles in their daily lives. They also gain inspirations for making the world a better place in which to live.

In practical terms, parental authority is exercised through the creative use of power, the practice of morality, the setting of family priorities, affirmation of their children, and a family's participation in its community and society.

The Creative Use of Power

Many of us do not like to use the words power and authority because they imply control over others and control of others over us. In fact the word power has come to convey an image of exploiting people. Consequently, there is a general tendency to avoid frank and open discussion of the fact that power is a central aspect of all human relationships, and authority is the essential channel for its use.

In order to realistically analyze parent-child relationships we need to distinguish between the exercise of power through legitimate and necessary authority from the illegitimate exercise of power.

The word power comes from the Latin poder, meaning "to be able." Everyone needs to be able, to be capable, to have a sense of personal power. At the heart of personal power is the sense that we are in charge of our lives. By accepting responsibility for our own selves and for our behavior, we gain personal power.

Democratic parents share power with their children, creating relationships based on mutual empowerment. They empower their children by helping their children find their talents and decide what they want to do with their lives. This legitimate exercise of power is the opposite of mutual victimization that occurs when parents and children struggle to control each other.

When exercised largely in one direction, power becomes control over others. For example, financial wealth is the best known instrument of power in that it permits control over the material aspect of one's life and of other people. Physical force also is a common lever of power. In this regard, Biblical scholars point out that "spare the rod and spoil the child" referred to one of the two tools used by shepherds -- a staff and a rod.⁶ Contrary to common belief, the rod was not used for hitting; it was used to guide sheep.

Less obvious forms of power are inherent in the daily leader-follower roles of employer-employee and student-teacher relationships. However, power really is never completely unidirectional, because compliance or non-compliance by the follower determines the actual power of a leader.

The coercive power of an institution is inversely related to the alternatives that are available to people. A business firm can make whatever rules it pleases, but if there are alternative employers, there is a way of escape for anyone who finds the rules oppressive. The potential coercive power of parents is great because a child has no alternatives for responding, other than by misbehaving, becoming emotionally disturbed, or by running away.

Because of the historical and present-day fear of coercive power, the society and government of the United States emphasize individual freedom. American culture has moved away from the powerful father image that permeated the old-world order of family, church, and state. The image of the American Revolution as throwing off the authority of a British king has been reflected in extreme sensitivity to the possible abuse of power to the extent that even legitimate parental authority has been undermined in American families.

As a result of this anti-authority ethos, many parents are not aware that freedom is the ability to make choices between alternatives and only has meaning in contrast with the restraint that is necessary so that our freedom does not deprive others of their freedom. If we did not have to take into account the effect of our behavior on the freedom of other people, we would be free to do as we wish. In fact we cannot avoid facing the effects of our freedom on other people.

In recent decades the idea of Constitutionally guaranteed freedom has been equated with the absence of restraints and even the absence of responsibility for making choices. Without recognition of its limitations, freedom has become meaningless and dangerous, particularly for teenagers. For example, by the time many parents have adolescent children, they are undergoing mid-life crises themselves. Their own unresolved conflicts are activated by their offspring from whom they withdraw. The resulting painful silence and detachment of parents gives their teenagers "freedom" in the form of actually unwanted and confusing permission to act in ways that can ruin their lives.

The dilemma many parents face over the issue of the physical exercise of power with children is illustrated by the following excerpt from a syndicated column of William Raspberry:

I've always told people that it was my luck to have had the most wonderful parents a person could hope to have. Not just nice neighbors, pillars of their church, and upstanding citizens,but loving, competent, effective parents.

Well, it's time to confess. My parents, for all their surface warmth and respectability, were into physical cruelty -- child abuse, to put it plainly. You see, they spanked their children. At least I always thought of it as spanking. But according to a report issued by a group of experts, I've been guilty of mislabeling. They said that we must conspire against language which describes punishment as something other than what it is. Assault is what it is. Let's not call it discipline, spanking, a good licking. What the old-fashioned among us agree is child abuse -- the depressingly frequent incidents of child battering -- is for these experts, just another point on a continuum that begins with spanking. Ordinary fanny dusting, to which some parents resort when more intelligent approaches fail, teaches children that violence is an acceptable way of settling disputes. Spanking and brutality, you see, are on the same continuum.

I think these experts are nuts. Theirs is just another manifestation of the fallacy of the false continuum. Sometimes the fallacy is obvious; love-making and rape, for all their surface similarities, are hardly seen as points along the same continuum.

I know parents who brutally -- and it seems, casually -- beat their children; and I know parents who never practice physical discipline but who nonetheless brutalize their children.

The difference between happy, well-adjusted children and their opposites has, in my view, precious little to do with the presence or absence of spanking. It has everything to do with the presence or absence of love.

I wouldn't urge that parents who are capable of exerting discipline in other ways should spank their children because my parents spanked me. I argue only that the denial of love is the ultimate brutality.

Actually parental authority is most appropriately exercised through the gradual relinquishment by parents of their power to their children. The focus of power in parental authority is not control but is creatively sharing power among family members.⁷

Optimally, the exercise of power is in appropriately-timed shifts from leader to follower roles between parent and child. For example, during early infancy the child actually wields great power and leads the parent by setting the feeding-sleep cycle. Subsequently parental power and leadership is introduced around limit setting and building the child's self-control. During that stage nonverbal communication in the form of physical redirecting is necessary in order to establish a child's respect for the parent's appropriate use of the word "No." Using one's feet and hands instead of one's voice is the most effective way of conveying this message to toddlers.

Research has shown that young children comply with adult's expectations from forty to sixty percent of the time.⁸ It also has shown that the children of parents who are authoritarian (controlling but detached and not warm) are likely to be discontented, withdrawn, and distrustful. The children of parents who are permissive (noncontrolling, nondemanding but warm) are not likely to be self-reliant, explorative, and self-controlled. In contrast, the children of parents who are authoritative (in charge, reasonable and warm) are likely to be self-reliant, self-controlled, explorative, and content.

Throughout childhood, there are times when a parent influences a child and times when a child influences a parent. Some parents err in the direction of trying to control a child excessively. Others err in permitting a child to control them, so that there are many tyrannical children today. The challenge for parents, then, is learning how to flexibly and appropriately shift back and forth between leader and follower roles with their children. In order to do this, a parent needs to respect and trust a child, and more fundamentally, respect and trust oneself. When they feel respected and trusted by their parents, children can care for themselves. When they do not feel respected and trusted by their parents, children often resort to whining, manipulative behavior.

Under optimal circumstances, teamwork in a family takes place through shifting back and forth between leader and follower roles. In the shifting process, the power issues involve dependency and independence in economic, emotional, and decision-making terms. These issues can be handled by either the creative or exploitative exercise of power. For example, leadership can take place through modeling for others vs trying to remodel others; validating vs distorting others; nurturing vs exploiting others; motivating vs coercing others; guiding vs directing others; facilitating vs blocking others; and advocating for vs ignoring others.

Bruno Bettelheim used an old German adage "stretch according to the cover" as an example of sharing power in families.⁹ This adage goes back to the time when an entire family slept under one blanket in one bed. In those days children learned from an early age to adjust to living in close proximity to others. If one child pulled the cover too much over to his side, his sibling would wake him up to retrieve his share. If one child kicked, the other would protest. If they wanted to sleep peacefully, children learned the give-and-take that was necessary for successful community living. Bettelheim pointed out that people whose living conditions never forced them to learn to "stretch according to the cover" find it difficult to establish lasting relationships. As adults they have not learned to cope with the frustrating accommodations which intimate living entails.

The two sides of love in childrearing are showing affection and caring enough to help a child learn self-discipline. Although the negativistic behavior of young children is frustrating for all those involved in their care, it is a sign of their growing independence. At the same time, they need reasonable limit setting of their behavior and parental models of self-discipline so that they can learn how to control their impulses and to delay gratification themselves.

Learning how to control one's impulses is learning how to behave civilly and to tolerate the inevitable frustrations of life. Learning how to delay gratification is learning how to schedule the pleasant and the unpleasant in life in such a way as to enhance pleasure by getting the unpleasant over with first. It is the only efficient and effective way to live.

In an effort to allay some of the contemporary confusion about the roles of parents and children in families, Ann Landers published the following Twelve Rules for Raising Children:

Remember that each child is a gift from God, the richest of all blessings. Each child is an individual and should be permitted to be himself or herself.

Do not crush a child's spirit when he or she fails. Never compare one child with another.

Remember that anger and hostility are natural emotions. Help your child find acceptable outlets for these feelings, or they may be turned inward and create physical or emotional problems.

Discipline your child with firmness and reason. Do not let your anger throw you off balance. Be fair. Even the youngest child has a keen sense injustice.

Avoid situations in which your child can manipulate one adult against another.

Do not give your child everything he or she desires. Do not deprive your child of the satisfaction that comes from achievement and from earning something.

Do not set yourself up as a model of perfection. Children profit from knowing that their parents make mistakes too.

Do not make unrealistic threats in anger or promises in a generous mood. To a child a parent's word means everything.

Do not smother your child with gifts and lavish surprises. The purest love expresses itself in day-in, day-out consistency that builds self-confidence, trust, and a strong base for character development.

Teach your child that there is dignity in hard work, whether it is performed with a shovel or with delicate surgical instruments.

Do not try to protect your child against every blow and disappointment. Experiencing a few lumps will help your child learn how to handle them.

Teach your child to love God and to love other people. Do not SEND your child to a place of worship - TAKE your child there. Children learn from example. Faith in God can be your child's strength and light when all else fails.

When thinking about discipline in the home, it is important to bear in mind the original meaning of discipline -- learning and practicing that which is learned, not punishment. The goal of childrearing is helping children acquire self-discipline. The foundations for self-discipline are laid during the second and third years of life when parental limit setting helps children learn how to control their impulses and to take into account the impact of their behavior on others. The consistent application of external controls during the first two years of life is the most effective way of insuring that a child will develop the internal controls involved in self-discipline and that the child will not continue testing limits during later years. The key is developing respect for parents and then for other people as well.

Many parents do not realize how important it is to set limits for toddlers. The easy way is letting them do as they wish and giving in to their demands. At least that quiets them down in the moment. The more difficult but rewarding course is to help them learn the limits of their power. Most toddlers test limits and push for all they can get. It is a natural result of their egocentricity and their pleasure in being the center of attention. They are quick to assert themselves over siblings and peers. They want what they want when they want it. This means that parents are well advised to set clear limits and help toddlers realize that they mean what they say. In order to get this across to toddlers parents need to use their feet and hands rather than their voices.

The goal with toddlers is to achieve their responsiveness to the words and facial expressions of their parents through initial physical interventions. Physical redirection and restraint are necessary in order to show a toddler that a parent's words are to be taken seriously. Verbal commands across a room can be easily ignored and often are not followed up by a parent, leading a toddler to conclude that what a parent says is not to be taken seriously.

In the same vein, the management of whining and temper tantrums needs to get across to toddlers that those behaviors will not get them what they want. If whining or tantruming children are appeased, the message is that those behaviors can be used to manipulate adults. This means that a whining or out-of-control toddler should be placed in a setting that will permit regaining of control without unduly disrupting family life. Removing the child to a room or a play pen gives a parent a breather and conveys to the child that a "time out" is needed so that the child can settle down. Rather than sentencing the child for a period of time, letting the child rejoin the parent when ready to do so conveys to message that regaining self-control is the purpose of the time out, not punishment.

The Practice of Morality

The exercise of parental authority needs to take place within the guidelines of judgments about right and wrong. It may be possible for sophisticated adults to live without thinking in terms of right and wrong, but this is not the case with children.

The ideas of power and authority make some people uncomfortable. Many of us prefer to think that we are nonjudgmental and try to avoid using the words "right" and "wrong" and "bad" and "good". We also would like to believe that there are no "bad" people -- just "bad" behavior.

Whether we like it or not, however, "good" and "bad" are real polarities in life. They are the only terms that have meaning to young children. The most useful meaning of "bad" is malevolence toward others. For this reason, "bad" is not an accurate word to use when children do not comply with parental desires or expectations. A child may be exercising will or independence through noncompliance. "Bad" should be reserved for mean, unjust behavior toward others. "Bad" and "good" can be dealt with most usefully by facing issues of "right" and "wrong" in the family.

Right and Wrong in the Home

In the current era there is a tug-of-war in the moral arena. On the one side are "absolutists" who insist that children need moral indoctrination. On the other side are "free thinkers" who insist that it is up to children to find their own values. The former believe that there are absolute moral truths. The latter believe that moral principles are only personal preferences.

Both sides have valid points if we distinguish between the times when absolute and relative levels of moral judgment are appropriate.¹⁰ For example, murder is a violation of an absolute moral value, whereas honesty is relative and may not always be the "best policy". Children do need to learn how to distinguish between times in which absolute judgments or relative judgments are more applicable.

When we get right down to it, the issue of right and wrong in family living is the source of much dissension. This is because right and wrong depends on the perspective of the one making the judgment. The ancient Greeks pondered this question as illustrated by Plato's observation that killing lambs was right for human beings but wrong for wolves.

The fact is that subject to individual differences and to the influence of their upbringing, children do have the inherent capacities to distinguish right from wrong and to be generous, compassionate, and altruistic. They have biologically-based predispositions to attend to and to respond to others' emotional states that are evident by the age of one to two years.¹¹ These predispositions wither or are reinforced by subsequent life experiences in the form of parental modeling. Children also acquire prosocial or antisocial values from their peers, teachers, religion, movies, literature, and television.

The question of distinguishing right from wrong in family life is made easier by drawing upon the concepts of good and bad. This places interactions between parents and children on moral grounds rather than on arbitrary definitions of right and wrong based on the convenience or desires of parents. It also introduces justice into the handling of children rather than the simple exercise of parental power. For example, children can be expected to be courteous at the dinner table because respecting other people's rights is a moral good rather than because failing to do so annoys the parents.

In this way the foundations for moral development are laid in the home by learning how to cope with our impulses to be deceptive and to be destructive toward others -- learning how to cope with our own bad impulses. If marital and parent-child relationships are to flourish, their good-bad, love-hate natures need to be openly recognized. How children learn to cope with their bad impulses is shaped by the degree to which our actions as parents correspond to our statements about morality.

Those of us who model morality at home do not have to be concerned about every book, class, film, activity, idea, or peer influence to which our children are exposed. Children learn to choose their values and to accept their own imperfections from us. Those of us who do not model morality or who avoid our responsibility to deal with moral issues abdicate our children's moral development to the influence of others, often their peers.

The struggle that is inherent in life between good and bad can be broken down into manageable pieces. Good revolves around the truth (reality-trust) and love (giving to others). The core issues for the good are emotional honesty (accepting responsibility for one's feelings and actions) and the creative use of power (influencing others constructively). Bad essentially is deception (altering reality-mistrust) and hurting others (blaming-hating). Most family conflicts involve parents and children deceiving or hurting each other and, therefore, are opportunities for learning how to honestly accept responsibility for one's feelings and actions and for learning how to constructively manage impulses to hurt others.

All intimate relationships contain tension between good and bad impulses. In fact, the durability of a marriage bond is measured by its capacity to absorb hate and deception. The stability of a marriage is determined less by love and more by the acceptance and forgiveness of bad behavior by one's spouse. Because the marital relationship can be altered legally, the intolerance of bad behavior by a spouse can lead to a divorce that perpetuates the idea that the other spouse is the bad one, not me. Parental deception and hurting of a child also is based on the belief that the other person, in this case the child, is the bad one. Because a child cannot escape from the parent-child relationship, that child suffers varying degrees of emotional and personality damage.

Marital problems ensue and conflicts occur with our children when we cannot confidently express our own feelings of love to each other and to our children. Some of us are reluctant to show tenderness toward our children because of the fear of spoiling them. Others of us cannot bear to frustrate our children because of the fear of losing our children's love.

Rapport between parents and children is facilitated when we openly express our own authentic feelings of love and hate and when we accept our children's authentic affection and hate while setting limits on the actual expression of anger by our children. Curbing the readiness of children to use anger to get their way is vital in helping them to learn more appropriate ways of gratifying their wishes.

Those of us who are uncertain about our own feelings and judgments depend excessively upon childrearing rules. Because we do not trust our own intuitive judgments, we cannot adjust to the ups and downs of our children's needs and feelings. We actually can learn much about our own internal struggles with good and bad (love and hate) by remembering that we are the experienced adults when conflicts arise between ourselves and our children. Then we can listen to our children and together find reasonable solutions to the problems at hand.

A strong family is one in which there is mutual respect and in which no individual's personal needs or desires dominate. But families cannot always be just communities. Rules about telling the truth or about not interrupting when others are speaking tend to be unequally enforced for parents and children. As parents, we expect a degree of privacy that we do not accord our children. Often one family member is expected to do most of the compromising or another tends to be unjustly accused of starting squabbles among siblings. The best efforts to establish justice in a family cannot succeed completely because the family is a flawed institution composed of imperfect creatures. Consequently, family life, as is all of life, is a struggle between right and wrong. It is in the family that childen learn how to respect and advance the "common good".

The Stages of Moral Development

In a world that appears so devoid of the kind of conscience that enables mutually reliable community life, in a world with too many people dominated by biting, accusing consciences that continually cramp and destroy them and others, healthy conscience development is a major concern in human development everywhere.

The development of a healthy, reliable conscience does not come from clarifying values, internalizing parents' do's and don'ts, memorizing platitudes, doing verbal exercises in moral reasoning, or having one's behavior rewarded or corrected. Healthy conscience development comes from understanding oneself and other people. Therefore, developing self-esteem, becoming personally competent, forming an accurate picture of the world, understanding and appreciating the needs of others, and learning skills in communication and problem solving facilitate healthy conscience development.

All of these qualities make it possible for a child to feel anchored in humanity because the child is contributing to the welfare of groups whether in the family, the school, or the community. A healthy conscience is reflected in caring for others because they too have feelings, intentions, and desires.

The development of a healthy conscience advances through stages of increasing capacities to understand moral principles, such as described for boys by Lawrence Kohlberg ¹² and for girls by Carol Gilligan.¹³

Although children do spontaneously care about others and are receptive to ethical principles, they cannot be expected to master each stage of moral development without adult guidance, especially during the early years of life.

Before the age of two, children have no real concepts of rules. At first, we help our babies develop a sense of basic trust in the world by fulfilling their needs. Next we help our toddlers learn how to cope with limit setting, so that the child's impulses and reality are not in continual conflict. During that stage, the child needs to learn respect for the reasonable use of the word "No." This provides a foundation for legitimate authority and for coping with the unpleasant realities of life.

In fact the child's corresponding use of the word "No" performs a useful developmental function by defining the child's will as distinct from the wills of others. Children who do not learn to respect and to appropriately use the word "No" during the second and third years of life are more easily frustrated and less responsive to legitimate authority in later life than those who do.

We can help our children gain satisfaction from adhering to limits and from tolerating frustration. We can help our children learn that crying and tantrums are not means of getting their own ways. The time, patience, and energy needed to help children accommodate their impulses to reality during the second and third years of life are demanding, but high yielding, investments of parenting. Simply indulging the wishes of children at that age is easier, but in the long range regretted.

From about two to seven, children desire to follow rules by imitating older persons. At first, they have a punishment-obedience orientation in which the consequences of an action determine its goodness or badness. Gradually, they realize that right and wrong are determined by what is good or bad for oneself and others, rather than whether or not one is caught and punished. When a child finds pleasure in pleasing us, that child learns that the best times are when both child and parent are happy. Unhappy times are when a child has done something that engenders unhappiness in a parent.

Between seven and eleven, children can see rules as the products of mutual consent, rather than as handed down by authorities. At that time children are able to understand and to deal with moral gray zones. After the age of twelve, rules can be seen as reflecting abstract laws apart from authority figures. Later moral judgments can be seen as widely shared opinions, and laws can be seen as efforts to solve human problems. Next is the stage in which humanistic ethical principles of justice and dignity can be seen as transcending social utility. The seldom attained last stage is an altruistic commitment to being a caregiver to the human family and a caretaker of the Earth.

The Need for Moral Principles

Family life plays a critical role in the nurturing of morality. Faith in money, status, popularity, or religion are daily affirmed or challenged by how we live with one another. Being questioned and challenged by children compels parents to clarify their own moral values.

Because parents can wield oppressive power over children, right and wrong can easily be defined by what pleases or by what irritates the parents. For this reason families need objective moral principles to guide behavior both at home and elsewhere.

Most religions provide these guidelines. The underlying theme is expressed in the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do to you. This simple guideline is essential for the survival of groups of all kinds ranging from families to societies. Whether it be in parent-child relationships or in international relations, the basis for cooperation is empathy not exploitation. In both families and in international affairs, cooperation involves sharing and taking turns.

At the same time, religious principles can be misused by parents in the moral development of their children. For example, it has been considered admirable in the authoritarian tradition for children to tell the truth, to be grateful for their parent's intentions, to overlook the cruelty of their parent's actions, to accept their parent's ideas, and to not be difficult when it comes to doing what is expected of them.¹⁴ In order to teach children these values some adults believe they must resort to deceiving, punishing, and humiliating children. The leaders of the Third Reich in Germany advocated that kind of strict upbringing.

However, children are sensitive to moral hypocrisy. Corruption, dishonesty, and cynicism in other people are noticed by children even at the ages of five and six.¹⁵ Still, many adults discourage the idealism of children, because they do not want naive moral sensibilities getting in their way.

The challenge for us is to cultivate our children's moral inclinations by modeling practical ways of handling the human struggle between right and wrong. This means openly accepting our own bad impulses and coping with them in ways that permit the good to prevail. Religious concepts and parables are helpful in making judgments about and coping with right and wrong, particularly those that emphasize forgiveness.

All of these principles are summarized in the vivid description of the ways in which they thought their parents had failed them during their childhood years given by delinquent boys interviewed by Reverend C. Galea at the Guelph Correctional Center in Ontario, Canada. Their advice was reported as a "get tough" code for parents who experience difficulties in their relationships with their children in an Ann Landers column:

Keep cool. Don't fly off the handle. Kids need to see how much better things turn out when people keep their tempers under control.

Don't get strung out from too much booze or too many pills. When we see our parents reaching for those crutches, we get the idea that it's perfectly OK to reach for a bottle or a capsule when things get heavy.

Be strict. Show us who's boss. We need to know we've got some strong supports under us. When you cave in we get scared.

Don't blow your class. Don't try to dress, dance, or talk like your kids. You embarrass us, and you look ridiculous.

Show us the way. Tell us God is not dead, or sleeping, or on vacation. We need to believe in something bigger and stronger than ourselves.

If you catch us lying, stealing, or being cruel, get tough. Let us know WHY what we did was wrong. Impress on us the importance of not repeating such behavior.

When we need punishment, dish it out. But let us know you still love us, even though we have let you down.

Make it clear you mean what you say. Don't compromise. And don't be intimidated by our threats to drop out of school or leave home. Stand up to us and we'll respect you. Kids don't want everything they ask for.

Be honest. Tell us the truth no matter what. We can take it. Lukewarm answers make us uneasy.

Praise us when we deserve it. Give us a few compliments once in a while, and we will be able to accept criticism a lot easier. The bottom line is that we want you to tell it like it is.