|
Vocapedia > Media > USA > NYT > Illustrations >
2008-2009
Wesley Bedrosian
Mind
When
a Parent’s ‘I Love You’
Means ‘Do as I Say’
September 15, 2009
The New York Times
By ALFIE KOHN
More than 50 years ago, the psychologist Carl Rogers suggested
that simply loving our children wasn’t enough. We have to love them
unconditionally, he said — for who they are, not for what they do.
As a father, I know this is a tall order, but it becomes even more challenging
now that so much of the advice we are given amounts to exactly the opposite. In
effect, we’re given tips in conditional parenting, which comes in two flavors:
turn up the affection when they’re good, withhold affection when they’re not.
Thus, the talk show host Phil McGraw tells us in his book “Family First” (Free
Press, 2004) that what children need or enjoy should be offered contingently,
turned into rewards to be doled out or withheld so they “behave according to
your wishes.” And “one of the most powerful currencies for a child,” he adds,
“is the parents’ acceptance and approval.”
Likewise, Jo Frost of “Supernanny,” in her book of the same name (Hyperion,
2005), says, “The best rewards are attention, praise and love,” and these should
be held back “when the child behaves badly until she says she is sorry,” at
which point the love is turned back on.
Conditional parenting isn’t limited to old-school authoritarians. Some people
who wouldn’t dream of spanking choose instead to discipline their young children
by forcibly isolating them, a tactic we prefer to call “time out.” Conversely,
“positive reinforcement” teaches children that they are loved, and lovable, only
when they do whatever we decide is a “good job.”
This raises the intriguing possibility that the problem with praise isn’t that
it is done the wrong way — or handed out too easily, as social conservatives
insist. Rather, it might be just another method of control, analogous to
punishment. The primary message of all types of conditional parenting is that
children must earn a parent’s love. A steady diet of that, Rogers warned, and
children might eventually need a therapist to provide the unconditional
acceptance they didn’t get when it counted.
But was Rogers right? Before we toss out mainstream discipline, it would be nice
to have some evidence. And now we do.
In 2004, two Israeli researchers, Avi Assor and Guy Roth, joined Edward L. Deci,
a leading American expert on the psychology of motivation, in asking more than
100 college students whether the love they had received from their parents had
seemed to depend on whether they had succeeded in school, practiced hard for
sports, been considerate toward others or suppressed emotions like anger and
fear.
It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed
somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep
price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second,
they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong
internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness
after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt
guilty or ashamed.
In a companion study, Dr. Assor and his colleagues interviewed mothers of grown
children. With this generation, too, conditional parenting proved damaging.
Those mothers who, as children, sensed that they were loved only when they lived
up to their parents’ expectations now felt less worthy as adults. Yet despite
the negative effects, these mothers were more likely to use conditional
affection with their own children.
This July, the same researchers, now joined by two of Dr. Deci’s colleagues at
the University of Rochester, published two replications and extensions of the
2004 study. This time the subjects were ninth graders, and this time giving more
approval when children did what parents wanted was carefully distinguished from
giving less when they did not.
The studies found that both positive and negative conditional parenting were
harmful, but in slightly different ways. The positive kind sometimes succeeded
in getting children to work harder on academic tasks, but at the cost of
unhealthy feelings of “internal compulsion.” Negative conditional parenting
didn’t even work in the short run; it just increased the teenagers’ negative
feelings about their parents.
What these and other studies tell us, if we’re able to hear the news, is that
praising children for doing something right isn’t a meaningful alternative to
pulling back or punishing when they do something wrong. Both are examples of
conditional parenting, and both are counterproductive.
The child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who readily acknowledged that the
version of negative conditional parenting known as time-out can cause “deep
feelings of anxiety,” nevertheless endorsed it for that very reason. “When our
words are not enough,” he said, “the threat of the withdrawal of our love and
affection is the only sound method to impress on him that he had better conform
to our request.”
But the data suggest that love withdrawal isn’t particularly effective at
getting compliance, much less at promoting moral development. Even if we did
succeed in making children obey us, though — say, by using positive
reinforcement — is obedience worth the possible long-term psychological harm?
Should parental love be used as a tool for controlling children?
Deeper issues also underlie a different sort of criticism. Albert Bandura, the
father of the branch of psychology known as social learning theory, declared
that unconditional love “would make children directionless and quite unlovable”
— an assertion entirely unsupported by empirical studies. The idea that children
accepted for who they are would lack direction or appeal is most informative for
what it tells us about the dark view of human nature held by those who issue
such warnings.
In practice, according to an impressive collection of data by Dr. Deci and
others, unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be
accompanied by “autonomy support”: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing
opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being
encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from
the child’s point of view.
The last of these features is important with respect to unconditional parenting
itself. Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any
strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the
children — whether they feel just as loved when they mess up or fall short.
Rogers didn’t say so, but I’ll bet he would have been glad to see less demand
for skillful therapists if that meant more people were growing into adulthood
having already felt unconditionally accepted.
Alfie Kohn is the author of 11 books
about human behavior and
education,
including “Unconditional Parenting”
and “Punished by Rewards.”
When a Parent’s ‘I Love
You’ Means ‘Do as I Say’, NYT, 15.9.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/health/15mind.html
|
