Permissive Parenting: Outsourcing the Role of Parent to Children – This Won’t End Well

Would you like to turn your child into a self-centered, needy brat, or worse … a depressed teenager who lacks the necessary skills to cope with life’s challenges? Yeah, we pretty much knew the answer. If you’d like to avoid that fate for your children, you might want to avoid the new parenting methods being espoused by those on the left-ish side of the political spectrum. This article is from earlier in the year … er … last year (it’s gonna take a while to get used to that), but it just crossed our timeline as the people of Twitter/X took note and commented.

“I have been a family doctor for nearly 34 years. Until recently, I saw no connection between politics and parenting… I’ve noticed something new. It is now much less common to find left-of-center parents who are both strict and loving.

” Most parents love their children. It would be absurd to suggest one’s politics dictate that, but the author, Leonard Sax, points out that he sees a difference between how strict parents are based on their political leanings. Must read.

Sax goes on to say: Wow. This mom was invoking the ‘My body, my choice’ slogan of abortion-rights activists to defend her 6-year-old daughter’s refusal to let me, the doctor, look at her daughter’s throat. Imagine a situation where your child is sick, you know they need to see the doctor, you take them to the doctor, and then you don’t let the doctor perform the necessary examination because your kid objected.

Make it make sense. Yes, it’s unfathomable to us and all of you reading this because, let’s face it, if you’re reading this you fall somewhere on the right side of the political spectrum and, according to Dr. Sax, we don’t typically entertain these absurd parenting styles.

As a parent, I’ve seen the effects of this. I’m a political independent, but I set healthy boundaries and expectations for my kids, as does their dad. We have friends who don’t do that at all, and their young kids hit and swear at them.

Giant N O P E. This is a growing trend, according to the doctor: It is now much less common to find left-of-center parents who are strict and loving. Loving, yes, but not strict.

I’m seeing a growing number of parents like the mom I just described—parents who truly believe that it’s virtuous to let the kid be in charge, even when the kid is a six 6-year-old with a fever who is refusing to let the doctor look at her throat. They believe it’s to let the kid be in charge. Yep.

We get this messaging constantly if you’ve been paying attention. ‘Don’t stifle your children’s dreams! You be you! Let them find themselves!’ It’s in media, entertainment, politics, and clearly now in left-wing parenting advice. I know several teachers who have noticed drastic changes over the years in both parenting and child behavior, not for the better unfortunately The idea that the kid should call the shots has been prolific.

Generally, conservatives have seen this as the Left trying to remove their traditional influences from children so progressives can indoctrinate them with their values. The claims made in this article indicate that left-leaning parents, however, took the advice seriously and their children are paying for it. Dr.

Sax describes ‘gentle parenting’ (and related theories) where the parent lets the child decide. There’s no concept of punishment. You don’t tell your kid what to do.

You just try to ‘model’ the behavior you want and hope they’ll choose to do the same. One mother was playing with her son, then gently let him know that she needed to take a break from playing with him in order to do some housework. Her son exploded in anger, hitting and kicking his mom.

That mom reached out to Robin Einzig, a leading guru of gentle parenting, to ask what she should do in that situation. Einzig responded without hesitation, ‘He’s telling you very clearly that right now he needs your presence. ‘ He needs the presence of some discipline.

Not sure why this isn’t more of a concern given we are ruining entire generations of young people It’s not a bigger concern because these parents have been duped into believing they are doing the ‘right’ thing. Progressives take advantage of people’s desire to be good to push their agendas. ‘You want to be open-minded, don’t you? You wouldn’t want to be called a racist, right? You don’t want to damage your child, surely?’ The split this MS is seeing on the left is the death of liberalism and its replacement with progressivism.

Progressivism is going to talk a non-negligible number of kids into suicide. That is an alarming thought. Could it be true? “Recent studies have called attention to the intersection of politics and depression among adolescents: namely, that left-of-center adolescents are increasingly more likely to be depressed than right-of-center adolescents.

” … This finding is so pronounced that left-of-center boys are now more likely to be depressed than right-of-center girls. The doctor goes on to say that some have offered greater time on social media as a possible explanation as well as right-leaning parents being more optimistic. Leonard Sax believes there’s more to it than that.

In my experience, permissive parenting is now more common among left-of-center parents than among right-of-center parents. That’s important, because researchers have found that permissive parenting leads to young adults with ‘less sense of meaning and purpose in life, less autonomy and mastery of the world around them. ‘ … lower emotional intelligence and lower personal growth.

… is associated with an increased risk of drug and alcohol abuse, and lower academic achievement, while authoritative parenting is associated with lower risk of drug and alcohol abuse and higher academic achievement. The children of permissive parents are more likely to become anxious and depressed. Two decades ago, Brad Wilcox showed that conservative religious parents were most likely to be authoritative—both strict and loving.

From my perspective, that’s even more true today. None of this is surprising, right? Depressed children sometimes hurt themselves or others. This depression often stems from a sense that they cannot have what others have (popularity, friendship, romantic relationships).

Excellent observation on permissive parenting. Dovetails into the gender-affirming debacle. It’s a parent’s job to guide their children towards an acceptable, healthy standard in those areas and how to respond appropriately when you don’t get what you want.

That requires the concept of ideals in each of those areas, and progressives abhor the concept of ideals. ‘Who are you to tell your kids what the right kind of relationship is? You can’t tell Johnny what gender he is! It’s not your place to question how Abby chooses to express herself on social media! Let them be to themselves!’ Parents are stepping away from their responsibilities. They’ve been shamed into refraining from defining ideals for their children and are now turning them loose at a young age to ‘decide for themselves’ with no guardrails to guide them.

It’s no wonder the doctor found this phenomenon was less likely among conservative religious parents. They are not only more strict but provide a set of ideals for their children to live by – a set of ideals progressives hate. To those type of parents I just paraphrase Seinfeld.

Hey you, the rest of us are tying to have a civilization here. We can’t sacrifice everything upon which civilization was built on the altar of progressivism and expect the civilized part to remain. ***.