What’s authoritative parenting? What are the upsides of parenting with discipline and rules?
Abigail Shrier explains that modern parenting has become overly permissive and therapeutic. She encourages parents to adopt a more authoritative parenting style—an approach that combines love with clear rules, high standards, and consistent discipline.
Continue reading to learn the authoritative parenting benefits that both you and your child can experience.
Be a More Authoritative Parent
One of the authoritative parenting benefits is that it instills a sense of independence in children. Parents often treat their children like therapy clients who need constant validation and emotional support. For example, where previous generations might have told a misbehaving child to stop and go to their room, today’s parents engage in lengthy discussions about emotions and offer multiple choices for the child to choose from.
The shift toward this more permissive style of parenting happened as Generation X parents rejected their own upbringing, wanting to avoid the emotional detachment and discipline methods they experienced as kids. However, this gentler parenting style hasn’t produced better outcomes. Shrier argues that despite parents being more present in their children’s lives and accommodating more of their needs, young people are more anxious, depressed, and struggling to launch into adulthood. Children naturally need and want parental authority—when parents fail to provide it, kids look for it elsewhere, so they may even distance themselves from their parents and seek authority from extreme political movements or cults.
(Shortform note: Gen X earned the nickname “latchkey kids” because they regularly came home to empty houses after school while their parents worked. They received so little supervision that New York’s FOX 5 news aired a nightly reminder asking parents “It’s 10 p.m., do you know where your children are?” While Shrier says that Gen X parents have rejected their own upbringing, research suggests the independence they had wasn’t necessarily harmful. Kids who spent time alone fared just as well socially and emotionally as those with adult supervision. They also had various support systems in place—they could call their parents, visit neighbors, or hang out with friends.)
For these reasons, Shrier advocates a return to clearer boundaries, consistent consequences, and the understanding that temporary discomfort from discipline helps children develop into capable adults. She cites studies showing that children raised with firm but loving guidance become more successful and emotionally stable than those raised with permissive parenting.
| Discipline Children With the Counting System In 1-2-3 Magic, Thomas W. Phelan offers specific insights into why modern parents’ tendency to over-explain and over-discuss misbehavior actually backfires. He explains that trying to have detailed conversations with misbehaving children is ineffective because their brains aren’t ready for it—children under 12 can’t process explanations about why their behavior is wrong. When parents launch into lengthy discussions about feelings and choices, they often end up frustrating their children and making the situation worse. Instead of long talks or emotional reactions, Phelan recommends a simple counting system where parents calmly give children three chances to correct their behavior: When a child misbehaves, the parent calmly says, “That’s one” and waits five seconds. If the behavior continues they say, “That’s two,” and if the child still doesn’t stop, they get “That’s three” and must take a five-minute break. This approach provides clear boundaries while avoiding power struggles or lengthy discussions that young brains aren’t ready to handle. It also offers a middle ground between the harsh discipline of previous generations and today’s overly permissive parenting that Shrier critiques. |
