To Be Titled

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?

I hope I’m not withholding my love when I try to teach Xander what is the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do (morally or otherwise). Without conditioning positive and negative feedback on children’s behavior, parents effectively lose the ability to influence children’s choices. The Love and Logic approach would step in here, but then the question is whether every behavior/choice that parents want children to choose can be reasoned through via constrained choices. It’s good to know the psychological science behind parenting, but I’m guessing we’ll be muddling through.

A meta-level commentary I have on this is the broader societal implication. If conditional parenting does have such adverse consequences, is the world just full of generations of people psychologically damaged from bad parenting?

[HT: SNSK]