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Okay, the title is misleading.
Developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner could summarize complex processes in simple ways. He said:
“Development, it turns out, occurs through the process of progressively more complex exchange between a child and somebody else—especially somebody who's crazy about that child.”
In fact, Bronfenbrenner often said that the one thing kids absolutely needed to grow into healthy, happy adults was one person who was irrationally attached to them and loved and supported them no matter what they did.
I absolutely believe that. A century of research (and millennia of human experience) attests to the many ways in which parental love can turn into a core sense that one is worthy and inherently good and capable and that it can buffer kids against all the world throws against them.
But Urie also said – quoting Leontiev, the great Soviet psychologist – that development was optimized when kids experienced both the maximum of challenge and the maximum of support. In other words, kids need to be supported while they are being pushed. Not pushed in the sense of those harried, over-achieving kids rushing from blue ribbon to gold star. But encouraged to do their best and fully engage themselves in whatever they choose to do – reading a book, wandering aimlessly through the woods, or building a robot – and given honest feedback when appropriate.
Challenge and support. Or, as the literature on parenting style calls it, demandingness and responsiveness.
Parenting style is usually described along two dimensions. Responsiveness is the extent to which parents are emotionally warm and respond to the needs of the child. Demandingness is the extent to which the child is asked to conform to the needs of others. In general, kids do best when their parents (or teachers or mentors) provide high levels of both: the maximum of challenge and the maximum of support. Give and take.
Over the decades, several researchers have noted that there was another important dimension of parenting. It’s been called different things over time: psychological autonomy-granting, intrusiveness, psychological control. Brian Barber has done the most extensive recent research in this area. He distinguished between two types of demandingness: behavioral control and psychological control. Behavioral control is setting rules and high expectations. It’s straightforward. Psychological control is manipulative. Parents who exert psychological control try to influence their kids’ behavior by manipulating either the emotional relationship between parent and child (if you really loved me you would . . . ) or the child’s sense of self (if you were a good kid, you would . . . ). They can also try to influence behavior by trying to manipulate the child’s emotions.
Note: What psychological control does is it takes away from the child’s sense that they are irrationally loved and makes that love contingent on the child’s behavior or about how the child feels.
A lot of people aren’t comfortable with the word ‘control’ or ‘obey’ or even ‘influence’ when they talk about parents’ relationships with their children. But a lot of time that is exactly what parents are trying to do. That’s the job of being a parent: to care for, protect, and raise the child to fit into the family, to get along with others, to stand up for themselves, and to function autonomously in a way that balances their own needs with those of others.
Behavioral control is very straightforward. You tell the child not to take a cookie. The child can decide whether the pleasure of taking the cookie is worth the risk of getting caught and getting punished. It’s their decision and it's about what's happening here and now.
Kids whose parents make rules and have high expectations using behavior control tend to do well. They learn to argue – especially when their parents are good at explaining why there are rules and change them when the kids have good arguments.
Psychological control isn’t straightforward or based on the issue at hand. It makes the small choice into an issue about love, about the relationship, about who you are as a person, and about self-worth. A small decision about taking a cookie becomes a much more important decision embedded with more meaning. Over the course of growing up, kids who experience high levels of psychological control develop lower self-esteem and are much more likely to feel depressed and anxious.
The easiest trap for parents to fall into that moves us into psychological control is insisting that kids not only do what we ask them to do, but feel how we want them to feel. Wouldn’t it be great if they not only did their homework – which you KNOW is good for them and necessary and they will, in fact, eventually be happy to they did – but acknowledged that you were right and it really was the best thing to do?
It’s especially easy to try to convience teenagers that they should feel the way we want them to. Everyone wants to be liked – even parents.
I ask my son to empty the dishwasher. He groans.
“Why do I always have to put away the dishes.”
“Everyone has to help. Your brother did it this morning. You can see if he’ll trade you for setting the table.”
He stomps towards the kitchen, grumbling the whole way. I want him (no, I need him) to help out. But he doesn’t have to like it. I don’t like to empty the dishwasher. But it has to be done.
Letting kids grumble and complain is okay. In fact, it’s both a time-honored and safe way for them to establish autonomy. Kids who argue bitterly about their curfew and who complain loudly to their friends about how ridiculously strict their parents are, but still come home, get to express their autonomy, coolness, and independence without experiencing the risks that made their parents set the curfew in the first place.
I remember interviewing a middle school girl who talked about how she missed her mom driving her to dates. She had a funny look on her face when she said it. On the one hand, she and her boyfriend felt dorky in the back seat and it seemed silly. Goodnight kisses were awkward. They would giggle together and complain about how dumb it was that her mom wouldn’t let her boyfriend drive. On the other hand, when her mother finally gave in, she found herself wrestling with her boyfriend in the front seat and having to handle a lot of things she really didn’t want to deal with just yet. Grumbling together and complaining let her and her friends feel independent and express autonomy without having to take the behavioral consequences quite yet.
It is reasonable to ask kids to do reasonable things. Asking them to feel the way you want about it is not reasonable. It’s an intrusion of their self.
© 2010 Nancy Darling. All Rights Reserved
More quotes from Bronfrenbrenner:
http://www.poemhunter.com/quotations/famous.asp?people=Urie%20Bronfenbr…
