Even though I am a child advocate, child liberation theologian, and child protection professional, I do not write much about parenting. This is for several reasons, the most important of which is that I am not a parent myself. While I have plenty of experience with child care and teaching children of all ages, I try to stay in my lanes (theology, child protection, and homeschooling) and leave day-to-day parenting advice to actual parents.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts on parenting and don’t read tons of parenting books. I do, on both counts. I read both good and bad parenting books—books with empowering and liberating children as their parenting goals (like Kathleen and James McGinnis’s Parenting for Peace and Justice and Cindy Wang Brandt’s Parenting Forward) and books with indoctrinating and controlling children as their parenting goals (like Michael and Debi Pearl’s To Train Up A Child and Tedd Tripp’s Shepherding A Child’s Heart).
One big question all parenting books ask is, “Is there an ideal parenting style and what is it?” Psychologist Dr. Diana Baumrind is well-known for her parenting style categories, which originally were three: authoritarian on one side of a spectrum and permissive on the other side, with authoritative right in the middle and thus the ideal balance to Baumrind. Later, scholars added a fourth parenting category: neglectful or uninvolved.
Authoritative parenting is often seen as a pro-child alternative to authoritarian parenting. It is also frequently promoted as the “best” form of parenting. But research by Baumrind herself found that, “On average, authoritative parents spanked just as much as the average of all other parents. Undoubtedly, some parents can be authoritative without using spanking but we have no evidence that all or even most parents can achieve authoritative parenting without an occasional spank.”
Authoritative parenting, while preferable to authoritarian parenting, is still parenting based on authority as its core, underlying principle. So, it still often involves adults using their power over children for top-down enforcement and thus requires violence sometimes. And if authoritative parents spank as much as other parents, that automatically disqualifies them from being the “best” parents—because an adult hitting a child will never be good parenting.
This is why I believe in a fifth category of parenting: collaborative or liberative parenting. As I have written elsewhere,
“There is a fifth option: collaborative or liberative parenting. Such parents use collaboration as their main tool. They value partnership with children and devalue control of children.
“Where collaborative or liberative parenting differs from authoritative parenting is on whether ‘the adults are ultimately in charge.’ Authoritative parenting says yes, absolutely, adults are in charge and they should be in charge. Collaborative or liberative parenting, on the other hand, both recognizes that society is structured in such a way that adults are in charge and at the same time acknowledges that children also deserve to be in charge…
“Collaborative or liberative parenting also makes space for children to disagree, disobey, and rebel in healthy ways. That is not a priority in authoritative parenting. When your priority is preserving adult authority, you do not actively think about how to undermine it. But we need to. Not all authorities are good. Not all authorities have the best interests of children in mind. Children need to understand this and be empowered to advocate for themselves when they are in unsafe or unjust situations.”
For more information on empowering children to disagree, disobey, and rebel in healthy ways, see my post, “Teaching Children to Disobey.”