by Carrie Benson

Created on: July 23, 2007

"Friendly Parenting - A Disastrous Experiment"

It is no news to those of us over the age of 30 that parenting styles in America have changed drastically since we were children. Certainly the new style of "friendly parenting" employed by parents raising children born after 1985, has had some positive effects. Parents are less likely to engage in corporal punishment, children are given more freedom to express themselves, rigid rules have been replaced by a set of rules that take into account a child's personality and/or disposition. These are certainly improvements.

However, friendly parenting has had several disastrous effects on the children it has produced and our society as a whole. The chief among these are a lack of respect for authority, a break down in the parent-child relationship, and a general sense of entitlement.

What is "friendly parenting"? I would define it as the style of parenting that focuses on being a child's friend vs. being the child's parent. The authoritarian role of parent is shunned and the parent instead acts as the child's friend, in essence their contemporary. The child's parent asks the child to do things rather than telling the child to do things. The child is allowed to participate in punishment crafting, and the parent does everything possible not to appear as the "bad guy". Certainly in some respects this style of parenting can seem benign. However, as the generation that first experienced this style of parenting is now entering the adult world, it is becoming apparent that many of their parents have taken this philosophy to the extreme with disastrous results.

Ever notice how the college students of today seem to have no respect for teachers, authority, the law? Ask any long serving high school teacher if they have noticed a change in the kids they teach over the past 10 years. Children who are raised by a friend instead of a parent do not learn to respect authority. This carries over into their adult lives, they answer to no one except for themselves. They do not see authority as valid, instead they see authority figures as their contemporaries.

The parent - child relationship is also a casualty of friendly parenting. Children have plenty of friends, what use do they have for a friend that starts to try to act as a parent? A friend who tells them they can't do what they want to do? A friendly parent who starts trying to act like a real parent once a child is a teenager has a rude awakening in store for them. So most times these parents do the only thing they can to salvage the relationship, they remain friends with the child. These are the kind of parents who "allow" their children to serve alcohol in their house, have sex in their homes, etc. The kind who just want to be one of the gang.

The final disastrous result that I will address is the sense of entitlement that these children develop. A friendly parent does not make a child work, the child should just want to do those chores, right? Wrong. Children of friendly parents do not like to be told what to do, do not feel they "have" to follow the rules, and so on. This works out really well in job situations. Try telling your not-so-friendly boss that you can't make it into work on time because you're not a morning person. And we wonder why as a society we have so many under-achieving young people in the job market and 5+ year college seniors?

Wake up America, your child needs the rules and structure of a real parent, not another friend.

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