Parenting and the Freedom of Children

Running Head: PARENTING AND THE FREEDOM OF CHILDREN
PARENTING AND THE FREEDOM OF CHILDREN
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1PARENTING AND THE FREEDOM OF CHILDREN
Parenting is the procedure of encouraging as well as and accelerating the physical,
psychological, intellectual development of children. In their course of parenting, Parents
often ignore “children’s’ freedom”, one of the essential elements that accelerates the
psychological as well as intellectual development of the children. This happens because of
parents’ excessive concern for the safety of their children. On the other hand, most of the
children want to break the shell of restrictions and learn new things by exploring the world
around them. Thus, there arises a conflict between child safety and child freedom as well as
development.
One such incident of conflict arose a teenage girl and her strictly catholic family.
Since her childhood she was supposed to abide by the rule of her family in case of basic
personal choices, for example, her hairstyle, how long her skirt should be, what should be her
favourite movie. When she grew up the boundaries of domination increased. Conflict was on
what subject she should choose to study; the political issues she should be concerned about
and so on. She was not even allowed to make her weekend plans on her own. She did not
even have the right to express her opinion freely. Her own house became a prison for her. At
the age of 17 she parted her ways. Later she revealed about her painful childhood in her
personal blogs and her story caught the eyes of the media.
This was an incident prior to 2015. A brief analysis of this incident reveals that, this is
an example of Authoritarian Parenting, in which parents want children to follow them
blindly.
This example is indicative of the fact that prior to 2015, there were many parents in South
western as well as Western countries who believed in Authoritarian Parenting. Statistical
results show, even America was one of such countries where there were many Authoritarian