Parenting and the Freedom of Children

Parenting is the procedure of encouraging as well as and accelerating the physical, psychological, intellectual development of children. This article explores the conflict between child safety and child freedom in parenting.

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

2PARENTING AND THE FREEDOM OF CHILDREN
parents prior to 2015. Authoritarian parents attempt to impose their own beliefs and rules on
their child without thinking about the child’s mentality, likes, dislikes and expect the child to
show a submissive attitude, without raising any question. Moreover, they draw examples of
their childhood like “In our times, we used to do this…”. This indicates the lack of insight of
the parents for which they do not even understand the importance of freedom in the
development of a child. Freedom of children implies freedom of thoughts, movement, speech,
consciousness. Research conducted ted on American adolescents showed teens brought up
under the guidance of authoritarian parents have low self-esteem, poor social skills, the
inability to express themselves. They do not always receive social acceptance. They are not
able to be less self-reliant (Lamborn et al 1991; Steinberg et al 1992; Steinberg et al 1994).
Recently a research work by college students of U.S., revealed that students reared by parents
who follow authoritarian policies, tend to indulge in bullying peers. (Luk et al 2016).
Observing the cases in which Authoritarian parenting led to the psychological imbalance of
children, the new-age parents in America have changed their approaches of parenting and
adopted permissive parenting policies which oppose the enforcement of restrictions on
children. Also, many laws have been implemented in favour of the freedom of children. If
parents today tend to curb the freedom of children in America, and impose conventional rules
and regulations on them, they are liable to get legal assistance.
Finally, it can be concluded that, the overall growth of a child depends on the
parenting approach adopted by the parents, for this reason, new-age parents as well as young
couples expecting babies, are provided trainings for parenting. Also, US government has
imposed laws in order to protect the freedom and self-esteem of the children. This has proved
fruitful in several cases in which children oppressed by their parents were allowed to get
divorce from their parents.

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References
Daly, A. (2016). A Commentary on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child,Article 15: The Right to Freedom of Association and to Freedom of Peaceful
Assembly. BRILL.
Palley, E., & Shdaimah, C. S. (2017). In our hands: The struggle for US child care policy.
NYU Press.
Parents.au.reachout.com. (2019). A teenager's story about family conflict - ReachOut Parents.
Retrieved from https://parents.au.reachout.com/common-concerns/everyday-issues/a-
teenagers-story-about-family-conflict
Van Veelen, J. S., Bunders, A. E., Cesuroglu, T., Broerse, J. E., & Regeer, B. J. (2018).
Child-and family-centered practices in a post-bureaucratic era: inherent conflicts
encountered by the new child welfare professional. Journal of Public Child
Welfare, 12(4), 411-435.