Our House, My Rules
People debate all the time about how strictly children should be disciplined. Obviously, this is a worthwhile debate to have, as there must be some optimal amount of discipline that is greater than zero. The debate's nominal focus is usually on what's best for the child, with even the advocates for greater strictness arguing that it's "for their own good." It might also touch on what's good for other family members or for society at large. What I think is missing from the usual debate is that it assumes nothing but honorable motives on the part of the arguers. That is, it assumes that the arguments in favor of greater strictness are completely untainted by any element of authoritarianism or cruelty. But people are sometimes authoritarian and cruel! Just for fun! And the only people who you can be consistently cruel to without them slugging you, shunning you, suing you, or calling the police on you are your children. This is a reason for more than the usual amount of skepticism of arguments that say that strict parenting is necessary. If there were no such thing as cruelty in the world, people would still argue about the optimal level of strictness, and sometimes the more strict position would be the correct one, and parents would chose the optimal level of strictness on the basis of these arguments. But what we actually have is a world with lots and lots of cruelty lurking just under the surface, which cannot help but show up in the form of pro-strictness arguments in parenting debates. This should cause us to place less weight on pro-strictness arguments than we otherwise would.* Note that this is basically the same idea as Bertrand Russell's argument against the idea of sin: its true function is to allow people to exercise their natural cruelty while at the same time maintaining their opinion of themselves as moral. One example of authoritarianism masquerading as sound discipline (even among otherwise good parents) is the idea of "My House, My Rules." I've even