Obedience is the Opposite of Respect [version 1.2]
As a necessary part of raising children, we have them do necessary things: eat, sleep, get in the car, go to the doctor's. But how those necessary things are presented to the child create huge differences in the tone of the relationship. If you tell your children to do thing but refuse to tell them why, they learn that questioning authority brings trouble where ceding the right to self-determination maintains peace. Children to whom these needs are presented as informed choices and parental recommendations learn that they themselves are also a source for the decisions about their lives. That control also comes from within.
Children raised with an emphasis on obedience to parental authority rather than trained in decision making and self-reliance are being handicapped by our cultural assumption that love and respect are meaningful in a context where only one person has that sense of agency. In most cultures, parents believe they model respect by showing respect to other adults and then yelling at their kids for not being respectful to other adults. Parents are then surprised when their children get in trouble for yelling, despite having modeled that to their children directly. Because of our cultural assumptions about the agency and personhood of children the double standard is not obvious.
Obedient children are expected to make the same decisions for themselves that parents would make for them, but without understanding how those decisions are made. And when the child has a reasonable disagreement or an uncomfortable question they can be over-ruled, sometimes to the point of physical discipline. If a someone decided to spank me in a grocery store for putting too many sweets in my cart, I would be within my rights to press assault charges. Children don't have the legal rights needed to do that. If our parents give us information and patiently wait for our decisions, we learn that communication and patience can produce family harmony. When our decisions about our bodily autonomy are respected we learn that our decisions are important to our parents even when we have a disagreement. There are a lot of decisions that are going to get a parental over-ride, even for respectful parents, but making a point to only do so when the child's safety is concerned and making a point of explaining when the child is being allowed to make a decision that the parent doesn't agree with will show that parents are trying to respect their child's decisions.
As children, most of us navigate a hostile environment where adults have the right to deny our bodily autonomy and can choose to not invest in communicating with our fumbling attempts to grasp and articulate our needs. As children, our decisions are not respected and open conflict often ends in violence; many of us learn to not respect the judgement of our parents and other adults because that respect is never modeled to us. When we don’t fundamentally respect other people’s ability to make decisions, any insecurity we have about getting our needs met can make us feel emotionally justified in manipulating them into what we believe is best.
When we get used to manipulation rather than openly asking and communicating to meet our needs through negotiation, the familial relationships we form are warped by our mutual lack of respect for each other’s agency and by the lack of knowledge of each other's needs. We do not become practiced at articulating our emotional needs to others or to ourselves. We do not become practiced at listening to others during conflict. When we have disagreements, we get over them less easily than our peers in respectful relationships, and we are more prone to fear and resentment which further breaks down our willingness to talk openly of our needs. Without communication, our relationships become inauthentic and feel fake. By our teen years we may begin to project that feeling of fraudulence onto our other relationships, even onto all relationships.
As miscommunication continues, our parents begin to know us less well, their ideals and standards for us can become unrealistic, and we internalize those standards and either berate ourselves for our inability to live up to them or use them as proof that our authority figures are out of touch and not to be trusted. We rationalize misdeeds and become less capable of being honest with ourselves, loosening the fundamental pin in our rationality. We learn to hide our judgements so that they can never be used against us, but in refusing to explain our minds we are also refusing to acknowledge miscommunication, substituting our beliefs about someone's intentions for their real, often very different, intentions. Without rationality's touchstone of our experiences resembling reality, all access to understanding is handicapped.
In contrast, respect-oriented children who learned patience, disagreement tolerance, emotional authenticity, and identification and communication of their needs are better prepared to have stable relationships of every kind. These children, some teenaged friends of mine, are more articulate from more in-depth communication, more responsible than their peers through long practice at decision making and discussing the consequences of those decisions. They are more trusting, but also have very clear boundaries for danger and disrespect. They are more emotionally adventurous, but also more practical and realistic about emotional attachments.
Our culture of disrespect starts basically as soon as kids learn to talk. Respect is fundamentally trusting others to make decisions for themselves; it's not making decisions that aren't yours to make. Obedience and the enforcement of obedience are kind of the opposite of that.
[Please add commentary if I've missed something obvious, discussion and respectful debate are always welcome here.]
Children raised with an emphasis on obedience to parental authority rather than trained in decision making and self-reliance are being handicapped by our cultural assumption that love and respect are meaningful in a context where only one person has that sense of agency. In most cultures, parents believe they model respect by showing respect to other adults and then yelling at their kids for not being respectful to other adults. Parents are then surprised when their children get in trouble for yelling, despite having modeled that to their children directly. Because of our cultural assumptions about the agency and personhood of children the double standard is not obvious.
Obedient children are expected to make the same decisions for themselves that parents would make for them, but without understanding how those decisions are made. And when the child has a reasonable disagreement or an uncomfortable question they can be over-ruled, sometimes to the point of physical discipline. If a someone decided to spank me in a grocery store for putting too many sweets in my cart, I would be within my rights to press assault charges. Children don't have the legal rights needed to do that. If our parents give us information and patiently wait for our decisions, we learn that communication and patience can produce family harmony. When our decisions about our bodily autonomy are respected we learn that our decisions are important to our parents even when we have a disagreement. There are a lot of decisions that are going to get a parental over-ride, even for respectful parents, but making a point to only do so when the child's safety is concerned and making a point of explaining when the child is being allowed to make a decision that the parent doesn't agree with will show that parents are trying to respect their child's decisions.
As children, most of us navigate a hostile environment where adults have the right to deny our bodily autonomy and can choose to not invest in communicating with our fumbling attempts to grasp and articulate our needs. As children, our decisions are not respected and open conflict often ends in violence; many of us learn to not respect the judgement of our parents and other adults because that respect is never modeled to us. When we don’t fundamentally respect other people’s ability to make decisions, any insecurity we have about getting our needs met can make us feel emotionally justified in manipulating them into what we believe is best.
When we get used to manipulation rather than openly asking and communicating to meet our needs through negotiation, the familial relationships we form are warped by our mutual lack of respect for each other’s agency and by the lack of knowledge of each other's needs. We do not become practiced at articulating our emotional needs to others or to ourselves. We do not become practiced at listening to others during conflict. When we have disagreements, we get over them less easily than our peers in respectful relationships, and we are more prone to fear and resentment which further breaks down our willingness to talk openly of our needs. Without communication, our relationships become inauthentic and feel fake. By our teen years we may begin to project that feeling of fraudulence onto our other relationships, even onto all relationships.
As miscommunication continues, our parents begin to know us less well, their ideals and standards for us can become unrealistic, and we internalize those standards and either berate ourselves for our inability to live up to them or use them as proof that our authority figures are out of touch and not to be trusted. We rationalize misdeeds and become less capable of being honest with ourselves, loosening the fundamental pin in our rationality. We learn to hide our judgements so that they can never be used against us, but in refusing to explain our minds we are also refusing to acknowledge miscommunication, substituting our beliefs about someone's intentions for their real, often very different, intentions. Without rationality's touchstone of our experiences resembling reality, all access to understanding is handicapped.
In contrast, respect-oriented children who learned patience, disagreement tolerance, emotional authenticity, and identification and communication of their needs are better prepared to have stable relationships of every kind. These children, some teenaged friends of mine, are more articulate from more in-depth communication, more responsible than their peers through long practice at decision making and discussing the consequences of those decisions. They are more trusting, but also have very clear boundaries for danger and disrespect. They are more emotionally adventurous, but also more practical and realistic about emotional attachments.
Our culture of disrespect starts basically as soon as kids learn to talk. Respect is fundamentally trusting others to make decisions for themselves; it's not making decisions that aren't yours to make. Obedience and the enforcement of obedience are kind of the opposite of that.
[Please add commentary if I've missed something obvious, discussion and respectful debate are always welcome here.]