On April 19, 2024, I re-published a story I'd originally written during the last election cycle. It was intended to help people understand the other side of the political spectrum — at least as far as what felt important and even moral to them. Core conservative values often don't make much sense to those with core liberal ones, and vice versa. The following essay seeks to clear some of that up.
While the piece was intended to present two differing points of view without a lot of judgment, understanding where someone else is coming from and why it makes sense to them is different from saying that point of view is equally valid.
Today, I'm going to go into more depth about why a lot of core conservative social values aren't good for children or for society as a whole. This doesn't address the fiscal aspect, but merely how embracing "Strict Father Morality" actually causes a lot of problems in our society. For more about the reasoning behind these values, check out the story above.
As I noted in the first story, "The Strict Father model is what we might refer to as traditional and patriarchal. In this model, the man is the head of the household and his wife and children defer to his authority, which he uses to guide them, encourage them, and keep them safe. He typically sets and enforces rules for the house. Self-discipline, self-reliance, and respect for legitimate authority are the crucial things that children must learn. In this way, the strict father shows his love, by putting those in his charge on the correct path and punishing them if they leave it. This is how he prepares his children for a happy and successful life." At least, this is how people who subscribe to this model tend to think of themselves.
On a societal scale, this translates to a belief in the rightness of a dominance-based hierarchy, law and order, self-sufficiency, and respect for authority. "Rewards and punishments are moral acts; giving someone an appropriate reward or punishment balances the moral books. The obligation to obey is a metaphorical debt," says cognitive linguist, George Lakoff. "You owe obedience to someone who has authority over you. If you obey, you are paying the debt; if you don't obey, you are refusing to pay the debt — an immoral act, equivalent by moral arithmetic to stealing, a crime."
What this outlook tends to support then is the defense of severe consequences and "corrective" violence as a way to not only maintain order, but provide "appropriate" guidance to those in your charge. Ruthless behavior in the interests of preserving "correct" thinking and actions is seen as being justified.
This is the sort of outlook that brushes off police brutality, beating children until their will is broken, and punishing Liz Cheney for cooperating with Democrats as normal and appropriate. Whatever you have to do in order to preserve the hierarchy is not just fair game, but in fact, a necessity.
Consequently, one of the primary conservative categories of correct action is protecting "good people" from external evils all the while maintaining the moral accounting of the system of punishments and rewards. Protecting so-called moral people from those who seek to rupture the fabric of what they deem most important seems only right from a traditional "strict father" perspective.
Black Lives Matter marchers were not viewed by many of these same people as being engaged in legitimate political discourse because they were too far down the societal hierarchy to have legitimate authority. Plus, in challenging those who actually do have that authority, they were seen to be committing an immoral act. January 6 protesters, on the other hand, were often viewed as people challenging illegitimate authority for the greater moral good.
Overly controlling and physically abusive forms of child rearing are a core part of "Strict Father Morality" — values that come straight out of fundamentalist Christian doctrine. But "spare the rod and spoil the child" isn't actually true or in line with any sort of modern child development or psychology. There are no mainline experts today who support it, particularly when spanking is done with a paddle, belt, or "switch". It's not only detrimental to the parent/child bond but it teaches kids that violence is the way to hold and exert power in all aspects of life.
I should say at the outset that virtually all of the mainstream experts on childrearing see the Strict Father model as being destructive to children. A nurturant approach is preferred. And most of the child development literature within the field of developmental psychology points in one direction: childrearing according to the Strict Father model harms children; a Nurturant Parent model is far superior.
Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (p. 340). The University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
James Dobson is one of the leading proponents of brutalizing and dominating your child as a way to attempt to raise them to healthy and responsible adulthood ala the "core conservative" method. To be honest, his beliefs just make my skin crawl, but he is actually one of the more reasonable of these sorts of people, which is frankly terrifying.
But Dobson is clear about the need for punishment, as are the others. Rewards should not be used as a substitute for authority; reward and punishment each has its proper place in child management, and reversals bring unfortunate results. (Dobson, 91) The point of punishment is not for some specific offense, but to enforce the parent's absolute authority in general, as a matter of principle. Any rebelliousness of spirit must be broken.
The spanking should be administered firmly. It should be painful and it should last until the child's will is broken. It should last until the child is crying, not tears of anger, but tears of a broken will. As long as he is stiff, grits his teeth, holds on to his own will, the spanking should continue. (Hyles, 99–100)
Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (p. 343). The University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
If you don't treat your child like a wild horse that needs to be brutally broken, it is believed that the child will grow up to be dysfunctional and self-indulgent. But in reality, nurturance doesn't lead to out of control children — but rather just the opposite. Feelings of security, trust, and loving connection with parents is what allows children to grow up to be socially adept, responsible, confident, and able to have beneficial connections with other people. Some researchers and child development experts refer to what Lakoff calls the Nurturant Parent model as Authoritative parenting — where the parent teaches guidlines and explains to the child why they are important.
When children are respected, nurtured, and communicated with from birth, they gradually enter into a lifetime relationship of mutual respect, communication, and caring with their parents. Modern hunter-gatherer tribes confirm that this philosophy does tend to bear out. Anthropologist, Peter Gray has this to say about contemporary hunter-gatherer bands:
"It is difficult to prove with empirical evidence that the kindly, trustful parenting of hunter-gatherers promotes the development of people who treat one another kindly and who eschew aggression, but the theory makes intuitive sense. It makes sense that infants and children who are themselves trusted and treated well from the beginning would grow up to trust others and treat them well and would feel little or no need to dominate others in order to get their needs met."
Conversely, those who have always been taught to blindly submit to coercive and violent authority tend to have an external locus of control, with little sense of agency or self-determination. They often have low self-esteem and are prone to depression. Because they've never gotten to develop their own sense of or trust in themselves, and never been allowed to advocate for their needs or interests, they tend to take out the frustrations of that on other people who have less power than they do.
Growing up in a home where violence is used to achieve "order" and control and to get what you want teaches children to go on to do this in their adult lives. It reinforces Might Makes Right paradigms in the home, with both children and spouses, but also out in the wider world.
"A meta-study of 51 studies from eight countries found that children of authoritarian parents were verbally and physically more aggressive than those of authoritative parents (Sunita, Sing, and Sihag, 2022). Further, their behavior was linked with low emotion and strong control. Additionally, aggression, anxiety, depression, and problem behaviors in children were all correlated with parent's high levels of control."
Not only does Strict Father Morality advocate for what can only be characterized as a disastrous form of child-rearing that bleeds into problematic beliefs about how to treat other people in the wider society, it completely misunderstands and misrepresents human nature.
As Lakoff points out, Strict Father morality requires that four conditions on the human mind and human behavior must be met:
- Absolute categorization: Everything is either in or out of a category (even though not everything is so cut and dried).
- Literality: All moral rules must be literal. (Few things in life are so clear and perfectly defined.)
- Perfect communication: The hearer receives exactly the same meaning as the speaker intends to communicate. (Most people have experience with how silly that belief is.)
- Folk behaviorism: According to human nature, people normally act effectively to get rewards and avoid punishments. (But it's rarely that straightforward, in part because so little "thought" is actually conscious.)
Cognitive science has shown that all of these are false. The human mind simply does not work this way. And it's not that these principles are off just a little. They are all massively false.
Lakoff, George. Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (pp. 369–370). The University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
I don't have time to go into each of those in detail here, but consider reading Lakoff's Moral Politics for a more in-depth explanation or Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand for more about the ways that communication is inherently imperfect.
In the Strict Father model, empathy is low, and sometimes considered irrelevant. Nurturance is seen as a reward for obedience, not as the primary way to build and maintain social bonds both inside and outside the family. Moral authority and retribution are core values based in absolutes that are out of touch with what we scientifically know about how human beings flourish.
Not only does this model divide society into Us vs. Them, but it justifies punitive action and harm in the name of the greater good by metrics that are often subjective. Yes, we must have guidelines and consequences for those who stray from those into harming others, but how that is undertaken can make all the difference.
T. Berry Brazelton, MD is one of the most well-respected pediatricians in the country. He believes that next to love, discipline is a parent's greatest gift — but that "Discipline means teaching — not punishment." It takes a lot of empathy, time, and loving interaction. In relation to child rearing, it takes understanding of what is going on in different developmental stages and how that can manifest in behavior. This is a lot more difficult than simply beating someone into submission, but it's also a lot better for both the child, and the culture at large.
Although there are many Strict Father (aka patriarchal) cultures, around the world there are many that aren't."Iceland maintains a low crime rate through a strong emphasis on community policing, education on ethics, and a justice system focused on rehabilitation over punishment." Children are so safe, that parents routinely let them nap alone outdoors. It's one of the most gender-equal and accepting of LGBTQ people cultures in the world.
I'm hoping to write more about Iceland in the near future but it's clear that they adhere much more to the Nurturant Parent model of childrearing and society where pro-social values and creating community go a long way toward a safe society with a lot of personal autonomy. That's something that our ancient ancestors would have understood a lot about. They operated in much the same way, blending individualism with a sense of connection and responsibility to the community that did not stem from dependencies or control.
As I noted in the story linked above, "A child raised in a Nurturant Parent model understands the nature of interdependence. He understands that bonds of affection and earned mutual respect are stronger than bonds of dominance." While this isn't a "traditional" aka patriarchal way of viewing the family or the society, it is the one rooted in child development, psychology, cognitive science, neurobiology, and ancient history.
For more about what Nurturant Parent morality means, read the linked story above.
While I understand why Strict Father morality people think and believe the way that they do, there's also ample evidence that it doesn't align with current scientific understanding of how children, or humans in general, best flourish. It's a destructive way to run a culture, and although we've moved away from it significantly in the past 50 years, that needs to continue if we ever hope to reduce violence, and increase human connection and happiness in our society.
© Copyright Elle Beau 2024