Scrap boundaries! Oh wait, don't though.

Radical Mothering No. 34

I’ve noticed a trend in some parenting content recently, speaking out about how boundaries aren’t needed, and how they can be harmful.

I wanted to share my thoughts, because while I support what all of these people are saying, and I also understand why some people might want to rid their parenting toolkit of the term “boundaries” if it has caused them stress or harm or shame, I also worry about what it actually means to scrap the idea of boundaries altogether.

Like if we’re not calling boundaries that anymore, do we have another word? Are we still holding on to this concept, which I believe is fundamentally a crucial one?

I think this is two-fold: one, we lack a definition of boundaries that everyone understands and can get behind, and two, boundaries actually just exist out there whether we call them that or not.

We often confuse boundaries with limits - this is clear to me when I hear people using the terms interchangeably. They are not the same. I’m still figuring it out! But here is what I’ve learned.

Limits are arbitrary, often top-down rules. They don’t necessarily result from an understanding of needs, or from a connected relationship with our children, even though we are told that “children need limits to feel safe.”

Children don’t need limits. You may want to have some rules or limits (you do you!), but they are not in any way a need. They don’t need limits to feel safe, or for any other reason; that is absolutely just a myth to control children and to legitimize adult power over. I am not in the business of promoting limits.

Boundaries, however, are entirely different. A boundary is a reflection of a need. Boundaries are ways that we figure out our needs, and find ways to get them met. That’s it!!

We all have boundaries because we all have needs. We don’t need boundaries - they are just there for us as ways to get our needs met.

You cannot impose a boundary on others, because a boundary is about you and what you can control.

You cannot “give” children boundaries because boundaries are about OUR OWN needs, so all we can do is show children how we get our own needs met, and honour what children say about their own needs, and perhaps support them to find ways to meet their needs aka find their own boundaries.

“Upholding a boundary” is not about forcing or controlling others, but about doing something we can control to meet a need. I don’t love this phrase because it sounds like we’re barricading for an attack, when in reality, it’s not like that at all.

Here’s an example: My children are being loud, and I need silence to finish writing. I can move to another room, or I can use earplugs. None of this infringes on their autonomy, but it is a boundary I am setting: I don’t want to work in a loud room.

The place where it gets sticky in parenting I think, is what if your children follow you to the other room? This, for me, is a moment when consent and collaboration come in. We can have conversations around my need to work, and their need to be with me, and how can we get both needs met? In this sense, yes, we didn’t need a firm boundary because we collaborated to come up with a solution.

Sure, sometimes we do need to express our needs as a firm boundary - both with our children, and out in the world. But in most cases, boundaries and collaboration are mutually exclusive! In fact, boundaries are supportive of collaboration because they help us figure out ways to meet our needs.

My need was for quiet. The boundary was something I could control: leaving the room or wearing earplugs.

The collaboration piece was talking to my child about how we meet both our needs, even if this sometimes means allowing for flexibility around my boundary.

And that’s another misconception: boundaries do not need to be “firm”.

I don’t see boundaries as walls, literally set in stone. I don’t see consent as a wall either. Both are fluid, both take everyone’s needs and desires into account. Both are moving and always fluctuating and changing.

Both are about togetherness, not separation.

But I worry that telling people we don’t need boundaries might actually translate to trampling over people’s (especially mother’s!) needs, and that feels worrying and problematic to me, given women’s history of martyrdom and putting everybody’s needs before our own.

I think the language of boundaries, if framed as ways we nurture and care for ourselves, and ways we can work together with our children to care for everyone, is still helpful. I think there is even a place for co-creating more solid, communal boundaries for our families, so that we aren’t always negotiating around things moment by moment, so that we do have a framework that allows us ALL to feel held (listen to Sophie Christophy talking about fixed parts of consent on my pod!).

I also worry that telling people we need strong, firm boundaries, and that we as parents need to “uphold” them consistently, means we become inflexible, self-serving, and unable to be in partnership and community over everybody’s needs, rather than just our own. Inflexible boundaries, as many of us with neurodivergent or PDA kids might have realized, just don’t work for many (most?) children.

Partnership, talking about needs, co-creating a framework of boundaries, does work.

There is a place for boundaries in our lives.