We are in it together
Chapter 12 of my book.
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Chapter Twelve
We are in it together
Partnership & Mutuality
This chapter is about the truly revolutionary idea and practice of living in partnership with our children and young people.
I’m not sure when I started using this word, but I definitely wasn’t the first person - so I’m going to attribute it to both
and Davies, who have used it in multiple ways to describe a relationship between adults and young people that is rooted in solidarity, egalitarianism and mutuality.Our entire Western, industrialised society is defined by a culture of domination, extraction and over-productivity. Our dominant culture is headed by capitalism, which in many ways holds all of us hostage, and works to persuade us that we might be able to escape the grip of other oppressive systems, if only we could succeed at it, if only we could do capitalism really well.
Professor of Black studies, Kehinde Andrews, views capitalism as the child of colonialism, and notes that we won’t be able to fight racism until we agree that capitalism essentially enables it.
So working to untangle ourselves from our capitalist culture seems like perhaps the one most crucial thing, and can mean beginning with our most basic unit: our family. It means we begin to view our children as equal partners, rather than as beings to control, shape and coerce into doing.
Most of us were never taught, and were often actively discouraged, from thinking relationally. When I realized this, it stayed with me. We were never taught to think relationally, only oppositionally.
And so this is the work we do when we come back to partnering with our children; the work of undoing the ways we were taught and encouraged to exist – oppositionally: comparing ourselves to others, competing, evaluating ourselves and others, believing that our success depended on others’ failure, and believing that reality was characterised by scarcity and a race to the top.
I refuse to believe this is what humans were supposed to be doing.
I refuse to believe this is how I’m supposed to be living.
That is where consent comes in: it is my way to make sense of how we begin to opt out of patterns of domination.
Oh the good old days
Centering consent is not about going back to ‘the good old days’. As far as I can tell, there are no good old days. Not in recorded history at least. Children have always been at the bottom of the pile in the Western world – the history of childhood is marred with mistreatment, abuse, discrimination and neglect; with poverty, war, forced labour, and hunger.
These days, right now, are as good as the days have ever been in the history of Western, industrialised countries.
And I don’t want to fall into the trap of romanticising other cultures and communities, but anthropologists have found that there were, and still exist, cultures and communities where consensual, or at least egalitarian, relationships are valued and centred. They may not look the same as what I’m describing in this book, but there are cultures where a sense of mutuality exists.
This is no longer the norm for most modern societies, and perhaps it was never the norm worldwide, but it is a sliver of humanity that many of us have chosen to ignore, because it doesn’t tell the accepted story of humanity’s fight for survival, every person for themselves, scrambling for limited resources. It doesn’t legitimise the ‘survival of the fittest’ narrative, and this has political and social repercussions: we might have to recognise that humans are in fact wired for connection, care and community.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson writes about the way consensual relationships are embedded in many Indigenous traditions; her North American tribe, the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg, rejected authoritarian power, and “children were full citizens with the same rights and responsibilities as adults.” She talks about the ways children held and hold knowledge that is entirely theirs, and the ways “relationality” is centred in her culture and traditions.
It would be negligent of me not to mention that consent has existed and does exist for entire groups of humans. We have chosen to erase it from our histories, from the stories we tell, from our scientific discoveries, and from our cultural norms. We have chosen to believe it is somehow new and revolutionary. But in fact, it’s a part of human history.
Why does partnership matter?
By choosing to partner with our children we are committing to preserving their wholeness as people. We are committing to stepping out of this societal dynamic. I am consent-based as a parent because I believe it is the right thing. Not because I’m hoping for a tangible outcome based on societal ideas of success. I suppose the only outcome I’m hoping for is that my child will emerge intact from their childhood, and go out into the world requiring everybody around them to respect their humanity, their wholeness. And hopefully do the same for others in return. Not only do it, but demand it for others.
And perhaps they will bring this idea of partnership with them, out into the world. Maybe rejecting that things can only get done by trampling over others.
That is the bigger purpose of understanding consent, coercion and power dynamics. Of seeing domination and they ways it is consistently, predictably replicated in so many contexts, like the dull, uniformly boring idea that it is.
If you stand by the idea that we often repeat what was done to us, that the way we are raised affects the way we go out into the world and build relationships, that in the same way we can break cycles, we can also start cycles, then all the research in the world will only prove what we already know, what perhaps we have always known.
Partnership is not permissive (because it’s not what you think)
In Baumrind’s parenting framework (which I don’t care for one bit, but which gets mentioned a lot when it comes to permissiveness), if you are highly responsive to your child, you should also be highly demanding for the best “outcomes” in parenting. And if you are highly responsive but demand little to nothing, you are by definition permissive, because your high responsiveness and low demandingness aren’t based on actual needs or on a connection with your child, but are “indiscriminate” - dispensed randomly, and mostly out of fear of upsetting your child.
Permissiveness, based on “outcomes” measured in several studies, is unequivocally ‘bad’ parenting.
I want to reframe where we locate partnership parenting in this model, and get more specific about what permissive actually means because I believe this paradigm is missing something crucial: the fact that children are people, and that you can collect all the data in the world, but ultimately children deserve the same degree of respect as any other group of people.
What Baumrind argues is that HOW we use power over children matters. She doesn’t question WHETHER we should, and in fact argues that we absolutely should exert power over. She argues that “confrontative” power is better than “coercive” power - that authoritative, manipulative power is better than disciplinarian, violent, authoritarian power. Not only better, but necessary and ideal.
A parent who uses confrontative power does the following: “confronts when the child disobeys, cannot be coerced by the child, successfully exerts force or influence, enforces after initial non-compliance, exercises power unambivalently, uses negative sanctions freely, and discourages a defiant stance.”
Authoritative parents are “power-assertive” but apparently “not coercive.” I’m not quite sure how that works, honestly. How do you assert power and extract obedience without coercion or manipulation of some sort?
In my experience being in relationship with my children, there are times when I do need to be the person in charge - but it only feels like I’m not using my power over them, if there is buy-in on their side.
Bedtime is tough for Leo (and for me!). Suddenly at 8pm, he is full of creative energy and has a ton of ideas for things to do. This would potentially be okay, if he didn’t also need me to sit by his bed as he falls asleep, and as a result need to go to bed at a time that is reasonable for me, too. He gets that - and so when I’m reminding him to go through the motions of bedtime, and giving him plenty of time to do that, he knows there’s a reason I’m shepherding him through it – we’ve talked about it many times. If I’m having a tough day or more tired than usual and revert back to what he calls “bossing me around”, in other words rushing him and trying to make him do things before he’s ready, then it’s almost like a switch flips and he’s all of a sudden combative. He can sense the balance of power has shifted, and we’re no longer working together, but in opposition to one another.
In my experience, there is a fine line between being the person who is leading, where leadership comes from a shared sense of understanding, and being the person using our power to compell others to do things. I don’t really see how you can be “power-assertive” and also not be coercing at the same time. I recognise that ‘coercion’ is a really strong word - nobody wants to believe they are doing it. But the thing is, it’s accurate. When we take advantage of power imbalances to get people to do things they haven’t agreed to - even things we believe are in their best interests - it’s coercive.
Within Baumrind’s framework, permissive parents are essentially not using their power ‘properly.’
At first glance, I see myself here more than I do in the other parenting styles. I refuse to control, bribe and punish; I have low-ish demands of my children but am also highly engaged.
The bit where I begin to see how I’m NOT permissive, is this: Permissive parents are also misusing their power, but in different ways: they are responding in a random, over-bearing way, that appears to lack a sense of attunement to their child, AND they are demanding nothing across the board. It is not a partnership: it’s a one-way street.
They still very much hold power over their child, but are simply ‘allowing’ their child to get away with pretty much anything. Permissiveness lacks a true understanding of power dynamics and mutuality. Permissiveness is grounded in fear, not love.
This is not ‘power with’ parenting that many of us talk about when we refer to partnership parenting or consent-based parenting or peaceful parenting, which is characterized by reciprocity and collaboration.
Permissive parenting is NOT the adult seeking to understand power dynamics, and intentionally making a choice to partner with their child. Nope! Permissive parents are still very much in charge nominally-speaking, but they are simply not exerting the power that they still hold.
Another difference is that permissive parenting doesn’t fully understand the difference between boundaries and limits; partnering with our children has nothing to do with limits, and much to do with boundaries.
An analogy for permissiveness might be a monarch on their throne. An authoritarian monarch will exert power through violence or the threat of violence; a monarch who is more authoritative might be more responsive to their subjects, but they will be subjects nonetheless. A permissive monarch might respond and people please out of fear, and then essentially let their subjects run circles around them, also out of fear.
The crucial aspect, for me, is that the permissive monarch IS NOT GIVING UP THEIR THRONE. They are not engaging in democratic decision-making, they are not ruling collaboratively. They forget about their own needs and are unable to express them. They are not attuned to their subjects because they’re scared of not being liked. Yet they aren’t turning their country into a democracy quite yet - they are powerless, but still on their throne.
Partnership parenting exists outside of our mainstream parenting frameworks because it is not about asserting power in any way, and yet it’s also not about permissiveness.
“Harmonious” parents?
Here is what I see when I think of high responsiveness: I see a parent who is highly attuned to their child, who understands their child’s needs, who sees their behaviour as communication, who listens to their child and is on their side, and who works to accept them as the fully-formed person they are.
And here is what I see when I think of low (but not no) demandingness: I see a parent who understands that children, like all people, do better when they feel in control, and that relationship often flourishes when we build a culture of consent, when we work together, when we centre collaboration over power or lack of power. I see a parent who does the inner work to disentangle themselves from arbitrary demands and “musts”, and recognizes what really matters.
I see a parent who makes decisions based on love and compassion, based on a shared understanding, not fear.
This, to me, is not a permissive parent.
What I described above - a parent who is responsive but not helicoptery or controlling, who makes appropriate demands and sometimes low to no demands, who is not in control, nor out of control, but engages in a mutual relationship with their children - that is not a permissive parent.
That, to me, is someone parenting in partnership! And guess what?
Baumrind did in fact write one single paper on parents who partner. She kept it very quiet, because apparently in her sample, there weren’t very many of them. She called these parents “harmonious” and noticed that their children’s outcomes were in fact not bad.
Part of me is like, Ha! See?? We exist. But the majority of me doesn’t need Baumrind to validate what I know to be right. So, I stand by my previous statement: we don’t need Baumrind’s parenting framework, it’s harmful, let’s scrap it.
We are not “harmonious”! That makes it sound like we walk around in flowy dresses and our children run barefoot in fields all day. I mean – there’s nothing wrong with that. But I don’t find a whole lot of ease in partnering with my children. It’s difficult, always-changing work. It’s beautiful too, of course. But it’s not always, or even often, harmonious.
We are partners
Partnership is rooted in trust, connection and attachment. It encourages us to get to know the child in front of us and to build a strong relationship with our child. It nudges us to trust that young people are capable, whole humans who know what they need and can make choices for themselves.
An understanding of partnership moves us from relating to each other from opposing sides, to sitting side by side. It shifts our focus from creating rules and limits, to understanding what solidarity looks like.
It moves consent-based practice from a way to get what we want, to a way to collaborate for a common objective. This is a crucial point: centering consent is not about managing behavior, or getting a certain outcome, or getting our children to do things the way we think they should be done.
It is about honouring our children’s wholeness and working with them, not secretly trying to change their behavior, or mould who they become.
Partnership is an important condition of creating a consent-based environment, because it moves the focus from competition, comparison and hoarding, to collaboration.
But I also think it’s deeper than collaboration – because it is honouring the bond between a caregiver and their child. Anyone can collaborate, even if they don’t particularly like one another. But partnership is rooted in trust, unconditional love, non-judgment and a sense we belong together.
It is a crucial aspect of creating a culture where consent can thrive, but it’s also HOW consent expresses itself. It is not only the sea we swim in, but also the way marine life moves and interacts. There is no line sometimes, between where the sea ends and where a form of life begins – in the same way there is actually, scientifically, no firm line between the atoms that make up our bodies and those in the air around us, always vibrating with life, always intermingling.
We are raised to build walls between us but we forget this crucial point: at the risk of sounding a little out there, we are LITERALLY all made of the same thing, all bleeding into one another.
At some point the culture we are creating in our home, will bleed into the ways we express consent-based-ness.
Expanding mutuality
Mutuality is the way that we share feeling and experiences and exercise mutual consideration and respect. Mutuality is born in relationship with others, with community and with place.
In human relationships, it isn’t always verbal and obvious. If we are in a close, unconditional relationship with our child, we’ll often know where their boundaries lie well before they verbally tell us. We’ll often be able to sense whether they are reluctant, or enthusiastic. We’ll have a deep sense of what their needs our, because we might recognize the same needs in ourselves.
Mutuality is messy and complex and it is also a practice. We will get it wrong, a lot. But sharing our emotional lives and experiences and thoughts is going to matter.
Mutuality also applies to our wider community. It means building connections based on mutual understandings, a shared culture or views, and mutual aid. Creating communities that rely on mutuality lays the groundwork for growing a culture of consent within our community.
Relationship to place is something many of us are becoming increasingly aware of. Mutuality here looks like getting to know the land we live on, and building sustainable relationships and rituals that tie us to the earth, and the earth to us.
What does this have to do with consent? Well, it wouldn’t be entirely far-fetched to argue that what we need to reclaim a consent-based relationship to the physical places we inhabit. In fact, many Indigenous people have been sustaining this kind of relationship for millennia – a system of mutuality between the land and humans that ensures everyone is respected and cared for.
Whether it is to a place, a tree, a piece of land, a culture, or a human being – it is still consent-based-ness.
We have lost this innate sense. We do not see organic boundaries anymore. And we do not sense our shared connection. We are told we can take and take until someone tells us to stop, and even then we sometimes still take. We are told to armor up or people will trample all over us. We chop trees and strip the seas of their life with reckless abandon, not sensing what the earth might be telling us. We pick flowers and never ask. We treat animals, and children, like less than fully sentient beings. We reject our place in a world that was designed to function on seeing and recognizing the ways we are all connected and interdependent.
Consent-based being is also about reclaiming that sense of mutuality with everything around us, including the very core of our own being, the one we have wrapped up so tightly we often struggle to break free.
I am starting there, with me, but that is not where I’m going to stop.
Ok Ok but HOW DO WE DO IT?
We have looked at creating a culture of consent and all the many things we need. We’ve pulled them all together in this chapter and centered them in trust-based relationship, partnership and mutuality.
We feel firm about why centering consent matters, and how it expands out from our family to every single setting and relationship and community we inhabit.
But still: on a daily basis, how do we be consent-based?
This is not a “how to” book because I am still how to-ing, and messing up, every day. But I do have some experience and research and thoughts I can share.
In the next few chapters, I’ll share what it might look like, in actual practice, to centre consent in your home and the spaces you inhabit.
I am also committed to working to change the material conditions of children and young people in society, because these conditions allow the kind of domination to continue to happen: things like the rights they possess and the way adults are made to respect them, children’s ability to make decisions from voting for politicians to being consulted about legislation to making decisions about their everyday lives. These are not only mindset and cultural changes: these things require systemic change.
That, too, is part of how we centre consent.
Thanks for reading people! The next 3 chapters are going to focus more on the actual daily ways centering consent might show up.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Fran x
References:
Andrews, K. (2021). The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World. Allen Lane.
Baumrind, D. (1971). Harmonious parents and their preschool children. Developmental Psychology, 4, 99-102.
Such good work Fran.
I highlighted this:
“Consent-based parenting or peaceful parenting, which is characterized by reciprocity and collaboration.”
Because I wanted to ask - what about when a parent is doing their best to bring reciprocity and collaboration, and for whatever reason, a child cannot often engage in that way? When they are developmentally mostly existing in a unilateral phase, of this is the way things have to be?
We’ve talked about it a bit and I imagine you’ll say it’s an ongoing and unfolding process. Ross Greene’s Plan C is helpful for thinking about these kids.
And you do allude to the messiness and often not-peaceful feeling nature of collaborative parenting! Low demand can be high demand for us as parents.
Not okay to pay kids to read. Yes, okay to ban kids’s phones bell to bell, if they are in school, that is