We are not permissive (because it's not what you think it is).

Radical Mothering No. 33

Recently I’ve heard quite a few people say that perhaps they are permissive parents, and that they don’t care one bit.

Far be it for me to argue with anyone about how they wish to identify - if you feel like you’re permissive and proud, you do you!

However, because I love words, and I feel like words matter, I want to pick apart what I believe permissive actually means - and I don’t think it means what some of us think it means!

The word originates from Diana Baumrind’s research on parenting styles, which is still widely quoted but if I’m honest, I have many issues with, only one of which is the fact she supported “mild spanking” as part of authoritative parenting, because the data apparently showed it was not harmful.

Her research identified 3 main styles of parenting: Authoritarian, Authoritative and Permissive. Later research also added a fourth style: Unengaged.

Baumrind and other researchers measured the amount of “responsiveness” and “demandingness” showed by parents towards their child. Authoritative parenting, they concluded, had just the right balance of high responsiveness and high demandingness: in other words, parents showed high degrees of warmth, support and care, AND placed high demands on their children.

These were the ‘good’ parents, the data said. The ones that caused less harm, and raised better humans.

The conclusion in a further piece of research was that “high responsiveness, although clearly beneficial when conjoined with high demandingness in an authoritative configuration, was not beneficial when conjoined with low demandingness in a permissive configuration… because responsiveness of permissive parents is indiscriminant (not logically connected to the child's behavior or contingent on its consequences) it is likely to be experienced by the child as unrealistic and overinvolved, rather than as supportive and caring.”

In other words: 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 massively 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 defiant stance.”

What a list! And to think that these are the attributes of authoritative parenting, which is where much of gentle parenting places itself! Gah! Has everybody forgotten that children are in fact humans? Could anyone get away with speaking about any other group of humans this way?

Authoritative parents are “power-assertive” but apparently “not coercive.” Hmmm. I’m not quite sure how that works, honestly. How do you assert power and extract obedience without coercion or manipulation of some sort?

Within this 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.

They still very much hold power over their child, but are simply ‘allowing’ their child to get away with pretty much anything. Permissiveness is a one-way street, and lacks the 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 mutuality and empowerment.

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 (which by my definition, are essentially the way we all get our needs met. More on this next week!!).

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.

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 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, 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 there is no category in Baumrind’s paradigm for partnership parenting, for consent-based parenting, for parenting with mutual respect.

We are not permissive if we are attuned to our individual children, and recognise they need as much autonomy as possible to thrive.

We are not permissive if we lower our demandingness when what we’re asking is clearly beyond their capability.

We are not going to raise selfish and self-centered children (as some of the research suggests), we are raising children who experience unconditional love and acceptance, who will know what it feels like to be loved, and what it feels like to be seen as who you are, and not asked to change one bit.

We are not permissive if we refuse to make rules and limits and enact a soft version of force to get others to obey.

We are not permissive if we talk to children about adultism and power dynamics - things that actually matter to them.

We are collaborators, partners, supporters. We are living in solidarity with our children. We are building trust. We are refusing to use shame.

None of this is permissive because we are not in the business of giving permission.

Our relationship is rooted in mutual respect, not fear of saying no, not in anxious shielding from the world, not in people-pleasing, and not in blind allegiance to data - it is firmly about seeing our children as people, too.

Some references.

Diana Baumrind, Robert E. Larzelere & Elizabeth B. Owens (2010) Effects of Preschool Parents' Power Assertive Patterns and Practices on Adolescent Development, Parenting, 10:3, 157-201,DOI: 10.1080/15295190903290790

Baumrind, D. (2012). Differentiating between confrontive and coercive kinds of parental power-assertive disciplinary practices. Human Development, 55(2), 35-51. doi:https://doi.org/10.1159/000337962