The Law-Abiding Citizen Starter Kit

It's funny how rapidly social perspectives shift, isn't it?

Alice Miller was a Swiss psychologist and psychoanalyst who wrote extensively about childhood trauma. At the time she was first writing in (70s/80s), her work seems to have caused quite a stir. Talking about how corporal punishment can damage and inhibit a child's development was, apparently, something of a taboo as recently as the 80s.
I've been reading her for about a year, and reading now in the 2020s, it's quite shocking that something so obvious could be so provocative. Nowadays, corporal punishment is a very precarious topic with parents getting into legal trouble even over perceived physical abuse.

For new generations of parents, it seems understood that they're not gonna beat up their kids. By contrast, I don't know anyone in my generation (so kids who grew up 10-15 years ago) who wasn't smacked about a bit. Socially, it seemed understood that that was the way to discipline kids. It was just what was done. And obviously, I'm not talking about thrashing kids within an inch of their lives or anything savage like that. But ask anyone who grew up (in Eastern Europe at least) in the early 2000s, and they'll tell you sure they got slapped. I've even heard people my age talking about younger kids and ascribing to that bizarre mentality that it was better how we were raised. Kids today are spoiled, have no manners. They could do with a smack or two.

Obviously, that's crazy, but it's fascinating to see how mentality shifted so quickly, at least here. It's an interesting discrepancy that you'll frequently see when observing mother-child pairs on the street versus grandparent-grandchild pairs. Though traditionally more lenient and indulgent, it's very easy to note that the grandparents have this hardness about them often. It wouldn't be so far-fetched that they should smack the kid if he doesn't sit down, certainly more likely to happen than if the parent was with them.

Which is good, naturally, although a lot of younger parents do seem to be struggling with discipline and how you do educate your kids well without hitting them. It's like we dismantled the old narrative, but didn't replace it with anything, so that we're now kind of in a gray area.

One aspect that grated from the Miller book I'm currently reading ("For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence"). While criticizing the use of violence in education, Miller does suggest imposing a very rigid structure in early childhood and not tolerating moods or attitude from your kid. Nap time is nap time. Now you eat. Now you go out, and we don't sideline that. That sort of thing.

And her argument, at least as I understood it, was that obviously you need to teach the kid to respect authority and order, because how else are they gonna become law-abiding, model citizens?

Which was a bit terrifying to me. See, it's based on this assumption that the "order" out there is a fair, just one that we should want to conform to. Obviously, we need laws and to respect the natural order and common courtesy that allows us to survive together, but I think there's something perilous in teaching your kids that the order that be is good as is and should not be questioned.

That's the sort of mentality that gets countless people killed in needless wars.
It's the faulty logic that allowed the injustices of the pandemic to occur.
It's how hundreds of people are legally stripped of their rights each year.

For the mere crime of assuming that the "system" is looking out for them, and should be respected. Of course they wouldn't do anything to hurt you.

Miller suggests that while violence is not the answer, you shouldn't teach kids that they can get away with anything. Or that it's okay to do as they please. No. You need to teach them that you are the authority, and that they must always respect the authority's decisions.

Except...

It's confusing to me because we expect to thrive off the above mentality for about 18 years or so, and then we expect the kid who's no longer a kid to venture forth into the world and be this independent, self-assured, self-reliant non-conformist. We all want to have kids who think for themselves and know how to protect themselves both from abuse and the various more subtle forms of injustice. Yet how can they do that when for the most important, formative years of their life, we've taught them they should conform, and that they should respect our laws and decisions?

Doesn't it seem like something got lost on the way there?

Parenting seems extremely complex to me, and I feel we're not devoting as much thought to it as we should. It seems that the generalized view of a "good parent" in 2024 is someone who doesn't beat their kids, who doesn't yell, treats their kids with respect and so on (all very noble), but... what does the good parent do, exactly?
We seem to agree on the "how not to" part, yet are still quite shaky on the good practices. I don't think it's enough simply not hitting your kids or yelling at them. Okay, that's gonna mean they won't enter adulthood with all sorts of dissociative issues and trauma from your physical or verbal abuse. But that's just the bare minimum, as it were. It's far from giving them a head-start or a foot up or whatever. Seems to me that the good parent shouldn't only avoid the bad practices, but also figure out how to raise independent, free-thinking, self-reliant, healthy children.

But how do we do that?