In Response to Megan Cooney (3/13/2010)

Q: “Why, do you think, parents will sometimes go to the extremes of either overprotecting their child and giving into every demand of their child?”

Parents act these two different ways for reasons that are related, but the relation between the two parenting styles is not immediately obvious. When parents overprotect their child, they often try to be perfectionists and attempt to prevent anything bad from happening to their child. They believe that if they work hard enough at parenting, then nothing can go wrong for their child. These parents believe that they have complete control over how their children develop, and nothing else affects their children as much as they do. Parents who give in to all their children’s demands usually are the less strict types of parents. These parents believe that they only have a small effect on their children’s development, and so they want to make sure they have a positive effect. This style of parenting involves giving into all of their children’s wants, which usually means little rules and small punishments for misbehavior. It is clear that each style of parenting relates to the amount of control that parents feel they have over their children. I think that parents should know that they do have a significant amount of control over their children, but they also cannot control everything; even more importantly, they will have a small amount of control once their children become adults, so they need to let them learn lessons on their own. I think parenting is one of the main areas of life that involves finding a balance; the two parenting styles involved in the question clearly have not found a balance. Parents go to these extremes because they believe that their actions will have a positive effect on their child if they act a certain way. Even though these parents believe they are doing the right thing for their child, they are usually wrong. The problem is that parents will often not listen to others about their parenting because they believe that their parenting should not be changed. Parents need to be less stubborn about accepting help because their children’s future well being depends on their parenting.

1.Is bad parenting one of the main problems of our society, and if so, how can we fix this problem? (If not, what are the main problems?)