Anarchist parenting: non-authoritarian child-rearing resources:
Authoritarian parents are not unloving, rejecting, or cruel. Like the vast majority of parents, they do what they consider to be the best for their children. But the authoritarian adult is the kind of person whose view of the social world is extremely highly structured, and the structure is very much based on considerations of power strength, of in-groups and out-groups. It is a very black-and-white picture of the social world, so that there tends to be a complete acceptance of the mores of his own group, and, with that, a complete rejection of those of other groups. One of the manifestations of this is prejudice: colour-prejudice, anti-semitic prejudice – all these things tend to go with authoritarianism…
One mother, for instance, said to me, quite kindly: "In bringing up children obedience is the first essential. I'm older than the children. They must learn to respect what I say. They must learn to do what I say. This is the only way I can save them from the world". If you think about this, it is like somebody leading a pet dog through a dangerous jungle; it is not like one human being talking aboot another human being. Whereas another mother from a non-authoritarian group said: "It's very difficult to say what you should do with children, because really anything you can find that makes things easier and pleasanter for you will be good for them. I just take it easy with my children, and it works".
(via MeFi)
