How Permissive Parenting Can Be a Tool of Oppression

As an untigering mother and unschooler, I often criticize the coercive authoritarian parenting that I grew up with and practiced for many years. But to tell you the truth, I feel just as strongly about permissive parenting.

While tiger parenting gives the parents all the power, permissive parenting hands over all the power to the kids. Parents abdicate their responsibility to guide and set loving limits. They know how to say “Yes” to their child, but are afraid to say “No.” They wish to avoid the uncomfortable feelings or the pushback that may arise when they draw a boundary. This kind of parenting may seem gentle, but it is not loving. It’s nice, but not kind. Love has boundaries and limits. It requires us to intervene, to prevent harm, and to teach our kids appropriate ways to get their needs met.

NOT. EVERYTHING. GOES.

When parents fail to offer guidance or draw
consistent, loving boundaries, children often grow up lacking the skills to:

Regulate their emotions or behavior. They have a harder time with impulse control because they are rarely given limits. They may struggle with emotional self-regulation because parents leave them to work out things on their own, or rescue them from unpleasant feelings and situations.

Respect others. Since their feelings, needs, and desires are always centered, they are not taught to empathize and consider others. Unaware and indifferent to the effects of their choices, they may bulldoze and bully to get what they want.

Take responsibility and repair. Children of permissive parents are not taught to own their mistakes and make things right. Instead, they are given a pass for their anti-social or inappropriate behavior.

This happens when our daughter bites another kid and all we do is explain defensively, “She’s teething.” When our son whacks another child playfully and we just laugh and say, “Boys will be boys.” When our child pulls a Veruca-Salt in the store and we placate her by promising, “Don’t worry, sweetie. I’ll get you the golden goose.” 

These are all ways we absolve our children and ourselves from respecting the boundaries and limits of relationships and resources. When we only consider our child’s need for respect and autonomy without teaching them to extend the same consideration to others, we breed entitlement and egocentrism. Our children are left without any guidance about how to control their impulses, redirect their energies, or
empathize with others.  

While this is detrimental to the personal well-being of our children and the peace within our homes, it can be devastating—and even deadly—when we view it from a social justice standpoint. Overlooking harmful behavior can create individuals who dominate and violate boundaries. Indulging and making allowances for our child’s every whim ignores how those freedoms may infringe upon others. Authoritarianism is not the only way we teach children to become oppressors. Permissiveness can be just as effective because it allows bad behavior to go unchecked.

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• Young men are taught to embrace their sexuality and physicality, but not taught to honor sexual consent or tame their aggression.

• The wealthy freely pursue their own comfort but are unwilling to give up privilege so that others have access to services and resources.

• White people openly express their fears and tears, yet disregard how doing so actually endangers the lives of black and brown people.

• Those with power and privilege are shown “forgiveness” and leniency but are rarely held accountable for the harm they’ve caused. Their feelings are prioritized over those they’ve victimized.

• Powerful nations and corporations carelessly consume resources or destroy the environment without considering the ramifications for present and future generations.

• Those who are homophobic/transphobic are more concerned about their right to free speech than they are about how their hateful words affect the LGBTQIA community.

Focusing on the freedom of the individual without regard to the social implications is myopic and irresponsible. It ignores the inequalities embedded into our systems where certain individuals (usually the rich, white, heterosexual male ones) are afforded opportunities and compassion while others are not. Laissez-faire parenting leads to laissez-faire politics where protecting personal rights is deemed more important than considering what’s best for the whole community and our shared life together.

In many ways, permissiveness is even more insidious than authoritarianism because its harmful effects are masked behind a smile. Respect, empathy, and freedom are manipulated and twisted to excuse bad behavior and ignore accountability.

As peaceful parenting advocates, our passion for liberation and love needs to extend beyond the four walls of our home and out into the world. What we desire for our children, we must desire for all children. While we refuse to take up the heavy-handed cudgel of coercive parenting, we must likewise reject the reckless magic wand of permissive parenting that can too easily be used as a tool to uphold injustice, white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression.  

Peaceful parenting calls us to love and validate our children; to understand their developmental needs and let go of unfair expectations; to give them space to express themselves and exercise their autonomy; to respect and honor them.

But if we stop there, we are still complicit in oppression.

Tolerance without teaching is dangerous. Taking seriously our practice of anti-oppression means we must also lovingly limit, guide, and equip our children so that they learn how to respect and honor others. Otherwise, the liberty we offer our children easily turns into license and the autonomy that we safeguard for them ends up enabling abuse.