Children's Upbringing

About a hundred years ago the common attitude to bringing up children was the Victorian attitude: children were treated harshly; they were punished for their mistakes. If they made a mistake, they would get a good spanking, but the modern attitude toward mistakes is different. Nowadays a mistake is a sign of learning and gaining experience; in other words, you learn and gain experience by making mistakes. Therefore, these days mistakes are regarded as something constructive.

On the contrary, those days children weren't allowed to express their views freely. They weren't allowed to question their parents' decisions; let alone argue with them. Parents were relaxed and confident because they knew where they stood. To cut a long story short, children were totally dominated by their parents. Toward the end of this period, Freud introduced modern psychology.

According to modern psychology, children must grow up in a relaxed atmosphere. They shouldn't grow with anxiety and fear. Freud revolutionized the theories about children's upbringing and parents have been puzzled ever since. Nowadays there's no balance between parents' authority and children's freedom. It seems that children's happiness is important even at the cost of parents' suffering. Modern parents suffer from fear and guilt all the time. They fear their wrong treatment might cause their children to form complexes. Apart from that, when they're harsh to their children or when they happen to punish them, they have a sense of guilt for a long time. Certainly a child needs love and a lot of it, but modern parents' permissiveness is doing more harm than good. Psychologists have succeeded in undermining parents' confidence and authority. Parents aren't as decisive in treating their children as they used to be. They have lost their self-confidence regarding this matter; their situation as parents is shaky, compared with the past.

Unfortunately children have realized this quickly. These days parents are hesitant; they don't know how to act in problematic situations, so from early childhood the children are in control and parents' lives are regulated according to the needs of their kids. When these little children grow up into teenagers they take complete control.

These days children are more rebellious, more aggressive and more demanding. They take their parents for granted; they don't appreciate anything and have become thankless. If the young people are going to give a party; for instance, parents are asked to leave the house. Their presence merely spoils the fun. What else can the poor parents do but obey?