THE
PARENTAL
DILEMMA
John T. Rule, S.B.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts
The Kenneth D. Blackfan Lecture, Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, May 22, 1964.
John T. Rule was Dean of Students, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1956-61.
ADDRESS: 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge 39, Mass.
SPECIAL
ARTICLE
486
PEDIATRICS, March 1965
W
HEN I was a Dean of Students Ibe-came increasingly fascinated by the tremendous complexity and subtlety of the dynamics of student-parent relationships.
I grew more and more convinced that the
important forces at work between the par-ticipants were dominantly subjective and emotional, inhibiting mutual objective un-derstanding. Above all I learned the extent of human oblivion to personal motivation
in any such highly emotional situation. The parental tie is one of the strongest of all emotional ties. It is, however, one that should and must be broken, or at least rewoven in a looser mesh, if young people are to achieve independence and personality fulfilment. As a Dean, I most
frequently saw parents when, regardless of
the surface details of their immediate ques-tion, the true issue was the son’s struggle to break one of the threads of the tie. This
is not an unusual nor a new struggle; all
of us have been aware of it in our own lives, but it has relatively unexplored as-pects that I should like to examine in the hope of presenting a fresh viewpoint in a unified and perhaps illuminating way.
The young person has the problem of
growing away from his parent toward
him-self, the parent that of timing his
per-mission for him to do so, that of deter-mining the rate of thread cutting that will achieve a new and satisfactory relationship on a mutually mature basis.
Most parents intellectually want their children to become separate individuals but
emotionally and subconsciously they, in general, wish to hold them and control them. The parents conceal this from
them-selves under the guise of timing. In their
time scale the son is younger than he be-lieves he is. Healthy young people, as they grow up, wish to become independent, to seek their own identity. In their time scale they are older and wiser than their parents believe them to be.
Almost inevitably, indeed normally, a struggle occurs over the details of estab-lishing separateness and freedom from eon-trol. May I emphasize strongly that either the parents or the youth may be on either side of the struggle. The youth may wish to stay too long or to leave too early. Most frequently the parents wish to delay too long, but some release or even reject too early. Sometimes the struggle is of quite short duration and sometimes it lasts a life-time. For each growing individual the de-gree of severity, the emotional intensity, the details and proportions of his own struggle, are inevitably important factors
in his personality development leaving emotional scars or areas of permanent im-maturity or, on the other hand, of per-manent strength. It is a period on the part of the young person of bold forays into the
unknown and frightened returns to the fold. He yearns for freedom and needs restric-tion, he pleads for independence but de-mands support. Even at best his growth pattern is very uneven; the child and the man being present in bewildering sueces-sion until, if the process is successful, the man emerges dominant.
frequently very badly, especially when their control is too long maintained. Indeed,
I have chosen to speak on the topic
be-cause, with the best of good will, so many parents do handle it so badly. It is because I wish to look chiefly at parents rather than
children, and because there is no single and
no perfect solution, that I have chosen the title “The Parental Dilemma.”
The concept of continuous growth with no ceremonial or ritualistic initiation into
maturity is in many ways quite modern
and, I suspect, quite Western. Certainly
many primitive tribes initiated the child
with great ceremony into manhood over-night. The child was trained to be a man
while remaining a child; yet he could look
forward to the specific moment when
man-hood would become his, and simultaneously freedom from parental control. Life was simple; loyalties and responsibilities clearly defined; ultimate horizons limited and
ap-parent; the meaning of life, I suspect, quite
unquestioned, being certified by tribal ligion. The personal focus of attention was a static survival of self, family, and tribe. Egocentricity and self-concern were mini-mal. Such words as success, career, devel-opment, betterment, indeed all concepts of
continuous change, as opposed to cyclic
change, probably were very scarce in tribal languages if they existed at all. The
neces-sity to belong, so acute with our youth, was undoubtedly completely satisfied since the tribe received the totality of everyone’s loyalty.
The sudden doorway from childhood to manhood, clear cut and unequivocal,
what-ever its drawbacks, certainly had its
ad-vantages if one is to judge from our own difficulties w’ith the opposite. It solved the parental dilemma or, shall I say, prevented its coming into existence. I am not historian
enough to trace the changes which resulted
in our continuously developing system of handling human growth, unbroken #{149}by
sanctioned points of advance specified pre-cisely by society, and not subject to paren-tal hastening or delay.
\Vc do have dates of school graduation,
and an age at which one can vote, but all other “last night you couldn’t, today you can” emergenees into greater freedom are bits and pieces, parent controlled, that must be won too early or too late from parents with or without their consent. None of these, except perhaps school graduations, have any ceremonial content, any societal bestowing of honor and obligation. The
cement of the ritualistic and the traditional
is largely gone from American society,
preserved only partially in church
cere-monies such as the Jewish Bar Mitzvah-and by the Pueblo Indians.
The time span of dependence on parents has lengthened markedly in comparatively recent times. It varies, of course, being longest in families whose children attend college. In consequence the period of ex-pected obedience to parents also persists far later than it did even one hundred
years ago. One learns from Samuel Eliot
Morison’s “The Maritime History of New England” that captains of clipper ships were frequently nineteen or twenty. Many re-tired in their early twenties, their fortunes made. Contrast this with the young man still dependent on his father and thus to some degree obedient to him until he
re-ceives his doctorate at 25.
Concurrently there has been a decrease
in family responsibility as our society has shifted from being predominantly agrarian and rural to being mostly urban. This has,
I believe, slowed the rate of maturing by reducing manual responsibility for the
young. The loss of the routine chores of
the farm has changed the family from a group working together for the common good to a group dependent on the wage earner, absent as he earns-a family which can play together during play time but does so less and less as play is purchased or sought outside; and a family which does not work together in a common supportive venture.
forced in nature. This absence of manual work, helping care for crops and for animals, is a great loss because such work adds a dignity and responsibility to each individual that subtly suggests his
ability to be on his own. The resulting shift of parental attention away from
neces-sary “things to be done for the family’s well being” toward “ things not to be done dur-ing increased leisure” unfortunately serves to emphasize authority, control, and de-pendence, and makes it more difficult to find objective reasons for parental demands.
At least one other factor helps strongly to emphasize the dependency problem. This is the greatly increased contact with the non-family world, time spent with one’s peers away from home. The family is no longer self-dependent during their leisure
so that much of the teenager’s life is spent seeking pleasure and excitement elsewhere. This expands the opportunity for explora-tion into independent action, for the simu-lation of adulthood, for experimentation
fairly safely into not-yet-permitted areas.
The first signs of questioning the validity
of parental authority beyond those of test-ing its boundaries usually begin at the first or second year in high school. There
fol-lows a period of at least 8 years during which financial dependency exists depriv-ing the young of their strongest instrument of escape. But during this time they initi-ate, and to varying degrees complete, the process of establishing their own identity
as separate individuals and their freedom to act as they choose. It is a process of acquiring an ever widening circle of per-missions which gradually increase personal autonomy. The break of going to college
away from home is the only sudden ac-quisition of new freedom that can be looked forward to on the way.
This single event is, however, of great importance for it not only brings a sudden increase in independence, but to many it symbolizes becoming an adult. It can be a frightening experience, even a dreaded one to the less mature-a challenge to the more mature. Quite frequenfly it
precipi-tates an acute phase of the struggle for independence. Certainly the early college experience is most often the time of greatest child-parent misunderstanding. The student
expects a far greater break with the past
than his parents are willing to give him, or on the other hand they withdraw too completely and the son either “runs wild” or becomes bewildered. The way in which parents continue control at this point is quite crucial.
This break should be adequately antici-pated. Otherwise the college student,
fre-quenfly without being aware of it, becomes
preoccupied with establishing his inde-pendence or adjusting to a suddenly
ac-quired independence. This can be a serious block to learning which greatly reduces his academic effectiveness. Indeed, for many, I am convinced, a period of one or two years working away from home or being in the army before attending college would allow these problems to be solved and render their subsequent college life far more productive.
In order to highlight the points I wish to make, I must limit myself, rather roughly to be sure, to college-aspiring if not college-attending families-parents who desire their children, in general, to better their status, or reach the same high level; parents who think in terms of a career dominantly in-tellectual, professional, or managerial, rather than manual. These, of course, des-cribe the American middle- or upper-class family, the family of the sort that I have been able to observe most closely.
I can best proceed by describing for you the various modes that parents adopt to deal with their independence-seeking child.
during the teen years to be of great im-portance. Furthermore, the underlying es-tablished structure may be permanently crippled or hampered by the events of these years.
I also propose to limit myself to the fairly normal. I will not consider the broken family, or the highly disturbed totally rejective parent-the parent in name only-in other words I shall only include parents who, at least on the surface, are, or believe they are, genuinely interested in their child’s welfare and growth. You will note that I talk largely in terms of sons for my experience is predominantly with young men, but each type of parent exists for both sons and daughters.
Any classification is necessarily an arbi-trary cut in a continuous spectrum. Group-ing of human beings into isolated cells is the curse of the social scientist, far over-simplifying the complexity of all human relations. You must remember, therefore, that real parents compound these cate-gories.
I also want to warn you that my descrip-tions will appear quite condemnatory of parents. The ideal relationship is never achieved and I am interested in focusing on the damaging fraction rather than the
constructive fraction, seeking to suggest a
tempering of action. I therefore wish to
say in advance that I have a far greater
respect and admiration for parents and, shall I say, compassion for them, than my descriptions may indicate.
First the codified, father-dominated
fam-ily. Codified is the important word. Many
people prefer a rigidly structured value world, a stern world of clearly perceived
moral tenets, of specifically defined goals -of judgment about actions as opposed to understanding of actions. Such people have little tolerance for ambiguity, are impatient with indecision, and have a passion for orderliness and strength. In short, they have a code for living which is the source of their internal security. Violation of the code perhaps taps some well of deep-seated
insecurity which makes their clinging to the code even more rigid. This is a successful, and in many ways, an admirable pattern; its archetype is perhaps the Puritan, its present common type the strong business-man of high integrity and purposeful dedi-cation.
Because all values are clear to him, the father dominates the family. “Mays” and “may nots,” “dos” and “don’ts” are unequivo-cally stated to the child. Schedules and dead-lines are the rule, obedience demanded as a principle. Discussion of decisions is mini-mal. The child lives in a comfortable, Se-cure, strong-valued world-he absorbs the code.
What can go wrong with this? What are its dangers to personality development? What problems does it pose during the process of escape? To what kinds of chil-dren can it be a catastrophe?
Here I should pause to emphasize the old but profound clich#{233}that every human being is unique. Inevitably each is different from his or her parents. The differences have many dimensions-they may be aes-thetic, or emotional; they may lie in the dominance of perceiving over judging, of feeling over thinking, of introversion over extroversion.
Fathers of the sort we are discussing tend to have a low perception of uniqueness. The world is one of doing, not of being. They mold rather than nurture. They expect to make decisions, become disturbed and more restrictive in the face of resistance, and have little capacity for understanding any deviance from their code. For strong children that are like such parents there is little problem beyond a straight struggle over the decision-making power. This can involve defiance and rebellion and generate considerable bitterness unless the father is wise enough to know when and how to yield and not to let his own internal need for power carry on too long.
escape will be quite sporadic and very frightening to themselves for they have no capacity for decision having leaned on pa-ternal decision perpetually. As a result they grow into manhood lacking mobility, for-ever acting from the parental script, and will probably repeat it hollowly with their own children.
For the quite different child, the artistic, the dreamer, the intuitive, such a father
may impose cruel years of
misunderstand-ing through which the escape into freedom can only be achieved by a secretive inter-nalizing of the self within a pro forma shell of compliance.
The dominant father knows such a grow-ing teenager less and less as the youth learns the futility of discussion or argument against the details of the code and protects himself by being the desired stereotype at home while developing himself toward his own identity only away from home and within himself. He occasionally will express his amusement at his parents as he goes through the necessary process of down-grading his opinion of their omnipotence
as a step in reducing their stature in his
future world.
Manifestations of rebellion against this type of father may take many forms. They range from dishonest reporting in order to escape punishment to the extreme of ir-rational overt action aimed at shattering the father’s codified shell. I can remember
cases of open stealing and careless, flagrant cheating, certain to be caught, by young men of excellent records unable to explain such actions even to themselves. Yet inves-tigation quite clearly suggested that these were, in desperation, efforts to punish the father and break through his dominance
by shattering his code at one of its most highly valued points.
Some families are controlled by a strong-willed reasonable father. He differs from our first father only in the mode of imposing his will. He is usually successful, certain of his judgment, and ambitious for his children. He always has their best interests
in mind. Hence, the decision-making process is not, on the surface, completely arbitrary.
Yet such a father by his very strength dominates and absorbs the not yet estab-lished strength of his child, and decisions are always made by him though he may be the only one in the family who is not con-scious of the fact. Every decision is the subject of discussion, the pros and eons are weighed. The father with the tremendous weight of maturity and experience on his side molds the arguments to achieve a grudging agreement that his way is indeed the best way and ends by saying something like “I think you have made a wise deci-sion,” or “I’m glad to see that you are grow-ing up.”
The key to the success or failure of this process lies in the true motivation of the father. Where there is a genuine respect for the individuality of the child, together with an understanding of his personality and his growing qualities of uniqueness, the growth process can be bolstered and a successful release achieved. But where the father has a need for power, any com-pulsion to convince, or any other self-ful-filling motivation, the child is but a puppet and his own identity is shrunken by every lost decision he grudgingly admits is for the best. Bottled-up frustration at his es-sential lack of room to breath, at the psychic unreasonableness of eternal reasonableness, can again lead to violent overt efforts to destroy father.
sug-gesting that a transfer might be a wise move. In his skillful reply he advanced his arguments against this and then stated, “John has always made all of his own
de-cisions, in fact, I have insisted upon it.”
Highly intelligent successful fathers, es-pecially those who have achieved intellec-ttial eminence in professional fields through intense application and discipline, purpose-ful serious people, are not always blessed with equally intelligent sons. But high academic performance having been easy for the father is expected by him to be easy for his child. But enchantment with learn-ing as well as capacity for it, especially through high school, is not the norm.
Fur-thermore, unremitting dedication and
seri-ousness with little humor and play is not characteristic of youth. Such fathers quite frequently expect too much of their sons, do not understand any performance except the best and look to discipline and drive to achieve the impossible. They tend to ascribe to their children their own ability and intellectual maturity at the same age, or worse, at their own present age.
The dilemma here can become a particu-larly serious one, for the situation breeds insecurity and inferiority. Sometimes it can lead to such intense effort on the part of the son to fulfil expectations that serious disturbances occur within him, or it can lead to juvenile anti-intellectualism, seeking a level of companionship where the com-forts of the physical and the relaxation of the unambitious can predominate. When independence is finally achieved, even
though a useful and worthwhile life is led,
a sear of inferiority may persist and normal achievement seem to the achiever to be failure.
There is the reverse of the last-the
simple parents with the bright child who
seems to them quite superior. He becomes the idol of the family. He is very greatly admired and adored. Growing up is easy for things of the mind occupy his time and out-of-the-home temptations have little
appeal. The respect and admiration of the family is all that is needed.
But when self-evaluation begins, such a youth finds himself a prisoner of his family’s expectations of him. Though he is free to do as he chooses, any experimentation along non-intellectual paths, any deviations from the ideal, causes such parental disappoint-ment and consternation that he effectively has no choice but to perpetually strain to conform.
The most extreme case of this sort is the only child from a family of little educa-tional background, frequently first- or see-ond-generation Americans dreaming of higher status. The son becomes so intensely aware of the family’s pride and admiration, of his obligation to live up to it, that no pathway toward independence from the family is conceivable. Especially disastrous results occur when the true level of ability
is below the expectations. Such students in college, because of an overtaxing of both the physical and mental capacity to keep driving, exhibit a growing preoccupation with credit for learning rather than with learning itself. Persisted in too long, this can lead into psychic exhaustion, a sub-jective refusal of the mind to function. Ex-amination “freezing” is fairly common to such students. Even a blind fury of cheat-ing may occur. Convincing parents or son of the nature of the difficulty is almost impossible. To them any failure is always a temporary inexplicable ailment. The in-evitable shattering of the image can have
permanently crippling effects.
his younger years ambitions and aspirations which frequently prove to lead to a false identity.
Unfortunately when this occurs, it very often does not become apparent until the
commitment is well along. Young people in the early teens, in their outlooks and ambi-tions, on the whole, are their parents. They are unaware of this because the forces of divergence generally begin to emerge in puberty. Patterning after father is wholly satisfying until growing internal awareness and external exposure open new horizons and instigate the age of doubt and inde-pendent inquiry. The ensuing crisis may not occur until well into the college years. Gradually or suddenly the young man becomes aware that he does not want to be a doctor, that his interests have mysteri-ously gone stale and he is lost in a world of indecision and lack of motivation. “But
you have always wanted to be a doctor” is the family’s disappointed response.
The general error by the parents which then occurs is an overcinging to a long
investment in the commitment, and by the son a failure to rapidly enough reevaluate himself. He, too, has been committed and believes in commitment and is frightened and lost without it. Yet the forces within him dictate that he should be, and indeed is, other than he had supposed. Here then
the struggle for independence has the added burden of a struggle over goals. The world contains many square pegs in round holes because the problem has not been quickly enough resolved, or rather, never resolved, and the individual must live his life with the perpetual frustration of in-completion.
It is worth inserting here that all the practices of aptitude testing have failed to affect such situations very much. Such testing is a static reading in a dynamic
situation reflecting only where the young man is and has been, rather than where he is going.
Many families have a strong home life, a life in which mutual love is outstanding.
The members of the family enjoy each other thoroughly and are sufficient unto themselves. They know all about each other and have an intense interest in each other. In many ways, this is the most ad-mirable of all family structures. Its mutual dependence lends strength to all. The
par-ents are understanding, reasonable, and ex-cellent examples. Their motivations are genuinely toward the child’s welfare-not their own. They instinctively say “we don’t do that” rather than “you can’t do that.” The products of such a family can be and most generally are well-integrated, worthwhile people.
Where then is the dilemma? In those cases where such a family has difficulty on the way, the difficulty lies in overparticipa-lion, oversolicitude, too much help. The son or daughter belongs to the family, is deep-ly possessed by the family, and when he or she leaves for school or college, clings to detailed communication by every means as do the parents. The family aura is over-extended into the new life. Deeply then the young man or woman is acting for the family, not for himself. He is their symbol, and without his knowing it, the symbol is a burden.
When the son does not do well, the nor-mal process of help begins. Constant inter-reporting, discussions with school authori-ties, every mode of aid is invoked to help the young man over the rough spots, all
with the best of good will. Such aid, helpful though it may seem, only increases his burden. He is too little himself and too much his family, and the growing core of individualistic things that matter to him
conffict with those that matter to the family. The results are frequently an unwar-ranted failure. The signal of such a situa-lion is quite frequently academic
under-achievement, or examination “freezing.” It
is the rare parent who can be made to see
There frequently exists a very strong bond between one parent and a child, most often an only child. The source of its in-tensity usually lies in the needs of the parent involved. It may be a mother and daughter. They think alike and feel alike, confide in each other and have mutual secrets. Deci-sions have a high emotional content and are made on the side least threatening to the bond between them.
This makes again a happy home until the time arrives for beginning the move for independence. Both may intellectually affirm their desire to have daughter grow up, even make efforts which seem calculated to help her do so. Both look forward to a life for the daughter of college, marriage, and future family. But the subconscious motivations against this are very strong and very devious. So between them they manage to preserve the tie without recog-nizing that they are doing so. It usually takes the form of a language of their own based on peripheral signals both recognize
subjectively but block out consciously. The daughter now makes all of her own
deci-sions. The mother insists on this but is perfectly willing to confer with her daugh-ter for her help. As they discuss such a decision the mother struggles to be per-fectly objective, stating pros and cons alike. But the signals are there in the tone of the voice, in the choice of words, in the subtle inflections, the use of the hands and the eyes. And the daughter has become ex-tremely skilled at interpreting such sig-nals. Her empathy with her mother needs only minimal signalled information. Then, having determined mother’s wishes, the daughter makes the decision for herself and neither in any way is at all aware of what has happened. Such subtle and com-plete control without awareness is not at all uncommon. An outsider can listen to the subjective language, even point out the signals and still not be able to convince either participant that the mother has exer-cised any influence whatever.
I might add that this illusional technique runs through all the family relationships
we have been discussing and presents a most baffling problem to the outside coun-selor.
Under these circumstances the child far too frequently fails ever to escape the par-ental web. Fear of leaving home can be so strong that an abhorrence of going to col-lege develops, even a failure in senior year in high school to achieve this end. Where such young people do go to college, home-sickness is usually painfully acute accom-panied by a complete inability to study, or a deep certainty that they have no ca-pacity for college work. They may even be brought to recognize the problem and still have no shred of a desire to conquer it. Time is sometimes a cure, but strong per-sonalities do not often result.
Another form of maternal control is through an assumed weakness of
feminini-ty. It exists chiefly in fatherless families; mother is not only owed obedience and respect, but needs being taken care of. The technique of control is through hurt feel-ings at deviance, the “if you loved me you wouldn’t treat me that way” technique. Where independence is achieved it is al-most always through a final showdown battle after a series of tentative thrusts into freedom followed by abject apologies and protests of love and good intentions. But scars remain and the relationship is never thereafter an entirely good one. The parental error is overabsorption in the child to satisfy an internal need for affection. Where independence is not achieved, a “mother’s boy” results.
And last we have the dominant mother. Her own deep needs exhibit themselves as a need to dominate and possess so strong that the growth of independent character, of any strength of will in the child becomes particularly difficult. The child is the mother’s whole life and every effort is made to perpetually guide him.
where father and mother contend for con-trol, or use the child as an instrument in a continuing battle between themselves. There are, of course, combinations of all these types. In addition there are variable parents who swing from severity to
per-missiveness, from one basic motivation to another, because of their own internal emo-tional instability.
I have given you, really, some arehetypes. Most parents are a mixture of these types in much milder forms. The great majority do achieve reasonable success in raising children and in approximating an effective gradualism of release which allows the
young to grow into independence with
whole personalities and a satisfactory, though altered, parental relationship.
What common threads can we observe in all these types of parents? What are the true ingredients of success? What makes for growth and what inhibits it? The
com-plexity is so great that I can make only a
few very basic observations. These are
necessarily personal convictions only. Throughout I have emphasized parental motivation. Every intuitive antenna young people possess is tuned to it. It is extremely
difficult to mislead them. In general
sub-jective motivation has a quality of per-manence, and every single parental act is judged by the child in the light of that permanence and equated to its underlying
persistent emotional pattern. Immediate
short range variations occur but a persist-ing base of action is generally enmeshed in the personality structure of the parents. Because children so deeply sense these motivations, they are dominantly crucial
in parent-child relationships.
Consequently, I can say that I do not believe that it makes much difference whether parents are restrictive or permis-sive, whether they order or persuade, whether they run a tight or a loose ship. Good and bad results can be obtained from either side of these. It is why they act as they do that matters.
First, if parental actions are truly in the interest of the child, truly spring from an
effort to be selfless, the child will sense this at the core of his being and it will give him a strength and a dignity, an internal security, that forms the matrix of all full personalities.
Action predominantly based on any other personal motivation is damaging whether that motivation be ambition or pride or need for affection. Ambition for the child
so that one may take pride in him, get credit for having raised him well, is a good thing, but sufficiently tainted not to com-pare with ambition for the child for the child’s own sake. The distinction is very fine but very real. It is almost impossible, however, to get any parent to distinguish between the two, though at the critical point of career decisions it can become very apparent to others.
Second, accompanying this effort to be
selfless must be a profound respect for the dignity of every human being, a focal rec-ognition that, in our culture at least, sepa-rateness is a right, and a violation of per-sonality the greatest of immoralities. The depth of this respect determines the quality of the product. It is always attended by faith in the child’s integrity and the assump-tion that violations of integrity are but momentary lapses to be corrected.
The third fundamental fact is on the negative side. It is the weight to the child at the time for independence of the burden of parental love. Admirable as love may be, many forms of it are possessive and far from selfless, and prove in the long run to be a hindrance to the youth’s uniqueness, inhibitory of the dignity he could achieve through love freely given, as opposed to the burden of a love that he feels he owes. The latter is an onerous tie even to the child capable of the former.
of altering them, is a very, very difficult one. The best of psychiatrists can fail to be
of help. Specifically the basic problem for parents in trouble with their children is generally a therapeutic one rather than a counseling one. Undoubtedly this is dis-couraging. I find it so. Its solution is long range and no panacea can be effective.
On the other hand most parents have good will toward their children even though it is contaminated by unrecognized egocentric motivation. Through such good
will, it should be possible to help parents develop the habit of at least questioning their personal motivations. But parents, in seeking to raise their children wisely, give
almost all their attention to decisions. Is John old enough to have dates? How shall lie be punished for dishonesty or failure to
obey? Should we still insist on knowing where he goes and whom he is with? Shall we order him or persuade him? When should we be firm and when should we yield? Where these are immediate decisions they are of immediate importance and
they do carry weight in the larger scheme
of the child’s life, particularly in the for-mation of his habits.
Yet such immediate decisions, whether made rightly or wrongly, are incrusted with deeper interpretive meanings than the mere surface answers. To the sensitive child the mode of making them reveals at the intuitive level exactly how his parents view him, their awareness or unawareness
of him as a person and the degree of their freedom from personal motives and petty standards. It is here that the crucial dif-ference between mutual respect and a game of hide-and-seek as a modus operandi between parents and child is established.
Underlying the best of good will
frag-ments of hositility, selfishness, rejection, ar-bitrariness, arrogance, vanity, compulsion to have one’s way, desire to dominate, need to possess, or their opposites do exist in all of us. This is an area, I believe, in which parents desperately need psychological help at a level they can understand.
Popular literature on how to bring up
children is extensive, but the bulk of it,
though aimed at parents, is focused on what young people are like rather than on what parents are like. Most of the material that parents read about child raising deals with matters of health, instilling moral qualities, education in sex, how to handle emotional problems, and all the minor crises that all young people go through. Almost none of it says “examine thyself,” or illuminates the pitfalls of subjective mo-tivation. It is advice to parents about chil-dren, not advice to parents about parents. The Group for the Advancement of Psy-chiatry, of which I am a permanent con-sultant to the Committee on the College Student, is composed of committees. It has, among others, a Committee on Adolescents, a Committee on Child Psychiatry, a Com-mittee on the Family-but no Committee on Parents. A greatly increased effort in public literature exploring more thoroughly for parents what they themselves are like is badly needed.
I want to close with a broader look at the growth of young people. I have dis-cussed a journey-that from dependence to independence. There are many such
for they occupy far too much of the arena of consciousness and tend to stultify intel-lectual accomplishment.
This is a real dilemma for colleges. I have often wistfully wished that we could develop some mode of measuring the in-tensity of each such journey, of determin-ing where each individual is on each, and the pace at which he is proceeding. It would be the world’s greatest boon for ad-mission’s officers and for counselors. This is, however, certainly with our present un-derstanding of personality development, an idle wish.
We group all of these journeys under a
blanket and call them “maturing.” It is a weasel word very much in need of being dissected into its component parts. I would strongly suggest a maximum attention by educators and psychologists to the interplay between these journeys and their relation to the educational process. An adult’s
per-sonality and character depend upon the
degree to which he has completed all these journeys. Many of them can never wholly be traversed, but the total measure of any individual’s approach to completion of all
