Parenting the children we have

I have a piece up at the Personalist Project about parenting theories…and practice.

The parent who co-sleeps to ensure a securely attached child despite the child’s restlessness and parental fatigue and the father who steels himself to discipline his rebellious son with a length of rubber tubing to instill submission to authority are both driven by the same motivation: fear. 

…We are afraid our children will disappoint us. We are afraid they will make bad choices, suffer unnecessary pain, reject us, or embarrass us. We are afraid that our happiness will be injured by these things. Christian parents have, on top of all of these, the fear that our children will fall from grace and be lost because of our choices or failures. All of these fears weigh on us, imbuing each decision with a kind of paralyzing gravity. No wonder we are so attracted to guarantees, to air-tight explanations of how children’s brains can be wired and rewired by our parenting, how we can ‘raise children God’s way’ or ‘ground your child’s emotional well-being with secure attachment.’