? 1.Introduction”Tough-love parenting- Should or Shouldn’t?” is currently a highly controversial issue. “Tough-love” is an expression that is used in regards to one person treating another person in a strict, firm, consistent, yet loving manner with the intent of helping that individual in the long run” (York & Watchel, 1982, p.52).
Based on this work, tough-love teaches parents the way how to face and address problems, meet the challenges and then, according to their experiences, they can give a young person or their children the orientation, a sense of direction and support. By contrast, in real life, there are also some more factors that can prevent tough-love parenting from being successful such as diversity of children. It can be clearly seen that, tough-love parental choice in education is not consistent with every child due to their behaviors and their living environment. This paper, with the purpose to raise awareness and change the attitudes of people about the way they teach their children, will discuss the positive and negative effects of this parenting style.
2. Discussion of findings2.1. What is “tough-love” parenting?In the process of a child’s development, there are a great number of factors have impact on this such as the teachers, the friends, or the environment of living or education. However, the first and foremost element which must be totally concerned is parenting. Diana Baumrind, the author of a vast number of parenting research, divide parenting styles as three types: the permissive parents, the authoritarian parents and the authoritative parents. Each of them have their own advantages and disadvantages; however, Baumrind found authoritative parenting to be associated with better outcomes for children (Spina, 2015). Expanding on that parenting styles, based on Baumrind’s research, Bill Milliken, an educator, in his 1968 book first released the noticeable parenting called “Tough-love”.
There has no clear definition of “Tough-love”. Nonetheless, it can be easily understanding that “Tough-love is an expression that is used in regards to one person treating another person in a strict, firm, consistent, yet loving manner with the intent of helping that individual in the long run” (York & Watchel, (1982), p.52). It has been noticed that “tough-love” approaching is positively evaluated to have the higher successful ratio that “children brought up by parents practicing “tough-love” are more likely to have well-rounded personalities and well-developed characters” (Spina, 2015). 2.
2. What are positive effects when a child was educated by tough-love parenting?It has been noticed with concern that each parenting styles possesses their specific merits and demerits. On the authority of Baumrind’s research, there are three models of parental control which are authoritarian, authoritative and permissive parenting.
In fact, as the definition, “tough-love” parenting is one of the styles excluding from the Baumrind’s research. This expression was first utilized by Bill Milliken in his 1968 book with the same name “Tough Love”. According to some reports and some previous researches, it was generally reckoned that this “tough-love” parenting style shares some similarities with Baumrind’s authoritative one. “Parents of the children who were the most self-resilient, self-controlled, explorative and content were themselves controlling and demanding; but they were also warm, rational and receptive to the child’s communication. This unique combination of high control and positive encouragement of the child’s autonomous, and independent strivings is called authoritative style” (Baumrind, D. (1971), p22-23). Tough-love parenting has a strong influence on children’s life as well.
Firstly, tough-love parenting highly develop nice personality of children. Children brought up by parent opting “tough-love” parental choice in education are better prepared to do well in their future. Personality is one of the crucial factors which decide whether a person would be successful or not. The Baumrind’s research reveals that “the permissive parent attempts to behave in a nonpunitive, acceptant and affirmative manner toward the child’s impulses, desires, and actions” (Baumrind, D.
(1971), p.889). The parent enables their kids to indulge themselves for anything they want. However, the overly comfortable parenting can easily lead to some negative outcomes of children as displaying more aggression or less emotional understanding, being unable to manage their time or habits or suffering from delinquency or substance use (Cherry, K. (2017)). Conversely, “the authoritarian parent attempts to shape, control and evaluate the behaviors and attitudes of the child in accordance with a set standard of conduct, usually an absolute standard, theologically motivated and formulated by a higher authority” (Baumrind, D.
(1971), p.890). Nevertheless, this very strict parenting can make children feel stress, lack decision-making ability, fear of failure or have trouble in dealing with negative emotions (Maheswari, S. (2017)). To address almost the negative effects of two kinds of parenting, parent should follow the tough-love parenting or authoritative parenting.
It is important to nurture a child to be empathetic, resilient, patient and know how to protect themselves from temptation. Parents choosing “tough-love” parenting are well aware of balancing warmth with discipline, which is the most effective way to raise their children. The children receiving a combination of affection and regulation are well develop personality traits such a self-control, determination or empathy (Woods, J. (2009)).
Secondly, some parents choose “tough-love” parenting to rear their kids with high hopes for making a good orientation for their children. Mother and father are the older generation, as a general rule, they gain more experience which enable them to get more lessons, therefore, easily pass down these to posterity. Tough-love parents with their confidence and accomplishment, would have the right way to share their knowledge with their children. Parents who take tough-love child-rearing are doing their offspring a favour, not imposing (Woods, J. (2009)).
It is good for children to decide their own way; however, if they receive a strongly support from their parent, it would be better. Tough-love parents neither show their affection as the permissive parents nor do they force the discipline as the authoritarian parents. In other words, the former and the latter blend together perfectly. Parents taking tough-love parenting respect and restrict their children simultaneously. They acknowledge their responsibility for giving their kids some advice, indicating the shorter way to catch the desire and to be successful faster.
Being brought up with tough-love parenting, children would have a very good chance of having a sense of well-being that parents always stand with them and ready to support them whenever possible.2.3. What are negative effects?We are well aware that everything has both benefits and drawbacks and tough-love parenting is not an exception.
It can be clearly seen that this parenting is the most effective way to raise a child; nevertheless, there does exist some problems as well. In fact, tough-love parenting may be a bad influence on children for three main reasons.First of all, some parents often give their sons or daughters, especially the kids under 10 years old, “the harsh physical punishment” whenever they make any mistakes. If the children do not adhere some regulations, some people mete out them by physical activities such as smacking or slapping (Saunders, B. & Naylor, B. (2012)). It is seriously believed that physical punishment would create the classical conditioning; thus, the children will not relapse into their old fault. In the beginning, there could be parent’s anxiety and passion; in contrast, children would be negatively affected both physical and mental health, not only at that time but also the development into adulthood.
It is associated with fear of making mistake, antisocial behavior or loss of self-control (Saunders, B. & Naylor, B. (2012)). The more harsh physical punishment children receive, the more vulnerability they get.
On occasion, utilizing physical punishment seem inevitable. In addition, it is a highly controversial issue that some people think that these were loving discipline and would protect children from harm or bad manner while the others disagree. Children would perform well under pressure on account of physical punishment.Second, tough-love parental approaching in the wrong way would lead to some reverse effects. Some parents dangerously seem unbalanced between warmth and discipline. They protect their children in a serious way instead of training them how to protect themselves, how to be an empathetic, a resilient or a patient person. They overrate their responsibilities and always feel extremely anxious about their children.
Therefore, when a child faces up to any difficulties, he or she is easily vulnerable and need their parent’s understanding and support because he or she cannot tackle this problem by his/her own. They lack confident and basic experience to confront with the trouble (Pieper, M. H. & Pieper, W. J. (1992)).
Children need a caring as well as self-developed and exploitation themselves environment. They have to be stronger and gain more experiences. There are some important factors preparing for the better future.Finally, tough-love parenting could be make children easily suffer from emotional abuse because parents ignore them, reject their needs or keep them in isolation (Ghosh, M.
(2017)). This parenting could be put some distance between parents and their children. Some people find it hard to show their feeling outside so that they occasionally perform their affection with their children. Likewise, some others always stay behind their sons or daughters, and keep supporting them silently.
However, the child’s misunderstanding is synonymous with their belief that their parents do not love them. There could be leave behind both short term and long term psychological impact that make it hard for children to overcome. The children, especially the adolescence, would suffer from depression, low self-confidence, low hope in life or displaying anti-social tendency (Ghosh, M. (2017)). The psychological crisis would be getting worse and worse if tough-love parents do not recognize and have any urgent solutions to address this problem.
For instance, some parents believed that prevent their child from keeping in touch with friends or peers would protect them from temptations. Nonetheless, it creates the reverse effects. Children who suffer from emotional abuse in the long time are more liable to be teen-pregnancy, delinquent behavior or substance abuse (Ghosh, M. (2017)).3. ConclusionThis research aims to determine some of the facts about the “tough-love” parenting.
It is apparent that in spite of the merits, there does exist the number of drawbacks which needs to be tackled as soon as possible. Obviously, tough-love parental option is not the most effective way in every case. For individuals, depending on their living, education environment and their behavior that parents had better decide which kind of parenting is an appropriate method with their children. In conclusion, the above analysis has shown that if parents practice “tough-love” parenting in the right way, it would bring a better life and well prepare for children’s development.
