Does parental permissiveness affect children’s development?
Arguments
1. The excessive permissiveness of present-day parents is doing more harm than good to children and society as well.
2. Children should develop the habit of working and living independently and, meanwhile, practise the virtue of being filial to their parents.
3. Children who have a surfeit of happiness in their child hood often emerge like stodgy puddings and fail to make a success of life.
4. The fact that young people nowadays are self-centred, indifferent and inconsiderate ’of others is largely the outcome of parental permissiveness in their childhood.
5. Parental authority in a family helps a child to develop his character healthily.
6. Parents should exercise strict discipline over their children because, the more permissive the parents are, the more rebellious against their parents the children will become.
7. Lavish care and excessive permissiveness will only give rise to hedonism among the younger generation.
8. If one lets the child do whatever he wants to, he will ruin the child for life.
9. We have to admit the fact that we now have got a generation of spoilt, self-centred brats with no respect for their elders.
10. The spread of juvenile delinquency in our age is largely due to parental permissiveness.
Counter-arguments
1. More care for children is not the same as permissiveness to them.
2. The truth is that parents nowadays do not take enough care of their children and often neglect their development because the parents are only interested in their careers.
3. Parents are not at all permissive to their children. Violence often takes place in families in which children are abused.
4. Only a relaxed family atmosphere can help the physical and psychological growth of children.
5. To let children do what they like contributes to their independence and competence in their adult lives.
6. It is unfair to blame parents for the spread of juvenile delinquency. There are a lot of other causes involved.
7. Many cases show that children leave home and become members of street gangs just because they can not bear authoritarian control over them by their parents.
8. Strict discipline does not always work in terms of developing children’s personal qualities. Too much pressure on children leads to rebellion and other extreme actions.
9. Parents are not justified in using violence to keep discipline and maintain their authority over the children.
10. Children are human beings, too. They need to be protected instead of being frequently scolded or physically abused
