But if it’s important to us that kids not be “victims of others’ ideas,” we have to educate them “to think for themselves about all ideas, including those of adults.” Or, to put it the other way around, if we place a premium on obedience at home, we may end up producing kids who go along with what they’re told to do by people outside the home, too.' We hope they’ll stand up to bullies and resist peer pressure, particularly when sex and drugs are involved. 'Most of us, I’m convinced, do indeed want our children to think for themselves, to be assertive and morally courageous. They point out that amazingly well-behaved children do what their parents want them to do, and become what their parents want them to become, but often at the price of losing a sense of themselves.'

Many therapists, too, have commented on the emotional consequences of an excessive need to please and obey adults. One study, for example, followed toddlers in Washington, D.C., until they were five years old and found that “frequent compliance sometimes associated with maladjustment.” Conversely, “a certain level of resistance to parental authority” can be a “positive sign.” Another pair of psychologists, writing in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, described a disturbing phenomenon they called “compulsive compliance,” in which children’s fear of their parents leads them to do whatever they’re told-immediately and unthinkingly.

There is such a thing as being too well behaved. 'The problem isn’t just that we miss a lot by evaluating our strategies in terms of whether they get kids to obey it’s that obedience itself isn’t always desirable.

This slant is reflected even in the titles of recently published books: Don’t Be Afraid to Discipline Parents in Charge Parent in Control Taking Charge Back in Control Disciplining Your Preschooler-and Feeling Good About It ’Cause I’m the Mommy, That’s Why Laying Down the Law Guilt-Free Parenting “The Answer Is No” and on and on.' Many such guides also offer a pep talk about the need to stand up to kids and assert our power-in some cases explicitly writing off any misgivings we may have about doing so. 'More than a hundred parenting books are published in the United States every year, along with countless articles in parenting magazines, and most of them are filled with advice about how to get children to comply with our expectations, how to make them behave, how to train them as though they were pets.

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn