This is particularly relevant to South Asian families. Children often find they would be disappointing the exceedingly high expectations set on them by their parents. South Asian parents tend to set stricter rules, and a lot more of them.
But the study shows that doing the opposite, and being a permissive parent, doesn’t help the situation all that much.
Permissive parents might think there is a trade-off between being informed and being strict—that it’s better to know the truth and be able to help your children rather than not know at all.
But Darling found that permissive parents don’t actually know more about their children’s lives. In fact, their teenagers view their lack of rules as a sign their parents don’t really care.
Darling conducted her study around the world, and in Chile, where permissive parenting was the norm compared to other countries, found that kids lie to their parents more than in any other place.²
Another surprising find was when this need to lie and live an autonomous life was highest. Although popular culture thinks the high school years as riskiest, Darling found that teens’ objection to parental authority peaked around age 14 to 15.
As parents, it’s important to understand when, why, and how our teenagers might be lying to us. It is a comforting thought to know that lying is not directly related to the type of parent the teenager has, and that part of it is the natural phenomena of growing up.
However, it is also a good idea to realize that sometimes it’s better to acknowledge the inconvenient truths about our children’s lives than to avoid confrontation.
As a broad generalization, the South Asian culture is open about many things, but on the other hand, is hush-hush about the most important of things—in many cases this tends to be the disappointment brought on parents by their children.
A study conducted by Dr. Tabitha Holmes looked at more than fifty sets of mothers and their teenage daughters, and asked them questions about arguments they had with each other. She found that 43% of the mothers rated their arguments as being destructive to the relationship, disrespectful, and generally more harmful than beneficial.
In stark contrast, only 23% of daughters found that the same arguments were destructive. Instead, the majority felt that fighting with their mothers strengthened their relationship, and allowed them to understand their mothers’ perspective in a new way.³
Although uncomfortable, arguing seems to be a way teenagers can express their opinions, and explain why it is they want the things their parents find unreasonable.
So it seems that the science is somewhat unclear. On the one hand permissive parents don’t have teenagers that lie less. On the other, being too strict and rigid causes children to rebel more. What is the balance?
Darling’s study found the type of parent who was lied to the least was the one who had a few rules, enforced them consistently (they didn’t give in just out of inconvenience or to placate a teen out of exhaustion from fighting them), but found a way to be flexible and change rules if teenagers made a good argument for why a rule should be changed. This seemed to be a respectful dialogue between teenager and parent in which the parent’s authority was still maintained but the teenager felt respected by being able to present her side of the argument.
There is no formula for arguments, for lying, or for any aspect of parenting for that matter. But learning that some of our basic assumptions about our children’s behaviour may not necessarily be true can help us understand the reality in a different way.
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Notes:
¹Bronson, Po & Merryman, Ashley. NurtureShock. Twelve, Hachette Book Group. New York. 2009. “The Science of Teen Rebellion”, p. 139.
²Bronson, Po & Merryman, Ashley. NurtureShock. Twelve, Hachette Book Group. New York. 2009. “The Science of Teen Rebellion”, p. 139
³Bronson, Po & Merryman, Ashley. NurtureShock. Twelve, Hachette Book Group. New York. 2009. “The Science of Teen Rebellion”, p. 149
