Education and/or manipulation

Education and/or manipulation

Physical punishment of children is fortunately no longer allowed¹ in Denmark which in general certainly has contributed to reduce violence in the ordinary family, since the relationship between generations to a great extent is influenced by internal family "tradition" which very often can only be broken by massive external influences, in this case the law.

But which means of influence/motivation are adequate in the upbringing of children?

Most immediately likeable seems the nudge approach to behavior change.

The nudge concept comes from the book “Nudge: Improving Decisions about health, wealth and happiness” from 2008.

Nudging is about behavior changing initiatives that work without depriving people their options and work without additional stimulus control, which makes the approach particularly attractive. The starting point is the long list of cognitive biases that modern behavioral research (behavioral economics and cognitive psychology) has uncovered and in daily life often results in behavior systematically differing from our good and well-founded intentions.

But there are already here two hurdles if nudging is used in relation to children.

Firstly, children often do NOT have those good intentions that we like to acclaim as a part of our “human nature".

And therefore parents usually make sure, that their kids “right” choice is/seems more attractive than the "wrong" choice.

Secondly, we are hence moving into a border area where positive motivation borders or IS manipulation, where the more experienced “nugdes” the less experienced to do right that what mother or father wants, by letting a decision in accordance with the parents' wishes look like a decision to the child's own benefit.

It causes beyond the moral dilemma also the additional problem that the child is not brought up to do anything that it does not consider to be attractive - that is what we call “duty”.

Beside nudging/positive motivation/manipulation upbringing children within the legal framework includes other more massive "threats": everything from denial of attention to the refusal of love and closeness, confinement to a certain extent, and probably a lot more that I just can't remember here.

Those families avoiding direct threats are probably the ones with the most gifted manipulative parents who will have the greatest success in upbringing without psychological "violence".

Such these parents raise manipulation experts, who will then make their successful way through life.

Manipulative skills bordering psychopathology are what makes appreciated leaders - but are those the kind of people we want as our beloved ones?

I do not know and have no good solution, and certainly do NOT want to restore punishment as the main element in upbringing - but what do we aim at??

The skilful manipulators will not see any problem here - but that's probably also part of the problem ...

1The last right to use corporal punishment disappeared in 1985 with the introduction of a provision in the Authority Act on the child's right to include protection against physical violence; clarified the 1997 Act on custody and access, which forbids parents to expose their children to corporal punishment or other degrading treatment.

Posted by Philipp Blau pm. 18:29