Tough Love

Today's Photos By Jan

Our friend the Great Questioner, asked, is tough love inhumane? I've been challenged by this question in a particular way, because I had an instant answer that I figured needed some thought and even a little research. Having done my homework, I'm sticking with my original response.

Yes GQ, tough love is inhumane.

It's pertinent for a number of reasons to be thinking about this, because of how fashionable retro-politics has become, how acceptable it is in polite company to speak casually about imposing your beliefs on other people, and as we think about solutions to budget woes where tough love has been fashionable, like in schools.

The term tough love dates from the 1960's. At its core, if you read what various proponents have said over time, is the idea of inflicting current pain for future gain. You say, I know I'm being harsh now, but in the long run (a) this will help you or this is for your own good, and/or (b) some day you'll thank me.

Typically tough love is applied to younger people by parents or others in authority when the object of the toughness has failed to abide by limits. Nowadays you often read about tough love in association with acting out teenagers, especially around drugs or sex. Many of the authors and web sites that advocate some version of this practice seem to come from the Christian right wing.

Here are some problems with this approach.

1. An authoritarian approach relocates the taking of responsibility for actions from the individual to someone else. One aspect of tough love that isn't well accounted for is how removing responsibility for one's actions teaches one to behave responsibly. There's a logical flaw.

2. There has been some research trying to quantify the long term effects of this pattern of behavior towards others: does it work? Results seem to vary with who's conducting the research. I didn't find any convincing research from advocates of tough love.

3. The philosophy of hurt now for later gain itself flies in the face of all that we know about child development. People who are abused, whose autonomy is removed, and who are humiliated, do not grow up to be secure, compassionate and loving people. They may be terrified or even terrorized into stopping behaviors that are the subject of the attack, like various forms of juvenile delinquency. In that very short term sense, you could say that tough love works.

4. People who are addicted or acting out or committing crimes raise real problems for those around them, and parents who turn to tough love may well be suffering and desperate. Some people say, it's easy for you to question this method, you've never had to live with someone like little Johnny. I had no choice.

This is similar reasoning to what's used by other advocates of questionable practices - they pose an undeniably terrible problem and imply that their solution is the only solution. Thus genetically modified food is proposed as the only way to stop starvation, or the dictatorial sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona mistreats prisoners as the best solution to crime.

Even if tough love worked - and there is little evidence for this - it is clearly not the only and hardly the best way to deal with acting out children, prisoners, and others who are forced to become victims of authoritarian belligerence.

5. OK here's the bottom line, I want to go out on a limb here with an unequivocal proposition:

It's always better to love too much than to love too little.

It may well be that in raising our kids, my wife and I sometimes coddled them or "spoiled" them (although that's another fraught term), or didn't set good enough limits. But our kids grew up knowing that they were cherished, that they were safe with their parents and in their family, and in the larger sense they learned that the world is both scary and wonderful.

Every kid without exception has to overcome aspects of imperfect parenting. But I'm certain that dealing with being spoiled by shoddy limit setting is better in every respect than dealing with deep hurt, mistrust, and inability to connect with other people that results from authoritarian abuse.

One final more personal note. My wife was a fervent believer in unequivocal love of all our children as the best way to deal with misbehavior - in her case with both biological and step children. She was famous for quickly resorting to bribes instead of punishments - the kids loved that. While she wasn't perfect and had her own moments of temper, she was always vehement in her condemnation of tough love. And so she raised kids who weren't always easy to control nor respectful of authority. But she also raised kids who learned how to be loved and how to love with their whole hearts, without reservation or qualification.

Now that she is gone, I can continue to see the results of her philosophy every day as my grown children make their way in the world - loving many others and being loved by many. And yes, with a diminutive respect for authority.

A fair trade.