It’s no secret that we’re a society of tough-love advocates. Simply turn on the TV, and any self-help series has at least one critical, blunt caregiver or role model trying to motivate participants wanting to change for the better. Each week, we can watch Dr. Phil, The Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels, Simon Cowell, and countless others offer no-nonsense opinions and advice that often incite anger, frustration, and crying jags before they inspire change.
Even kids aren’t spared from this harsh treatment. Talk shows like Maury Povich are especially keen on sending troubled youth to boot camp, where so-called drill sergeants can scare the disrespect right out of them. Obviously, there’s a part of us that believes in tough love’s effectiveness (or at least in its voyeuristic enjoyment factor)—that it takes rigid discipline and brutal honesty to make a weak individual stronger or a willful child obedient. But is adopting a severe, reproachful stance the best way to teach or help anybody?
A Tale of Two Methods
Demos, a think tank in the UK, conducted a study involving nine thousand families in which researchers followed each family for eight years (ending in 2009) and paid close attention to their parenting styles and the children’s behavioral patterns. Based on their findings, they concluded that the most successful parenting style—the one that fostered successful emotional development the most—was a tough-love approach. In this study, tough love was defined as a balance of “warmth” and “discipline,” which seems like something most parents would strive for.
Critics of the study believe that the term was used inappropriately, and perhaps that’s true in light of what many of us think of as tough love. But others believe that children are so overprotected and overpraised these days that some parents would consider any kind of discipline stern. In their book, NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman argue that too much focus on building up kids’ self-esteem actually hurts them in the long run. Their research has found that such “excessive praise” negatively affects motivation and emotional well-being.
