Pants-Free Parenting: Parents aren’t society’s downfall

Kids these days are lazy and selfish, I am told. This is because modern parents are permissive and coddling. One article a friend forwarded to me warned that 'children run the house' not the parents and it was a dire warning for the state of our nation.

But if you will pardon me for yawning, I've heard this all before. Victorian mothers who paid attention to their children were accused of spoiling their children. Mothers in the 1950s who used formula were accused of coddling. And today, when I give my toddler the choice between goldfish or pretzels or insist on time outs instead of spanking, I'm apparently responsible for the downfall of our nation.

There is a lot to worry about in America. The candidates for president and their hateful rhetoric, global warming, and the economy, but not modern permissive parenting.

In fact, its authoritarian parenting that we ought to be worried about. A recent poll conducted by Matthew MacWilliams, a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst found that people who support Trump have one thing in common: authoritarian views on parenting.

This means these parents believe in obedience over curiosity and good manners over self-reliance. And the evidence that this form of parenting is hurting our nation's children is everywhere. Researchers have linked authoritarian forms of parenting with increased rates of depression and the inability to execute moral reasoning. Research also shows that spanking has negative outcomes on children including increased aggression and non-compliance in children.

So often parents who use these methods of parenting were raise with them. And the old, 'if it worked for me it will work for you' reasoning is applied, which is like the hazing approach to parenting. Just because something is tradition doesn't mean it should continue. It used to be tradition to have child labor, we don't now and we are a much better society for it.

Yet despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as a young mother, I am constantly bombarded with op-eds, news stories, emails and advice, suggesting that I am precisely what is wrong with America. Recently, I read 'A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy.' The author Sue Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters. I was a sophomore in high school when Columbine happened, and I remember the terror of that day and how my life irrevocably changed forever — no more backpacks, no more trench coats, and my parents even temporarily banned rock music, that scapegoat of violence everywhere. I also became afraid in a way I never had been before, afraid not just of ominous outside forces I had yet to meet, but of my friends and peers. Each one of us was capable of becoming the enemy at any moment, it's a feeling that has never left me.

It is easy to read the book and pinpoint all of Klebold's mistakes, but what is harder is to look at them and see the comparisons. We all make mistakes as parents, many of them. But unlike Klebold, most of us don't have to grapple with our mistakes in such a visceral way. Our children grow up and we forget each small misstep, and every second-guessed decision, we forget how easily mothers become the scapegoats for our children's worst decisions and desires.

What is scarier to admit in this blame game of who is the worst parent is this: How little control we truly have over the lives and behavior of the ones we most love.

• Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.