I was recently invited to speak at the Fathers and Family Conference in Los Angeles, California. My subject was “Parenting in the Age of Technology.” After a little research, I was led to a book on technology called The Seventh Sense: Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks, by Joshua Cooper Ramo. [1] What evolved from that reading was a presentation on why it is so important to use Breakthrough Parenting as a methodology to raise children so as to prepare them for a fast-paced, ever-changing technological era where “learning” is the most important survival skill. In this article, I summarize my presentation and should you require additional information, please reach out at [email protected]
The late Jayne Major, Ph.D., my mentor and instructor, taught us that there are basically three parenting techniques: Authoritarian, Permissive, and Breakthrough or Modern. [2] It is interesting that Authoritarian Parenting has been around for almost four million years. Permissive Parenting has been around for a few decades, and Breakthrough Parenting is now replacing all other methods.
Why?
Authoritarian parenting began millions of years ago and was based on instilling fear in children. Fear of the elements, fear of large animals, fear of unexplained forces, fear of the unknown. Eventually, as monotheistic religions evolved, those religions incorporated this fear-based approach of raising children into their beliefs, and religion was utilized to raise children through a series of rules of what to do and what not to do. [3] Authoritarian parenting, under the various religions, incorporated conditional love, punishment, moralism, shaming and external approval as a way to control children and adults to fit into the hierarchical socio-political systems throughout the ages. This parenting was effective in the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, The Song and Ming Dynasties, The Aztec and Incan cultures, the Middle Ages, The Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Romantic Era and the Victorian Era.
