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It seems on this forum that people believe a lot that liberal parenting produces degenerate children almost always but I wonder if the opposite can be true. Can a parent who is too strict create a child who actually "rebels" and becomes disrespectful towards others, engaging in violent criminal behavior, mentally unstable and depraved.
I heard a lot of serial killers and mass murderers actually come from pretty strict abusive parents. Now I know that a lot don't but I wonder if they had different parents (and different genetics) would they be normal.
Side question, why do you think society forgets about the strict parents that produced bad children and only looks at the liberal ones.
The old fallacies continue.
Read Dr. Stanton Samenow's books Inside the Criminal Mind and Inside the Criminal Mind.
It's a crapshoot. How do you explain siblings who had the same parents but are very different? My Ex was abusive, alcoholic and for the last 5 years of the marriage he was unemployed. His sister and her husband founded an extremely successful business are are multimillionaires and genuinely nice people.
For the record- I was raised by devout Roman Catholic parents and lost track of the number of guys I had sex with in my 20s. (Yes, I DID use contraception and it was before AIDS.) I raised my son in a very liberal Christian denomination and he became a conservative evangelical Christian. God has a sense of humor.
It all sounds like what I am talking about in the above post(s)....that is, forbidden fruit and rebellion. Your sons religion is probably the result of abusive ex and/or a combo of that and your rebelling against your own upbringing.
Back when we were hippies (ha ha), I knew a very wise man who said "We try to raise our kids right...and peaceful....so when they grow up they won't go out and cut their hair and rebel and join the rat race"......
And it made a lot of sense. In the USA we are constantly correcting from the sins of the past. Sooner of later we have to settle down to a "way of life" that is not reactionary.
I always liked a couple of those CSN songs like.....
Teach...your children well...their fathers HELL, did surely go by......
and
Our House......
The former generations were hugely affected by WWII and the Depression, etc......after that came the CounterCulture, Nixon, Vietnam, Civil Rights, JFK - MLK- RFK, etc.......so it's not like we've had a really nice "settled down" situation...ever!
I went to a church-sponsored college back in the day - not an evangelical church but one of the mainstream varieties. There were a lot of preacher's kids there from that particular religion; we called them PK's (preacher's kids). The PK's were the wildest kids in the school.
Parents with strict rules who expect blind obedience do, in general, have poorly behaved children and teens who do not grow into mature and responsible adults. But overly permissive parents with no rules don’t have great results either. The key is the happy medium. Rules are explained and understood. Mistakes are handled with some empathy and used as a learning experience.
I had an art class in high school with a girl couple years younger than me. We flirted a lot - her parents were pretty religious. She was into the hippie thing, but got into harder drugs down the line. She's been in and out of jail her whole life (30 now) from drug issues.
My best friend for many years had a strict father that spent a lot of time on business travel and was hardly ever around. His mother was more liberal and accepting. My friend struggled for years with his sexual orientation, and had drug/alcohol and mental health issues. He ultimately committed suicide at 27 back in 2013. I wouldn't call him a "degenerate," but he had some bad habits that I'd chalk up to mental illness more than anything else.
Another guy I went to high school with had very conservative, seemingly loving parents. Drugs also did him in, but he has a sadistic streak a mile long. He shot his wife's cat dead during a domestic dispute this year. He's a sociopath.
DH's parents were very strict Seventh Day Adventists. His sisters couldn't wear makeup, and their dad literally MEASURED their skirts with a ruler. Both sisters got pregnant at 16. One married the baby's father...the other got an abortion (without her mother's knowledge), only to become pregnant again two years later. This time, she immediately married the baby's father. FIL had "no idea" she was pregnant (until she gave birth 6 months later). DH went along with the rules, but moved out (and left the SDA church) soon after he graduated from high school. He's been a great husband, father, and grandfather...I wouldn't say he turned out to be a degenerate.
Other than out of wedlock pregnancies, divorces, and another son who likes to drink to excess (a broken rule in the church), the kids didn't turn out too bad, considering. Only one of them remained a Christian and is still in the SDA church. The others are all "backslid" and/or atheist.
It seems on this forum that people believe a lot that liberal parenting produces degenerate children almost always but I wonder if the opposite can be true. Can a parent who is too strict create a child who actually "rebels" and becomes disrespectful towards others, engaging in violent criminal behavior, mentally unstable and depraved.
Of course the opposite can be true. I don't believe a parent can "create" a child who rebels any more than a parent can "create" a child who doesn't rebel. They can provide an environment that influences that behavior, but they cannot create it in someone else.
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I heard a lot of serial killers and mass murderers actually come from pretty strict abusive parents. Now I know that a lot don't but I wonder if they had different parents (and different genetics) would they be normal
There is a massive difference between strict and abusive. Look it up. If they had different parents and different genetics, yes they would be a different person. Maybe normal (however you define that), maybe not. If you are truly interested, there are tons of scientific studies trying to get to the bottom of the nature vs nuture question. Might be a better place to look than a parenting forum :-)
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Side question, why do you think society forgets about the strict parents that produced bad children and only looks at the liberal ones.
I haven't noticed society doing this. Can you provide some examples?
I'm guessing you feel like your parents are/were too strict, and maybe they are to blame for offspring not turning out so well?
I really think that most times, it's drugs that make for a degenerate adult. Illegal drug and alcohol abuse can often turn a kid into a thief, a prostitute, a neglectful parent and/or abusive parent, etc. And someone a few posts up mentioned fairness. I think that's vitally important.
We have a very straight arrow friend who was so rigid that both his kids rebelled. He wouldn’t allow his daughter to have colored rubber bands on her braces. That, to me, is the definition of, the small stuff. If you don’t let a child have any freedom, you will pay for it later. The daughter turned out ok, but their son is a total loser.
I don't know, sometimes it's chaos. Like you have no way to know how something you did as a parent, that you tried so hard to do right, will land and grow in the mind of a kid.
My parents fought with me to make me eat a variety of foods and get me out of my picky eating ways, and I only dug in harder. Every mealtime was a power struggle. I am an extremely picky eating adult now and I don't expect that is ever going to change, more to the point I have no interest in trying, and anyone trying to push me in any other direction just makes me angry. I'd have given anything, to have simply had mealtimes be shared family time where people were happy to be around each other, rather than being left alone at the kitchen table for hours after everyone else was done, after being constantly yelled at, staring at a cold plate of food I'd never eat, and crying. All the attempts at "strictness" in the world did not help that situation.
So I was determined to do the opposite with my kids. I would do my best to get them to taste one bite of any food, but if they did not like it then, they could have something different (something easy to make, or when they got old enough, they were to make their own alternate food.) One of my sons ended up not picky, a pretty normal kid who would eat most things and try new stuff. The other one can be kind of neurotic about food, but he is willing to eat more variety than I am, I think. At least meal times were not torture, for anyone.
But you know, in general, some of the "wildest" adults I have ever known, not necessarily talking about criminals, drug addicts and sociopaths, but people who are really into things like alternative sexual lifestyles, paganism, tattoos and piercings and bright hair...just your sorts of "rebellious" and off-mainstream self expression stuff...
Catholic school kids. Yep. If I had a nickel for every sexual deviant or purple haired pagan who told me they used to be in a Catholic school, I'd have enough money to buy lunch. If that's not an illustration of strictness breeding rebellion, I don't know what is.
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