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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.
There are so many reason kids can become degenerate adults that go beyond parenting,be it strict or not strict. Some people find smug comfort in believing their parenting rules/styles will protect them and sitting in judgement of others.
I think that personality type is largely inherited from the parents. So probably a wide range of "good enough" parenting produces the same result, starting with the same genetic material. That being said, I have seen a kid who was clearly a budding sociopath, whose absent father was a sociopath, and the amazing mother managed to, with a great deal of effort, raise a productive member of society. He's not great, but he's not a full-fledged sociopath.
So no, I don't think that strict but fair and reasonable and kind and compassionate parenting creates degenerates. Nor does liberal, fair, reasonable, kind, and compassionate parenting create degenerates. Having a parent with a certain personality type predicts the behavior of the children.
I think you need to define what you mean by strict or not strict.
My understanding is that many in prison had abusive parents or parents who had no idea what they were up to (or who didn't care what they were up to), not strict parents. And of course, many had normal parents who did care and who did keep tabs, but things went awry somewhere either during childhood or later, during adulthood.
I would say that we are fairly strict in the sense that we need to know where our kids are and roughly what they are doing. I say "roughly" because my kids are teens, so obviously they don't need to report every action to me. But we still know where they are, in general, and who they are with. They do not go to parties and they can't just go off with friends who we don't know or to some undisclosed location. My 17-year-old is still expected to check in when he leaves places in certain circumstances. For example, this weekend he is staying with a friend. I don't need a text if they decide to go have lunch at Chik Fil A or if they go to see a movie, but if they all decided to stay over at a different friend's house, then we do need to know that. Also, he's not allowed to go with teen drivers unless we know who it is and where they are going and when they will be back. Around town with a location in mind, like "we are going bowling and then we might get something to eat and then we will be back," is fine. "We are thinking about going to spend the day in Tampa," is not fine. A car full of teenage boys with no destination or plan is an accident or mischief waiting to happen, IMO. And we do have Life360 on everyone's phone so we can check if needed. I do check periodically and there has never been a time when the kids were anywhere other than where they said they were going to be.
Maybe others see us as not strict because we don't care what the kids wear (within the limits of acceptable for the occasion), if they dye their hair weird colors (my daughter's is currently teal and purple), or if they decide to stay up until 2:00 am and sleep until 11 (we homeschool). They can also keep their bedrooms quite messy before my husband or I will step in and insist that they clean up. Also, we very rarely used physical discipline with them when they were small (and if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't do so at all) and they don't really get grounded or anything now. We can usually work out a way for them to do what they want to do in a way that is mutually acceptable, so there haven't been any real transgressions that would need to result in any type of punishment. Sometimes my son won't get all of his work done and he will need to do it before whatever it is he was planning on doing, but that's just a natural consequence, not us imposing a punishment on him.
So far, there are no indications that either will become a degenerate adult, but I'll keep you posted.
My mother was friends with a married couple who would be in their 70s today. (The wife died a few years ago, and I have no idea if her husband is still alive.) He was a pastor of his own church in the northeastern US, and their children, who would be roughly my age (early 50s), were raised quite strictly. Even the boys looked like dressed dolls, and they were expected to serve their parents, taking care of housework, fetching drinks (yes, the parents drank alcohol), and that sort of thing. The house was immaculate, with clear plastic covers on all the living room furniture. We lost track of them over the years, but I do know that one of the boys landed a lengthy stint in prison somewhere in the Midwest in the 1990s. I don't know what his offense was.
I can't believe people follow that disgusting family. They're famous for ****ting out kids. My aunt and uncle were overly religion us parents who were strict and their son is a jailbird. It's all about balance.
I think more degenerate behavior comes from abusive parents than from strict parents. The OP seems to suggest they are the same thing. I have seen some wid acts of rebellion out of kids whose parents were church going or even pastors and some really decent kids come out of homes where the parents drank a lot and never went to church. My opinion? There are so many factors in hos people turn out the way they turn out that there can literally be no easy answers on that due to the strictness of the parents. And the word degenerate has many meanings as well.
Degenerate kids can happen with loose and strict parents.
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