A question of discipline?

Hi everyone,

My name is Natasha I'm a 30-year-old single mother of a 9 going on 19 yr old daughter. I am posting this thread on here because at the moment I am undertaking a piece of research for my doctorate on parents, children and discipline. My interest in this area has developed through my own experience and difficulties as a parent alongside a concern over the increased attention that parenting has received both politically and in the popular press.

I would therefore like to know how you as parents feel about parenting in the 21st century. I am interested in a wide vary of aspects of parenting as my research is still in the early stages. I would therefore be very grateful of any feedback that you could give me as I want this research to be representative of the reality of parenting and not another stick with which to beat parents with. Below I will set out some questions as a guide but please feel free discuss other things that concern, annoy and elate you as a parent.

Do you welcome or detest the political/media attention on parenting?
What do you feel about parents being punished for their children's behaviour?
Do you feel that parents today are lacking the parenting skills of previous generations?
Do you worry about your own parenting skills and how to effectively discipline your child/ren?
Do you think that in society as a whole children lack discipline?
What discipline techniques do you use and are they effective?
Do you feel that it is hard to balance your role as authority figure and loving parent?

I would also appreciate some feedback on the use of the word discipline, do you find this word inappropriate or offensive in connection to the raising of children?

Finally, I would like to extend my thanks to anyone who has taken the time to read this I hope you will make some comments. Please feel free to add anything that you think I have missed. I very much look forward to reading your remarks.

Natasha 🙂 🙂 🙂

I'm still a pretty new mum so I can't really tell you how I personally will discipline (hopefully I'll make a decent job of it!) I think that it is quite right that parents are held responsible for the childs behaviour, children only know what they are taught and in my opinion this is their parents responsibility. I don't think that as a generation we lack parenting skills, I think that what we lack is the close family support that people used to enjoy and which has been slightly lost as there is a tendancy for people to move further away from their families. I think that on the whole most children are still well behaved and brought up well, only yesterday I was thinking how polite and well mannered all of the local kids around here were. I think that the actions of a few are blown out of all proportion by our media and this fuels the belief that all children and young people are the same. Hope that helps with your research Kerry xx