What a strange world we live in that I have to make the point that adults are the heads of their households.
The evidence for the apparent need for this clarification is all around us. So many parents seem to need to be told that a family is not a group of friends who happen to be related to each other. Friends are equals: healthy friend-to-friend relationships involve negotiations around decisions, status, and what the nature of the friendship will be.
Parents and their kids are not equals: a friendship dynamic between parents and their minor children is wrong. It’s wrong, it’s horribly unhealthy, it doesn’t work, and it will lead to unnecessary suffering for both kids and adults.
Families have to be hierarchies led by adults because parents will likely have fully formed, or nearly fully formed brains. No kid alive on planet Earth has one of those. They also have very little wisdom because all kids have been on Earth for a very short amount of time. Essentially, their brains don’t work, and they don’t know much-- not the kind of people that should be leading a family unit.
These words, including the word “hierarchy” itself, may conjure up images in the minds of many of a mean and domineering parent dictating the rules for the family and then enforcing those rules with an iron fist. This is not what a healthy hierarchy is, and because many adults don’t understand this, they will involve their kids in nearly every decision and have negotiations with them on the best course of action on most, and sometimes nearly all, decisions related to those kids.
Instead, a healthy family hierarchy involves the adult leaders of the family setting the rules and limits for the family according to their value structure based on the wisdom that they have accrued over their years on Earth, and it also involves giving their kids plenty of choices and freedom within the limits created by wiser-than-them adults. Yes, kids should have freedom. But they should have the freedom that the leaders of the family decide they should have.
Would you like to make your curfew 11:30 or midnight? (As long as the adult family leaders are okay with either choice.)
Would you like a Twinkie or carrots for a snack? (As long as you’re okay with your kid eating a Twinkie.)
Even really big choices can be given, as long as the parents at the top of family hierarchy are OK with either choice, according to their value structure and according to what they know about the world:
After doing a lot of research on both schools, we’ve decided that you can either go to the local public high school or the local private high school. It’s up to you.
It is the application of proper limits and the giving of choices within those limits that teaches kids how to be free, because, after all, that’s what freedom is. True freedom is making choices within the confines of the rules of society: you are not free to do whatever you want. You are not free to throw trash on the ground, or constantly scream at the top of your lungs, and you are not free to punch people in the face. That’s license, not freedom. Choosing to do any of those actions is not okay and will often lead to the very opposite of freedom.
Thankfully, healthy families are mini-societies within which kids can develop, learning how to be properly free by having choices that are given within the limits set by the adult leaders of the family hierarchy. This is how they can learn how to properly live in a society.