Face Off: Should parents be punished for their children’s mistakes?

When children are born, they are like blank pieces of paper. Their environment influences their well-being and development and shapes their future. Our parents teach us not only how to walk and talk but also characteristics like virtue, kindness, justice, integrity and diligence. They teach us how to distinguish between right and wrong. Since parents’ behaviours can significantly impact their children’s lives, it is crystal clear that they must take responsibility for their children’s mistakes.

Some argue that children can succumb to peer pressure and that parents should not be held responsible for this. Although this is sometimes true, we cannot deny that parents play a significant role in nurturing children and steering them away from making poor choices.

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“There are many reasons the youth display bad behaviours, and insufficient or inappropriate family education is a key cause,” Zang Tiewei, a spokesman for the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress, told the Beijing News in 2021. Nowadays, many Hong Kong families are choosing to have only one child, according to figures reported by The Standard in August. Fewer children means parents have more time and ability to monitor and teach their young ones, so they should also take more responsibility if their child makes mistakes.

Parents are role models, and children often mimic their parents. For instance, top medical experts in Britain have found that teens whose parents or caregivers smoke are four times as likely to do it themselves, according to research published by the UK government in December 2021.

Therefore, if the adults in their lives show values like diligence, compassion and integrity, their children will likely have a similar character. If parents were punished for their children’s mistakes, they could take it as an opportunity to reflect and see if their bad behaviours have influenced their kids, equipping them with the motivation to turn over a new leaf.

Punishing parents allows them to realise there is room for improvement in teaching their kids. It also shows parents that there will be consequences if they are not committed to being role models and raising their children properly.

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The nature of children is that they shift and grow and morph into beings beyond their parents, influenced by the world they grow up in. Their behaviour may not always reflect what their parents taught them; their peers, idols, and outside authority figures all play a part as well. Therefore, parents should not be punished for their children’s mistakes.

Children are people separate from their parents. Their mistakes are not necessarily linked to what their parents taught them. Parents are becoming more disconnected from their children than ever before, thanks to technological divides, clashes in thinking, and the fact that children spend upwards of seven hours per day at school. At a certain point, parents are no longer the most influential person in a child’s life. In fact, studies show that “by early adolescence, children spend more time with peers than with parents, siblings, or any other agent of socialisation,” according to the book Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence.

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Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, has confirmed this, writing in his book Changing Minds that as children reach age 10, input from their peers becomes more important in their decision-making process. Since children are not as influenced by their parents as previously assumed, parents should not be punished when they make mistakes.

Moreover, suppose parents are punished for their children’s mistakes. This will teach kids the wrong lesson. If they do something wrong and their parents are punished instead, they will feel as if they are not responsible for their actions and that they can continue acting poorly without facing consequences. Repercussions help us learn from our mistakes, so a lack of punishment means children will not learn.

A 2014 study on children aged 5 to 9 discovered a strong association between experiencing regret and learning from bad outcomes, proving that children need to experience negative consequences to discourage them from making the same mistakes.

In conclusion, parents are not always to blame when their children make mistakes. Many outside factors play a role, and children need to experience consequences themselves in order to learn and do better.