Permissive Parenting Makes Life Hell for Stepmothers — Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom
What happens to kids when parents are permissive and indulgent? Research suggests that they are lower functioning across several measures — socially, emotionally, and academically — and they certainly aren't much fun to be around. This is a legacy they bring with them into adulthood; many of today's twenty-somethings, researchers like Ron Taffel note, were raised with so much indiscriminate and unwarranted praise, and so few appropriate boundaries and rules, that they have an inflated sense of their own importance and achievements, and unrealistic expectations not only within their own family system, but also in the world (I am reminded of a nanny candidate with a B.A. but zero full-time nanny experience who told me she "required" an outrageous salary — in cash — "in order to be happy")
