Radical Parenting

Parenting is the process of upbringing a child by ensuring its physical and emotional wellbeing and promoting its social and intellectual development. There are many different ways of parenting a child and it differs from culture to culture. Although most parents follow the traditional and socially accepted way of parenting, there are others who chose to pave their own path. Radical parenting, as it was termed, has many different forms. However, in this paper, the focus will be on Unschoolers, Attachment Parenting and Gender Neutral Parenting.

In the documentary “Radical Parenting” on Discovery Health, Sarah and Chris Parent engages in a parenting method called the Unschooling. It is defined as a parenting method in which parents does not send their children to school. However, they aren’t home-schooled either. They are experientially based, which means that they learn through the experiences they have in life.

In my opinion, there are various advantages of using this technique. Firstly, it provides the child with a like-a-friend relationship with his/her parents due to the elimination of hierarchy within the family. The child will feel like s/he can come to his/her parents whenever s/he has problems. Secondly, the child has the freedom to do what s/he is interested in. For instance, if the child likes to learn about science, the parents can bring him/her to the museum to learn all about science. The child is not constrained to learning everything that it is in the textbook. Instead, s/he is free to learn whatever s/he wants.

However, there are disadvantages as well. For starters, the children will not have the standard education requirement that employers often seek in prospective employees. As such, it will be difficult for the children to get a job. In addition to that, because there is no structure or boundary in their own home, it would be difficult for them to adjust to the demands of the workforce. At home, they are given the liberty to do whatever they want. However, in the workforce, it does not matter what they want as what their bosses want. Furthermore, I think they would have a hard time adapting to a structured school system should they decide to be educated in college. Although they do learn about a variety of topics with their parents, the amount of information and topics that they learn in an education institute are far greater. Being unused to the system, they will be find it overbearing for them.

By watching the documentary, I surmised that the Unschoolers engage in permissive parenting style. This is because there is a lack of (or minimum) boundaries within the family. The children have the power to make their own decisions, regardless whether it is about eating, sleeping or playing. This is evident in what Sarah Parent mentioned: “There is no hierarchy in our house and no one is more important than anyone else. So there’s no punishment, no judgment. There are safety rules, but no