> In the top right quadrant is what psychologists call ‘authoritative’ parenting (not to be confused with authoritarian parenting). Perhaps because of this confusion, Angela has labelled this quadrant as ‘wise parenting’, which is a much better word for it.

Ahhh "Wise" parenting. No bias there, ha ha.

My wife and I no doubt were in the upper left quadrant, permissive parents. For better or worse, we weren't going to have any of the demanding side of the spectrum. Could we have been more demanding "for their own good"? Perhaps. But I think neither my wife nor I were raised with demanding parents and we turned out fine — so we went with that. I think for both of us it was the "supportive" axis we felt lacking in our own childhoods so that is where we doubled-down.

When my kids grow up though, if they have kids of their own, and the pendulum swings the other way, I will not be surprised. Life seems to be like that. When I was raising the girls I tried not to overthink it.

I maybe erred on the side of supportive as well, for the same reason, some perceived lack of support as kids. My parents weren’t entirely unsupportive, but I’d wanted a little more support at times and all the parents around me at the time seemed to ignore their kids most of time and just make sure they were fed.

Now we seem to have a whole generation of over-supportive ‘helicopter parenting’, and sometimes I worry I was too supportive in the sense that my kids didn’t get the free-roam exploration that I had as a child. Screens and games and internet are a non-trivial factor in there too.

Bias indeed! The article’s perhaps over-confident in its simplistic prescription. Parenting doesn’t fit onto a 2d axis, and parental demands and support vary wildly across activity and time and financial availability and probably a long list of other things. None of the “studies” the article mentions (without citing!) are showing parenting strategy outcomes even according to the article. Grit isn’t something you can actually reduce to 4 words, it depends on past successes and belief in one’s self and sometimes the ability to discount the social judgements of others. For that matter, knowing when to quit is an important skill that needs to sit right beside grit.

One of the few things I actually learned as a parent is that almost all parenting advice is completely bad, and that goes double for me when giving parenting advice. My wife and I shared things we knew about kids only to find out we were wrong. What works on one kid doesn’t work on the next… in the same family with the same parents. My wife eventually came up with our parenting prime directive, and it was simply to always show the kids love and talk to them a lot about their lives. It seems like that was helpful, but we’ll see in 20 years…

You can prepare your kids for their natural pendulum swing. I told mine it's natural to rebel and do the opposite of what your parents do, make sure you understand, and don't unintentionally swing too far in the other direction.