Pros:
- It is very helpful in pointing out that there are different types of disobedience: you can't classify all as outright rebellion. Different types of disobedience require different consequences, and the principle of penalty = making restitution has helped me greatly in not resorting to time-outs for every. single. thing (thus making them less effective).
- It lends confidence, through examples and logic, that kids under authority ARE happier. I have always been half-apologetic about my authority over my children ("I don't know what I'm doing; why should they listen to me?"), so this confidence has greatly helped our family. My three-year-old wasn't responding to me well because, frankly, I was wishy-washy. As soon as I became more confident and consistent, which I do owe to reading this book, she REALLY DID become happier. Her childcare at our weekly co-op told me she was so improved she was "like a different kid." I think the confidence also came from my above point, that restitution is a good rule of thumb for assigning consequences. It took a lot of guesswork out.
Cons:
- I think it fails to take into account its audience. The author repeatedly says that kids for the past few generations have been raised with no self-control and are entitled and lazy. While I technically agree with this, I am actually one of those kids. It distanced me every time he said something like that, as if he was siding with the people, some correct and some not, who are always complaining about "those dang millennials." I don't think this was rhetorically effective.
- It passes over, almost dismissively, the possibility of abuse within the realm of corporal punishment. All of its verbiage tends to tell the parents that they have the absolute right to rule their children, which could easily feed abuse. But the two sections with mention of abuse are brief, and one of them, unfortunately, even advises the non-abusive parent to train the kids not to tick the abusive parent off. I was shocked. If indeed the current generation of parents is from a generation without self-control, then we have to assume, by the book's own logic, that these parents are more likely to let their anger get the best of them and fall into abusive behavior. Combined with the complete confidence in parental authority this book espouses, this dismissive attitude toward the potential for abuse could easily be twisted in wicked hands. Of course, every principle, even a good one, is able to be perverted. But I don't think the book safeguarded enough against such perversion.
- It tends to hold up as the ideal the 1950s vision of marriage and family (it actually implies in one appendix that the "1950s marriage" is to be desired): children seen, not heard; daddy goes to work; mommy stays at home. This is in danger of chronological snobbery to the same degree as the utopian progressive elitism of the entitled generations Fugate condemns. No one era matches the biblical ideal. And, I am a stay-at-home mom, but his assertion that young women should not go to college really did make my mouth fall open--especially because it was in a one-page section with very little support for this rather huge claim (though, to his credit, he did refer me to another book on the subject in which I assume more support was to be found). What of women whose husbands die? What of singles? What of divorce? What of women whose spouses turn out to be one of those lack-of-self-control, self-absorbed abusers? What of women married to men who are doing the best they can but don't have great job opportunities in this economic climate--so dual income is needed? Are these women without husbands and without degrees to be thrown back on the charity of their dads until a man comes along to save them? This made me twitch, and now I have a great urge to go read some Wollstonecraft.
- "We have now seen the entire system for child training as revealed in the Word of God." This is a direct quote that feels representative of the tone. It struck me as naively overconfident, especially with how much he extrapolated from verses that leave much more room for interpretation so that they can hold true across cultures and centuries. Can God ever really be reduced to a system--especially one that seemingly reached its peak in 1950? It seems to me, from the life of Christ and from His involvement in my own life, that He resists systems.
- Last but not least, this book has almost no mention of grace, the only power that can truly change hearts. I agree that obedience does set kids up for greater success in life. It can also help them see the goodness of the Gospel: our desire-but-inability to obey points toward our need for a Redeemer. But mere obedience doesn't necessarily lead to a Gospel-soaked life: it can just as easily lead to a self-righteous, moralistic life. Perhaps the need for grace and heart change in children's lives wasn't the book's focus, in which case the title would be more accurate as What the Bible Says about Discipline. But the book doesn't talk about the most important aspect of child training, pointing our kids toward Jesus. It doesn't talk about how parents need to understand that they are God's ambassadors of grace: that these kids are not actually theirs, but His, and that their main need is not obedience, or good manners, but a Person who can save them, and who is more than ready to do so. In the book's tone and in its subject matter, I missed this grace toward children.
So, the reason I was able to benefit from the Pros because I've read other parenting books that ARE more grace-saturated, that DO guard against abuse with more urgency and compassion, that avoid an (even unintended) "kids these days" tone. so I can merely raise my eyebrows at the "cons" and gain from the good stuff.
Christ is FOR my kids. I want to show them that not only with the security of firm boundaries, but also with a gentle tone, a loving heart toward them, our sweet times together, and the knowledge that as a parent, I am just as fallible as they are--and we need the SAME Savior.