EVE: So you are saying it is the nature of the relationship with the child that determines the role of trust and lying?
PAUL: Yes, certainly so. The role of the parent is an extremely difficult one because you have to keep moving backward. When parents start out, they are completely responsible for their child, who is totally helpless. As that child grows, you have to roll back, you have to grant control; otherwise, your child can’t grow. You have to be able to live with the fact that as you grant the child more autonomy, they will get into all sorts of trouble. But you ultimately have to leave it up to them.
JASON MARSH: It seems like this could be difficult advice to follow, to trust that much. What was it from your research, or personal experience, that motivated you to take this approach?
PAUL: It wasn’t based on research, mine or anyone else’s. It was based on my own experience with parents who did just the opposite. They did everything they could to try to interfere with my life, and they were the last people I would have ever turned to when I was a child. I wanted to be the first people my kids would turn to.
It took some restraint, because worry was my middle name, way before I ever had a child. But I think, for children, the most important thing is to feel they can trust that their parents, whether they approve or disapprove, will always be available for help and support. If that’s not the case, then I think you’ve really failed as a parent.
JASON MARSH: Eve, what kind of effect do you think this kind of parenting style had on your behavior growing up, and on your feelings of trust toward your parents?
EVE: I was not your conventional good girl. But I definitely did not want to disappoint the trust they gave me, because I thought they were cool, and I liked them. They weren’t just authority figures; they were very open and available and accessible. And if I challenged what they did, they would explain it to me. It wasn’t like, “Because I said so.” There was always an explanation of why, and I guess that helped build trust. I always felt like, even in the worst-case scenarios, they would be the first person I would call. Still, to this day, I call them first when I have trouble.
PAUL: I remember the call from jail.
EVE: That was when I was arrested for protesting the war in Iraq.
JASON MARSH: Paul, do you think that by being so trusting, you not only earned the trust of your kids but also actually helped make them more trustworthy?
PAUL: Yes. I didn’t want them to get started on my path of lying to my parents. Because I do believe that it’s a slippery slope: you start lying once, you lie another time, you lie about more things, and you’ve crossed the threshold. And I didn’t want to put them in a position where they would cross that threshold.
EVE: What kinds of difficulties do parents encounter even when they want to put this kind of trust in their kids?
PAUL: A major difficulty is that so much changes from generation to generation. What was normative in one generation can shift greatly—changing sexual morality, recreational drugs. Parents have a hard time trusting that their kids are prepared to deal with these things that are so new to the parents.
Beyond that, there is the difficulty of giving up control. Many parents are control freaks, and that is in part because they do not want to worry. And in ways they are right to worry—adolescents take risks that are very dangerous.
EVE: But it starts before adolescence, right?
PAUL: It stars at 3 to 5 years of age, and it gets really strong in adolescence.
The Dalai Lama asked me once, “What is destructive compassion?” And I said that destructive compassion is when you are so worried about your child that you overcontrol them.
Since I work in this area and think about this area, I try to be very explicit and never put anyone in the position where they feel they have to lie to me. If they think that I am going to be a strict disciplinarian, that will change the relationship as well. The major research I have done shows that the main reason people lie is to avoid being punished.
JASON MARSH: But it seems that a lot of parents feel caught in a catch-22. They may understand why it’s important to trust their kids, but they may not feel that their kid is worthy of that trust. What can parents do to help encourage the kind of truthfulness in their kids that makes them more comfortable trusting those kids?
PAUL: They can do things all the time—over the dining room table, with stories, when they’re playing Chutes and Ladders and kids get tempted to cheat in the game. I really think up to the age of 10 or 11, children are zealots for the truth—they really don’t want to mislead or be misled. So you can build on that.
You can do it by example. When Eve was born, I quit smoking after I had smoked for 30 years. And I also decided I was going to try to see if I could lead my life without lying to anyone about anything. It was much harder to do that—to figure out ways to be truthful without being harmful or insulting, to stay polite but be truthful. And it became a real challenge. But I also thought, “I’m going to try to do this because that’s the example I want to be showing. I want my kids to see that there’s a way to be truthful.” It was very deliberate.
Parents also need to establish the rules of disclosure and the obligations that come with their trust. For instance, we always made very clear to both of our kids that if they got into trouble in school, they were obliged to tell us. So if they didn’t tell us, then they were lying to us. That meant we had to define “trouble.” Trouble meant they were held after school or called to the principal’s office. That’s a rule of disclosure.
We need to spell out these rules and obligations in any relationship. In the business world, do you have to tell your employer if you’re looking for another job? Does your employer need to tell you if they’re thinking of cutting your position? What are the rules of disclosure? They’re never revealed. They’re kept ambiguous. That just makes for a lot of distrust and bad work relationships. Same in marriages. I have one colleague who told me, “My rule is that anything I do out of town is okay.” I said, “Does your spouse know that?” He never felt he needed to tell his spouse about it. There was no disclosure. It’s just the basis for misunderstanding and distrust.
JASON MARSH: Eve, do you think that growing up with those rules has affected your relationships with others?
EVE: It’s funny because as my dad was speaking, I was thinking about how I really do respect authority. Even though I think I’m a dissenter at heart, I definitely respect authority. You know, I’m afraid of getting caught, and that helps me not do things wrong. I was arrested once, but that was simply because I was protesting. Other than that, I’ve never broken the law. I’ve only gotten one ticket.
In general, I hope that when punishment is exacted, it’s fair and just, and I do think that was modeled to me from my family relationships. I think if there’s an inconsistent message, I could imagine feeling like, “Well, those laws don’t apply to me.”
And in my personal relationships with friends, as well as romantic relationships, I definitely think trust is core. I definitely know I’m someone people depend on. I’m a social worker, that’s my profession, but I also feel I’m the person who people call when things are really hard and they need someone they can trust. And I feel really respectful of that role, and I appreciate it.
I think you experience people’s family life through how they interact with you, and I feel like I’ve been the beneficiary of a great deal of trust, and I myself am trusting. But I’ve been burned. I remember talking with my dad about it at one point, like, “Why do I feel disappointed? I feel like I’m trusting, and I’m not sure that’s always met.” Like, in my early 20s, when I first started to have really meaningful and important relationships outside of family, I found there were some people for whom family wasn’t a model of trust and for whom learning trust was new. And so they would maybe play people off each other, do those kinds of things that ultimately will burn you.