Expository Essay on Why Parents Sometimes Have to Be Harsh

“Spare the rod – spoil the child” the ancient saying goes. It grows less and less popular nowadays, but to a certain extent some degree of strictness or harshness is still considered to be normal, except for the cases when parents are really frightened to cause their children any kind of pain. So, why are we so attracted to this concept of tough love, although modern society seems to be so opposed to it?

The reason is quite simple – it is practical, and the history-long application of the method shows that it works. It is really easier to shout at a child once when he does something stupid than to sort out a mess when he has already done something extremely stupid because earlier you considered it to be immoral to apply any kind of violence in order to teach him what is right.

The problem with children is that they are not fully developed personalities yet – children rights activists may say what they want, but the science disagrees – even the structure of a child’s brain is different from that of an adult, which determines certain kinds of behavior characteristic of them – inability to generalize, predict consequences and so on. If we damage certain areas of an adult’s brain, he would behave in a similar, infantile manner, which explains why the rights of children should not be the same as the rights of adults.

Thus, with the child’s psychology being more primitive than…