Alfie Kohn - Views On Parenting

Views On Parenting

While Unconditional Parenting (2005) is Kohn's first book that deals primarily with the topic of raising children, he devoted three chapters to this question in Punished by Rewards (1993). He discusses the need for parents to keep in mind their long-term goals for their children, such as helping them grow into responsible and caring people, rather than on short-term goals, such as obedience. The key question, he argues, is "What do kids need – and how do we meet those needs?"

Toward that end, Kohn argues for an approach he calls "working with", as distinguished from "doing to". The latter is exemplified by punishments and rewards, and, more generally, a focus on behavior rather than on the motives and values that underlie behavior.

One of Kohn's most widely circulated articles is "Five Reasons to Stop Saying 'Good Job!'" which argues that praise, like other forms of extrinsic inducements, tends to undermine children's commitment to whatever they were praised for doing (i.e. children are taught to do things in order to get praise rather than do the things because it is right to do so, or because it is enjoyable to do so). Later, he expanded this critique to suggest that positive reinforcement, like certain forms of punitive "consequences," amount to forms of conditional parenting, in which love is made contingent on pleasing or obeying the parent.