Unison Parenting Blog: Lean Toward, Not Away

What can go wrong when parenting partners agree to parent in a certain way but hold onto their prior tendencies?

In a prior post, I discussed how to form a united framework of core values and parenting policies. But despite their best intentions, parents may still behave independently without realizing it.

I was struck by a conversation with a couple that struggled in this area. The father had grown up in a strict environment and tended to be very strict and harsh with the children – something that the parents had agreed not to do. But instead of calling the father back into their agreed plan, as recommended by the Unison Parenting model, the mother leaned away from the father in her parenting, trying to compensate for his strictness by being more lenient.

Then a vicious cycle occurred. Whenever the father saw the mother’s leniency, he became stricter to balance it. Of course, then she became more lenient to balance against his increased strictness.

You can see the mess that resulted. Instead of leaning toward the principles they planned, the parents kept leaning away from each other, trying to create some odd balance of their views. Instead of being in unison, the parents were actually at war with each other. This led to child confusion and gamesmanship as well, as the children tried to navigate which parent they should go to for structure or for permissiveness.

Parents can subtly or openly oppose each other in a variety of circumstances: nutrition, school performance, child activities and use of time, budgeting, family traditions, disagreement over medical diagnoses, and more.

The answer is not to unilaterally attempt to balance, but to lean in toward the agreed plan and to reconcile differences in new areas of opposition. Parents are not going to be clones of each other and act exactly the same, but they can act out of the same spirit and thought, instead of choosing their own individual principles and undermining each other.