Quiz: What Kind of Parent Are You?1. A plumber comes to your house to fix the hot water heater. While he’s at work, your four-year-old goes over to explore the hammers and wrenches in his toolkit. How do you respond?(a) You give her a stern glance, and she bobs a quick curtsy of apology, saying "Sorry, sir!" before sitting down quietly with her hands folded in her lap.(b) You get down on the floor with the child and have fun trying to figure out how to operate the blow-torch together.(c) You send the child to her room, where she can play with her dolls.(d) You pull the child onto your lap and carefully describe the tools and their purpose as the plumber uses them.
2. Your six-year-old steals jam from the cupboard and lies about it. What punishment does he receive?(a) He must write out Proverbs 12:22 ten times. ("Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.")(b) He is sent to bed without any supper, but after twenty minutes or so you sneak in with some bread and better – and an extra little pot of jam.(c) When his father gets home, he receives a spanking, and a heart-to-heart talk about the importance of telling the truth.(d) You remove TV privileges for a week – and then kick yourself for having asked "Did you steal the jam?" when you knew full well that he had, thus setting him up to lie in the first place.
3. You have a free afternoon on Sunday. How do you use it?(a) Recreation is, of course, forbidden on the Sabbath, but you have some very pious and instructive sermons that can be read aloud in the parlour.(b) You take the dog and a kite and head out to the park.(c) Sunday afternoons are set aside for a family drive. Sure, the children grumble when you’re getting them into the car, but this is a family tradition.(d) You settle down to your separate pursuits: surfing the net, playing on the Wii, watching Finding Nemo on the portable DVD player. And then you feel guilty because you’re not flying a kite at the park.
4. Your one-year-old has been putting bits of string into his mouth. How do you respond?
(a) You read aloud to him the following cautionary tale: "Henry King, Who chewed bits of String, and was early cut off in Dreadful Agonies."(b) You take away the string and give him candy instead.(c) You wonder why I’m asking, and then remove him from his walker so that you can take him out for a car ride, holding him on your lap in the front seat.(d) You snatch the string away, gasping, and then double check the outlet covers, stairway gates, and cupboard latches one more time.
5. While guests are visiting, your three-year-old wanders in and asks, "What’s that?" pointing to a prominent mole on your guest’s face. What is your reply?
(a) You wait for a natural pause in the conversation, and then turn to her with an expression of shocked reproof, admonishing, "Children should be seen, not heard!" You need hardly add that there will be no dessert after supper tonight.(b) You and your guests smile in appreciation of the uninhibited naturalness of the young, vowing to imitate such delightful honesty and candour in your own social interactions.(c) Mortified, you shush the child hastily and send her outdoors to play with her friends.(d) Pulling the child onto your lap, you introduce all the guests to her by name and then explain that the mark on your guest’s face is called a "mole" and that, no, it doesn’t hurt. When the child loses interest in this discussion, she wanders off again and you resume your conversation.
If you answered mostly (a), then you are the Late Victorian Parent. You love your children, but you believe that to love them too intensely would be sinful. You consider your children’s religious and moral upbringing to be your primary responsibility, and the way to achieve these goals is through discipline. Obedience, humility, and respect for elders are the virtues you strive to inculcate. Your fictional counterparts are Marilla Cuthbert (in Anne of Green Gables) and Marmee (from Little Women).
If you answered mostly (b), then you are the Edwardian Parent. You acknowledge that children are selfish hedonists – and you admire them for it. Freedom, playfulness, and imagination are the virtues that you seek to acquire through interaction and even identification with your children. Like the narrator of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, you find in children a means of reentering the Neverland from which, as an adult, you are forever barred.
If you answered mostly (c), then you are the Post-War Parent. You provide a stable and healthy environment in which your children can thrive – and then you pretty much just leave them to it. Your side of the bargain is to provide warm clothing, nutritious food, and appropriate punishments for misdemeanours; your children’s contribution is to obey the house rules, respect their elders, and do their homework. Although you may read an article about parenting from time to time in Good Housekeeping, your parenting philosophy, by and large, can be described as "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
"
If you answered mostly (d), then you are the Me-Generation Parent. Each parenting decision you make is scrutinized carefully, both by yourself and others. While at times you set limits (in Child Wise fashion), at other times you hand over the reigns of decision making to the child (following the advice of Barbara Coloroso and other parenting gurus). You consider education to be your primary parenting responsibility, so you purchase flash cards and videos depicting letters and numbers, only to toss them in the trash three months later after learning that traditional wooden and cloth toys (not plastic or electronic) do the most to foster your child’s intelligence. You put enormous effort into parenting while holding down a 50-hour-a-week job and keeping up with multiple clubs and activities. Don’t let all that blind you, though, to this simple truth: You are the most selfish generation yet, and your children will be even worse than you are.
