It strikes me as plausible that a world in which kids spend more time unsupervised requires a parenting style more reliant on swift punishment for detected wrongdoing than rewards for good behavior.
This is probably the best summary I’ve ever seen for 1) why I got spanked every so often, and 2) why I don’t really feel bad about that.
Today’s kids seem to be not only supervised but regimented; most of their time is supposed to be spent in some sort of structured activity. This makes it very easy to create elaborate reward systems, because there is all this elaborate surveillance that makes it very easy to monitor compliance.
File under: parenting.
Mark Larson 