>I will add this though. I tried repressive, paternalistic,
>authoritarian and patriarchal power, all enabled and cheered on by my
>wife, while we were still married, on a miserable little eight year
>old. I thought he was screwing around, not paying attention and not
>doing his work in school. I got the expected sullen, pouty, silent
>reaction, that belies a burning inarticulate rage. Looked mighty
>damned familiar to me.
I think I can see your mistake, eight years old is a bit too late for repressive, paternalistic authoritarian and patriarchal power. You can and probably should use these methods to inculcate some minimum standards of behaviour before they are about six or seven, but if it hasn't had the desired effect by then you are wasting your time. They need and want to start becoming reasoning human beings by the time they are eight, obedience won't get them through life (even if you were planning on living forever to be able to keep giving them orders.) So you have to plan ahead, you won't always have any power to force them to obey, so YOU might as well start getting used to it too.
As for getting 16 year olds to simply obey... Well its an interesting idea, but I can't see how it is practical. How would you go about that?
Dangerous behaviour seems to go with the territory of being a teenager. I often marvel at my luck in surviving that stage of my life, but obviously the law of averages mandates that some percentage of teenage males will survive to reach adulthood. When my firstborn son bought his first car I was terrified, but there was nothing I could do except wait nervously at home for news of his first car accident. Hopefully it would be serious enough to knock some sense into him, but not serious enough to make it moot. He survived it, luckily. Some things they just have to learn for themselves, you can't protect them by keeping them insulated from the experiences they need to learn from.
I can understand why parents would really really want to try though.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas
(Father of five and apprentice parent)