What's a Parent's Role?

Take our Authoritative Parenting Test

Find a family therapist near me

Every child needs an integration of structure, love, and wisdom.

Plato described the goal of parenting in a single sentence in Book 9 of the "Politeia."

Parents can provide a model, but only the child can integrate it as their own.

The goal is not a well-behaved child. It is a genuinely self-governed adult.

In 2003, I published a book for parents called Pearls of Wisdom. Children have three fundamental needs, and a parent’s job is to meet all three: Structure, Love, and Wisdom (SLW). Take it SLoW. Structure means providing for a child’s basic needs and giving them clear boundaries to guide them. Love means not just affection but the careful balance between fostering attachment and fostering independence. Wisdom means helping a child develop the judgment to discern what is good and beneficial from what is harmful and unhealthy.

Most parents don’t think of it this way, but what every good parent is working toward (whether they realize it or not) is a child who can eventually govern themselves. We usually call that autonomy. Plato had a more precise name for it.

Plato was already a central source in that book, and is quoted throughout. What I did not yet have was the recognition that he had named the governing function as a distinct fourth element of the psyche. The concept was there: The book opens with a quote about the integration of the personality, and SLW rests on the idea that the three needs only work well when they are balanced together (SLW Integration). That loving, governing order that good parenting provides, when internalized by the child, is what Plato calls a healthy auto politeia, or self-constitution.

Plato clearly describes the human psyche as having three parts: the appetitive part, which drives hunger,........

© Psychology Today