“Parental control,” in the scientific literature on parenting,
usually refers to parental intrusiveness, or pressure, or the extent to which
parents attempt to dominate their children’s lives. The opposite of control is “parental
support for autonomy.” A contrast is often made between psychological control
and behavioral control. Psychological control has to do with parental coercion
and manipulation directed at children’s thoughts and feelings, whereas
behavioral control includes such things as mentoring, monitoring, and setting
rules.
Behavioral control tends to have positive effects on
children, while psychological control has been linked to a variety of negative
effects, including psychopathological conditions such as anxiety and clinical
depression.
Our consumer-based world is a world of arrested development and wide-spread infantilization: in effect. a
society of children in perpetual need of corporate/governmental “parenting.”
Intrusive corporate marketing targets our underdeveloped
emotions, grooming our fragile and easily manipulated emotional states through
highly refined psychological devices. Paranoid governmental institutions direct
and redirect our behavior through an escalating array of coercive tactics
underwritten by violence and the threat of violence.
A community with unanimously agreed-upon rules, and ways of coordinating
behavior to everyone’s advantage that respect personal autonomy, provides a
healthy backdrop for development of personal maturity. A society in which corporate interests establish
the rules—where personal desire is manipulated to channel consumption for
corporate advantage—is a society that breeds chronic immaturity, dependency,
and psychopathology.
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