Self-Esteem: Sissy Parenting or Are the Parents Sissies?

Self-esteem is essential to truly living an empowered life, from my point of view.  When we have a healthy self-esteem, we can weather the storms of life more courageously. 

I came across an interesting article on the Internet today from the Ottawa Citizen.com online newspaper, the author being Kelly Roesler.  There was a discussion about a new book by John Strausbaugh called "Sissy Nation:  How America Became a Culture of Wimps and Stoopits". 

Now that is an attention grabbing title!  The article discussed the views of the two opposing camps on self-esteem and child rearing.

 The self-esteem camp allegedly suggests that self-esteem is developed by protecting the child from the harsh realities that he or she faces in the world, and pumping them up with excess praise and coddling. Here is a quote from the article regarding the opponents to this idea:

“Opponents of the "self-esteem" philosophy, which urges parents to instill self-confidence in their children by constantly assuring them everything they do is great, have suggested bullying could be beneficial to a child by nurturing core values of strength, independence and perseverance and generally building character”.

Well, I believe in the first place, self-esteem and self-confidence are not the same.  Self-esteem address self-worth or value and confidence has to do with the development of faith to do or accomplish something.

Now there is no standard definition, but this is the point of view I agree with.  Yes, you can hurt self-esteem overprotecting children and stunt their self-confidence as well.  I won’t address all the potential downsides to bullying, but I think the point here is that children do need to learn the values of strength, courage and independence to develop confidence and hold on to self-esteem.

Now if the parents have shaky self-esteem, they can fall in essentially two camps on this issue.  One is this ‘sissy’ role that the author of the book describes quite harshly as the following:

"If you're basically an upstanding citizen and parent but also overprotecting and overfeeding and overmedicating your kids," he writes, "that's you expressing your inner sissy through them."

Perhaps. This type of parent most likely has a difficult time with discipline and/or wants to be ‘liked’, a pleaser.  Then there of course is the other extreme of the abusive parent.  Of course the whole issue of bullying revolves around low self-esteem also. 

Children who tease and bullying are insecure and disrespectful of others (-some projection also going on here?), which is why they bully in the first place.  Lastly, even if a parent could protect their child from emotional pain, I agree that doing everything for a child weakens them and this will ultimately wound their self-esteem/self-respect. 

So what is the best answer?  The short answer is self-esteem has to be from a spiritual point of view, meaning, helping the child or adult to separate their INTRINSIC value from the judgment of others and from external titles or things. 

Confidence of course has to be developed by pushing through these external challenges, but if clearly understood, this would have nothing to very little to do with self-esteem. 

You are worthy and valuable as a Being regardless of what you do or what others say about you.  Take me for example.  My changing careers or my title has nothing to do with my value, but in order to build my confidence, I have to push through any fears of failure or the unknown and learn new skills. 

This is what develops character.  While there is a dance between self-esteem and confidence, to me they are significantly different.  When our society stops running from challenging feelings and situations, and find the courage to develop self-acceptance, we as human beings will begin to accept others and break the generational cycles of relationship dysfunction.

The higher our level of self-esteem and acceptance, the easier it is to develop more confidence and rise up to the challenges of life. What do you think?