There was a time when children were known to misbehave, and when they did they were punished accordingly. Gradually, however, at least in many quarters, this way of understanding familiar interactions between children and those who manage, control, and steer their behavior has given way to a very different picture that uses the language of “consequences” rather than “punishments.” A lot has been thought to have changed in this shift, but has it really?[i]

At first glance, the now familiar distinction between punishing a child and allowing her to suffer the consequences of her actions seems both well drawn and illuminating. An ornery child who refuses a coat when it is cold out will end up unhappy and learn a lesson—such is the power of consequences. A child who is sent to her room for refusing to put on her coat has been punished, and has learned what happens when she annoys an impatient parent with the power to punish. The former now has a reason of her own to be sensible about how she dresses; the latter has learned to avoid annoying an impatient and punitive parent.

Before moving to what can look very questionable about this distinction, it is important to note just how attractive it can look to be. Allowing consequences to have effect promises to help children learn how to behave without adults having to be harsh with them, and indeed without having to impose upon them any unhappiness. To be sure, a child who insists on going out in the cold may end up miserable, but if she does it is her fault, not her parents. That is the beauty of “consequences”—a parent cannot be blamed if her child is unhappy as a result of her foolishness, but she can be blamed if her child is miserable having been forbidden to play video games for a day (i.e., punished).

It gets better. Parents who punish their children do so because they have judged their behavior to be bad, a violation of a rule, and/or immoral—something, at least, in the neighborhood of “wrong”. Normative judgments assume values that may not be shared, and parents who judge their children’s behavior are assuming values that the child may not accept. Cast in this light, using punishment to manage a child’s behavior can look coercive, a way of compelling behavior that pays no heed to the child’s own beliefs, values, wishes, or interests. Here too consequences can seem to get adults off the hook. If a child learns to dress prudently when it is cold outside after suffering the consequences of not do so, she learns to better meet her own needs and wants rather than being compelled to abide the dictates of others. The child will freely choose to be less obstinate when advised to take her coat, and she will choose for reasons of her own. Surely this is preferable if we value, as we should, respecting a child’s growing autonomy.

Trouble looms however. What happens when the consequences of an action are so dangerous or painful that allowing a child to experience them would amount to neglect? Or when the lessons they would teach are not ones we would want a child to learn, such as those imparted by successful theft? In such cases we may feel the need to impose a suitable consequence rather than allowing one to unfold naturally, and so arises a distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘logical’ consequences. And, I worry, the reintroduction of punishment under a different name.

Roughly, the difference between ‘logical’ and ‘natural’ consequences is said to be the difference between a response to a child’s behavior that is imposed by a parent (or other adult in a position of authority) and one that arises naturally. Nature might be of use in teaching children to mind the weather as they get dressed, but nature provides few reliable outcomes to things like leaving one’s toys scattered around a room, and so is unlikely to teach a child to tidy up if she is not so inclined. Having her toys taken away for a while may impart such a lesson, doing so is frequently suggested as a ‘logical consequence’ that a parent might impose in such a case. It does not require a great deal of skepticism to wonder how this isn’t punishment in the more traditional sense—surely this parent is coupling what she judges to be unacceptable behavior with an unpleasant outcome hoping to shape her child’s behavior, and what is that if not a return to punishment?

The word ‘logical’ is expected to do an extraordinary amount of work to make the distinction between logical consequences and punishment viable. In particular it is expected to render losing one’s toys for not tidying up more sensible to a child than being sent to one’s room for not tidying up, so only the latter but not the former will be experienced as expression of parental will. It is also supposed to suggest the decision to impose this consequence stems not from a parent’s judgment but rather from an amoral imperative comparable to the causal forces of nature. If losing one’s toys follows logically from not picking up after oneself, the parent can hardly be blamed for doing her part.

I’ll put aside the question of whether children typically see a difference between those responses to their behavior dubbed consequences and more traditional forms of punishment. What seems clear, however, is that parents are still very much imposing their own values when they impose ‘logical consequences’ on what they judge to be unwanted behavior. A parent who does not mind living in toy-strewn squalor will not take her child’s toys away if they are not picked up—this is not a matter of “logic”, but of “values”. Parents who do respond with an action intended to discourage squalor surely are judging the behavior they are responding to as in some sense wrong or unacceptable, and they are coupling it with an unpleasant outcome. Which surely seems like punishment.

Natural consequences might seem to fare better, but not for long. There is a reasonably clear difference between punishing a child and allowing her to experience whatever comes of her choices. But it is not so clear that parents who opt for the latter escape responsibility for children’s ensuing unhappiness so easily or that they are not,  in the end, imposing their own values. Parents still have to choose when to allow their children to suffer a natural consequence and they will invariably do so with an eye towards teaching a lesson they want taught. This points to the same imposition of will that initially worried us about punishment. 

All told, it seems the contemporary distinction between punishment and consequences accomplishes little beyond obscuring the ways in which responses to children’s behavior remain driven by adults’ values and judgments.

 Notes

[i] The distinction between punishing a wayward child and allowing (or, as we’ll see, imposing) consequences is suggested by Rousseau in Emile, and echoed briefly by Kant in his remarks on education and pedagogy. See Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile: On Education, Allen Bloom trans. (New York: Basic Books),1979, and Immanuel Kant, Education, Annette Churton, trans. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 1960. The distinction is standard in popularchild rearing materials. Examples include the widely read and used books and programs that followed Foster Cline and Jim Fay, Parenting With Love and Logic (NavPress), 2004, 2014. A rare skeptical voice is psychologist Alfie Kohn, who focuses on the possible negative effects of the deliberate use of consequences on children to argue the approach is no improvement over traditional punishments. See Alfie Kohn, Beyond Discipline: From Compliance to Community (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) 2006, Chapter 4. For a longer version of the arguments presented here see Dennis Arjo, Paradoxes of Liberalism and Parental Authority (Lanham: Lexington Books), 2016, Chapter 3.

Dennis Arjo is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Johnson County Community College. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of California, Santa Barbara and works in the areas of moral psychology, comparative philosophy, and philosophy of education. He is the author of Paradoxes of Liberalism and Parental Authority.