AS more Jamaican parents abandon strict, authoritarian parenting for a more relaxed and permissive approach, the head of the National Parenting Support Commission (NPSC) Kaysia Kerr is warning that this shift — often lacking structure and guidance — is contributing to a rise in anti-social behaviour among children.

Kerr is urging parents to seek professional guidance instead of relying on their instincts when raising children.

“Parents just need to be open to accessing and stop winging it. This whole idea that there’s no manual on parenting is not true. I have a whole lot in the office so it’s not true at all, because people like to say, ‘Oh, I don’t really know what I’m doing, and it’s trial and error.’ The only part of the trial and error is when they’re 10 brothers, 10 different minds, and you’re trying the strategies. But the strategies are there, so when this one doesn’t work, you replace it,” she told the Jamaica Observer.

She pointed to a recent national landscape assessment by the NPSC that revealed ineffective parenting practices span all socio-economic backgrounds. Many parents, the commission’s CEO said, are also unaware of the developmental stages their children go through and how to tackle the various behavioural changes that come with each stage.

“The consequences of winging it are really what have brought us here in Jamaica. The anti-social behaviours are showing up, ineffective parenting is seen as one of the drivers of crime, so we are seeing the consequences out in society where our children are either raising themselves because there is no guidance in the home, or the parents are uninvolved,” Kerr said.

She said, too, that many Jamaicans are unconsciously parenting the way they were raised, often repeating negative patterns that stem from feelings of learned helplessness — a psychological state in which people believe they have no control over their circumstances and thus stop trying to change them, even when they can.

KERR…the consequences of winging it are really what have brought us here in Jamaica (Photo: JIS)

“I think it’s very visible to everybody what’s happening on the parenting landscape. Our children are not necessarily displaying the kinds of behaviours that we want. We want to develop better character traits, we want to go back to demonstrate for children what it means to be honest and what it means to operate with dignity, and what does it mean to have strong systems of values that are aligned to the things that there’s consensus on or wholesome for all of us.

“I think we need to, as adults, too, we all have an opportunity to demonstrate for the children what we want them to demonstrate, because it’s pointless to continue to bemoan the issues when sometimes the behaviours that we’re seeing are actually mirrors of how the adults are behaving. What we really want is an opportunity for the adults to do better so that the children who are looking on can have people to emulate,” she told the Sunday Observer.

The NPSC, a government agency under the Ministry of Education and Youth, has trained more than 300,000 parents in the past three years through its national parenting education programme. In the last year alone 100,000 parents have been trained with the help of guidance counsellors, health educators, and social workers. She said the commission will increase its outreach efforts, with a major focus during National Parent Month in November.

Kerr explained that there are four widely recognised parenting styles — authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and uninvolved. She said the NPSC is promoting the authoritative style, which combines clear expectations and discipline with emotional support and responsiveness to a child’s needs.

She noted that traditionally, Jamaica has leaned toward an authoritarian model — strict and demanding with limited warmth — but Kerr said the parenting landscape is now swinging too far in the opposite direction.

“What has happened on the landscape is that parents, having realised that that [authoritarian] is the parenting style that they need to move away from, have replaced it with the other end of the continuum, which would be either being uninvolved — and that is supported by data that say most of our homes are run by single-parent women — or, equally bad, the parents are there but they’re permissive, meaning that there are no boundaries set in the home or the boundaries are not clear.

“Children are left up [to themselves] to make decisions that they really have no business making. There is no enforcement of boundaries,” she explained.

She urged parents in need of support to contact the NPSC for free training and resources.

“Parents who really want to be effective will find the resources. Instead of just getting up and saying, ‘Oh, nothing is available,’ seek the resources,” she urged.