George Lakoff has given the world one of the most helpful and depressing models of understanding the differences between liberals and conservatives and how we think — what he calls the moral mind.
His book Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think is must reading for anyone trying to make sense of the times in which we live. I quote him all the time. Seriously, this is essential reading.
Mark Wingfield
But the book leaves me depressed every time I go back to it. Although the book is meticulously researched and clearly documented, I find no hope in it for how we might move forward constructively. Perhaps that’s because I so clearly fit the description of one of the two types of moral thinkers he describes.
Those two worldviews are based in the ways families operate: the Strict Father versus the Nurturant Parent.
First, some background on how Lakoff gets to these labels.
Says he: “The metaphor of the Left versus the Right comes with a line between them, and the metaphorical line has a ‘middle.’ There are ‘moderates’ like those above but not one worldview of the Moderate shared by all moderates. In short, there is no single ‘middle’ defined by (a) single worldview.”
This is important because we too often speak of “moderates” or “centrists” as if they were a cohesive third option. According to Lakoff, they are not. I wrote about this last year in a piece titled “There is no center.”
“Lakoff wants us to understand why liberals and conservatives speak different languages.”
Lakoff wants us to understand why liberals and conservatives speak different languages.
“The normal dismissal of daily facts that don’t fit moral worldviews explains why so many conservatives deny global warming in the face not only of the vast range of scientific facts, but even in the face of images of melting glaciers and the reality of droughts and fires,” he says. “It is not that science deniers say to themselves, ‘I’m going to deny the scientific facts.’ Instead, their brains work automatically and unconsciously so as to produce the effect of science denial.”
Liberals like me, he says, falsely believe if we just get enough facts, enough truth, out to people, they will see we are correct. But it doesn’t work that way. (See also Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind for more on this.)
Lakoff: “It should be true that if you just get the facts out to people, they will reason to the right conclusion. And so, year after year, decade after decade, liberals keep telling facts to conservative audiences without changing many minds. This behavior by liberals is itself a form of science denial — the denial of the cognitive and brain sciences. It is simply irrational behavior by many people proud of their rationality.”
Ouch.
Now here’s the most relevant part: “On the whole, conservatives are normal people who happen to have a conservative moral worldview deeply embedded in their brains and whose personal identity is significantly defined by that worldview.”
In other words, facts cannot get easily past a deeply embedded worldview.
He continues: “Deeply embedded in conservative and liberal politics are different models of the family. Conservatism, as we shall see, is based on a Strict Father model, while liberalism is centered around a Nurturant Parent model. These two models of the family give rise to different moral systems and different discourse forms, that is, different choices of words and different modes of reasoning.”
Strict Father
Lakoff calls the driver of the conservative worldview a Strict Father model.
“This model posits a traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family as well as the authority to set overall policy, to set strict rules for the behavior of children, and to enforce the rules,” he explains. “The mother has the day-to-day responsibility for the care of the house, raising the children, and upholding the father’s authority. Children must respect and obey their parents; by doing so they build character, that is, self-discipline and self-reliance. Love and nurturance are, of course, a vital part of family life but can never outweigh parental authority, which is itself an expression of love and nurturance — tough love. Self-discipline, self-reliance and respect for legitimate authority are the crucial things that children must learn. Once children are mature, they are on their own and must depend on their acquired self-discipline to survive. Their self-reliance gives them authority over their own destinies, and parents are not to meddle in their lives.”
“The Trump era has put my tolerance to the test and broken it.”
As someone who did not adhere to the Strict Father model before, I already was skeptical of its efficacy. But the Trump era has put my tolerance to the test and broken it.
If the Strict Father model teaches that “self-discipline, self-reliance and respect for legitimate authority are the crucial things that children must learn,” how in the world have conservatives fallen for Donald Trump? He pretends to embody those traits, but anyone with eyes to see should quickly realize his claims are fraudulent — just like everything else about him.
Again, this is not my worldview, and I struggle to understand it.
But apart from Trump, looking at families I have known in my six decades of living, it’s also apparent that Strict Fathers may think they are protecting their children from the evils of the world but often drive their children to embrace those very evils. The more severe their strictness, the more it backfires.
Strict Fathers may have the best of intentions, but they drive their children away from them.
The same is true of pastors and theologies, by the way. Calvinism and fundamentalism are the twin poster parents for Strict Father ideology run amok.
“Calvinism and fundamentalism are the twin poster parents for Strict Father ideology run amok.”
Nurturant Parent
The other model Lakoff posits and assigns to liberals like me is the Nurturant Parent.
He explains: “The liberal worldview centers on a very different ideal of family life, the Nurturant Parent model: Love, empathy and nurturance are primary, and children become responsible, self-disciplined and self-reliant through being cared for, respected and caring for others, both in their family and in their community. Support and protection are part of nurturance, and they require strength and courage on the part of parents. The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents and their community, not out of the fear of punishment. Good communication is crucial. If their authority is to be legitimate, parents must explain why their decisions serve the cause of protection and nurturance. Questioning by children is seen as positive, since children need to learn why their parents do what they do and since children often have good ideas that should be taken seriously.
He adds: “The principal goal of nurturance is for children to be fulfilled and happy in their lives. A fulfilling life is assumed to be, in significant part, a nurturant life — one committed to family and community responsibility. What children need to learn most is empathy for others, the capacity for nurturance, and the maintenance of social ties, which cannot be done without the strength, respect, self-discipline, and self-reliance that comes through being cared for.”
I’m biased because that’s the model I embrace, but this model also sounds more like Jesus than the Strict Father model.
Yes, children of Nurturant Parents can make bad decisions just like children of Strict Fathers, but children are not driven to those choices by overbearing parents.
Again, I’m biased on this, but applied to theology, the Nurturant Parent model seems more like the way of Jesus, who sought to lift people up rather than give them strict rules to follow or else.
Can’t there be more?
Reading Lakoff, I long for a third model or some larger set of models. Yet he insists these are the only two models that survive scrutiny to present comprehensive explanations for the way people think.
My own worldview is such that I see the dangers in the Strict Father model, yet I do not want to be so arrogant as to suggest everyone should share my Nurturant Parent model. Lakoff writes about how some people mix and match part of both models in illogical and incohesive ways.
But I want more than that. Just like some of us long for a legitimate third political party in America. Yet we are so entrenched in our two-party system that not even a catastrophe like Trump can spark a strong third-party option.
“So, we are left with binaries. And binaries always require winners and losers.”
So, we are left with binaries. And binaries always require winners and losers.
BNG columnist Rodney Kennedy has written about Lakoff’s models before. He also previously owned a consulting firm specializing in parenting workshops. Random House published his book, The Encouraging Parent: How to Stop Yelling at Your Kids and Start Teaching Them Confidence, Self-Discipline, and Joy.
Rod presented a third way that combines empathy with strength to act. He taught parents they can be in charge with open communication, nonpunitive discipline and teaching self-esteem through praise.
He explained: “This method doesn’t dismiss discipline, responsibility and consequences as if they are not important. Children are taught values of respect, resilience, responsibility, rapport, and the development of strong habits, practices, and routines.”
Another friend reminded me he grew up in a Strict Father household but found a way out of that in raising his own children. His point was that change is possible.
Still another friend, who is a therapist, said he objects to Lakoff’s use of the negative term “strict” for the conservative side and “nurturant” for the liberal side. “I’ve known conservative fathers who were very nurturing parents,” he explained.
I would counter that parents (and citizens) who are all in on a strict mindset do not consider “strict” to be a negative term.
Another friend, who is a spiritual director, said: “Strict Father has been normalized societally so that even for those of us who resist its pull, we are often influenced by it. You might even say that we have a Strict Father Wound.”
Strict Father failings today
The Strict Father model drives so many of the people and issues in the news today. This idea of a stern ruling hand begins with how one interprets the Bible — sinners in the hands of an angry God — and runs all the way to how one reads the news — was Harrison Butker standing up for family values or showing us he’s a well-paid male chauvinist?
“Even liberals like President Joe Biden exhibit Strict Father rationales for defending Israel’s indefensible slaughter of 35,000 innocent Palestinians.”
But the Strict Father model also pops up in some unlikely places. Consider the divide over Israel’s war in Gaza. Even liberals like President Joe Biden exhibit Strict Father rationales for defending Israel’s indefensible slaughter of 35,000 innocent Palestinians. Even liberals like presidents of Ivy League universities can’t be bothered to have a conversation with anti-Israel student protesters, who are assumed to be unlawful. And even some liberal Jews automatically place love of country over love of human life.
Among run-of-the-mill conservatives, the Strict Father model explains support for bans on transgender students, abortion, women’s rights, real American history, LGBTQ people and free access to library books. All these things threaten the strict control of a father who knows best — even if the father is dead wrong.
That’s why I’m convinced more than ever that the Strict Father model is killing us. It is strangling civility, tolerance, respect for others’ rights, creativity, self-expression, spiritual growth, intellectual growth and political sovereignty. Right now, it’s looking like the Strict Father is going to have us all under house arrest (a harsher version of “time out” or being “grounded”) before we know it.
I find the Nurturant Parent model more sufficient for our times, but I know not everyone is going to agree. Not everyone’s brains work that way. So, couldn’t someone please come up with another model that would give refuge to those who need to escape the Strict Father worldview?
The world may depend on it.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality. His forthcoming book is Troubling the Truth and Other Tales from the News.
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