Why Conditional Parenting Principles Make It Hard to Like Mikan Tsumiki (ESSAY)

Parental Conditional Regard and Its Secondhand Burden on Nonfamily

Mikan Tsumiki is a divisive character in the Danganronpa franchise. Fans of the series either love her or despise her, and similar personalities would create rifts in the general public as well. If we take both her backstory and actions into account, she is a morally gray character. Her actions were of her own, but they were not done from a real sense of choice. They stemmed from strong internal pressures and complex psychological forces working together to hinder moral decision-making. Like all living beings, she was unknowingly following a script that she had no part in writing. Perhaps we know Mikans in real life, but we are hesitant to lend a helping hand. We know what happens when others lack the emotional resources to function at a basic level. We read it in the news every day. What are the mental blocks preventing us from reaching out to these people? The answer may lie in the way you were raised.

Embedded within one's inner architecture, conditional parenting principles make it difficult to empathize, and thus cooperate, with people like Mikan Tsumiki. Conditional parenting sets a template for an unapt adherence to reciprocity, moral rigidity, love withdrawal, and the fear of permissiveness.

Conditional Parenting

According to the author of Unconditional Parenting, conditional parenting is "[love that is earned] by acting in ways [the parent] deems appropriate, or by performing up to [the parent's] standards." Like many other traits, conditional love exists along a spectrum. The vast majority of the world has been raised with conditional parenting principles. Time-out is one example. It is the most advised practice in professional literature for pre-adolescents (Chamberlain and Patterson, 1995). More on this in Love Withdrawal.

A common thread that runs through conditional parenting is B.F. Skinner's behaviorism. Behaviorism focuses solely on external forces–whether a behavior is reinforced or deterred. This framework assumes that people are defined exclusively by their actions, never mind the reasons behind them. This worldview emerged in the early 1900s, where psychology only focused on what could be observed: behaviors. A century later, psychologists had developed methods to indirectly measure one's inner workings through self-reports, brain scans, and polygenic studies. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner himself warned that punished children only learn to avoid getting caught and lie well. No internalization of morals actually takes place.

The purpose of punishment is to discourage certain behaviors from repeating via physical or emotional pain. However, punishment has been shown to fail on its own terms. Hoffman (1960) concluded that any punitive discipline led to more rule-breaking behavior in children outside the home. They experienced reduced moral internalization because the parent-child relationship has been eroded in favor of their immediate compliance. Corporal punishment especially spells out an array of problems. In a meta-analysis of 88 studies, Gershoff (2002) noted that corporal punishment (behaviors that do not result in physical injury, e.g. spanking or slapping) is significantly associated with:

Decreased moral internalization, increased child aggression, increased child delinquent and antisocial behavior, decreased quality of relationship between parent and child, decreased child mental health, increased risk of being a victim of physical abuse, increased adult aggression, increased adult criminal and antisocial behavior, decreased adult mental health, and increased risk of abusing own child or spouse.

The other side of the same coin is rewards. Another meta-analysis of 128 studies found that all types of rewards, tangible or verbal, undermine intrinsic motivation (Deci et al., 1999). Rewards, a branch of extrinsic motivation, do not encourage commitment to a task. Children immediately returned to their pre-reward behaviors when rewards were withheld in the experiment. To add on, when told that they were going to get rewarded, they assumed that the task at hand was inherently boring and needed some sort of incentive for anyone to do it. Dangling a carrot in front of a child for good behavior does not respect the child's need for free autonomy or love without strings attached.