What Is Autonomy-Supportive Parenting and Why Should You Care?

I thought my husband and I were following our values, raising self-sufficient children through choices like medium-level supervision, allowing them to be bored on weekends, and a “figure-it-out” approach to sibling conflict. When COVID19 lockdown screeched normal life to a halt, leaving us with only each other in our house around the clock, I realized I was wrong.

The amount of household work multiplied and my husband and I never sat down while our pajama-clad children lounged around with iPads. Some parents sympathized with all their children were going through and let them lounge, but I knew we were going to crack and break if we kept up this bed-and-breakfast approach with our little freeloaders. “I need water” became my maternal siren wailing that my children must level up their independence to transform into “I will get it myself” with their fully capable minds and bodies.

This epiphany was multi-dimensional: my children’s self-sufficiency was not just a matter of their growth and health, it was part of our whole family’s well-being. Self-sufficiency goes well beyond hydration and household chores, and is one key part of a bigger construct that I know from my training as a psychologist: autonomy.

Post-Intensive Parenting?

The evolution of parenting guidance and culture has recently flowed through the over-parenting approach based in fears of kidnapping and low self-esteem, to now ebb with the reality of the downsides of this intensive parenting trend not preparing our children well for life itself, persuasively documented in Julie Lythcott-Haims’ How to Raise an Adult. The natural next step in our parenting evolution is to better prepare our children for the world instead of shield them from it.

In recent years, articles and books have started the push toward a way that builds more independence. Free-range parenting, the importance of unstructured play for child development, letting them fail, doing more chores around the house. As a parenting writer, I have spent more time than most of us can afford to consume as many articles, books, podcast interviews, etc. that I can squeeze into my waking hours.

As a psychologist, I realized how these trends were aspects of one underlying researched framework: autonomy-supportive parenting. If we allow our children to build trust in their own skills and belief in their agency, we end up supervising and rescuing less. This process of us letting go and letting grow, with the intention of building self-sufficiency, instills a child’s confidence not only in their abilities, but in who they are. ultimately allowing the discovery of their authentic self .

This trust from us and inner confidence in them develop over time a strong sense of autonomy and well-being that pervades all areas of daily life: home, school, social, and even their own minds, bodies, and hearts.  

So, What IS It?

We often use the terms “autonomous” and “independent” interchangeably, but autonomy encompasses a much broader state of being than independence. While many parents, especially Western-based parents, value raising children to be independent (even while struggling with backing off to let it happen!), “autonomous” represents a broader and deeper way of being in the world that has been shown across populations, cultures, and settings to be associated with general psychological well-being.

Autonomy supportive parenting

The word “autonomy” derives from Greek roots meaning “self-governance” or “self-legislation.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines autonomy as: “To be directed by considerations, desires, conditions, and characteristics that are not simply imposed externally upon one, but are part of what can somehow be considered one’s authentic self. Autonomy in this sense seems an irrefutable value, especially since its opposite — being guided by forces external to the self and which one cannot authentically embrace — seems to mark the height of oppression.”

In regular person language, “supporting autonomy” means raising our children to understand their authentic selves, including developing self-respect, self-worth, behaving by values, the ability to self-govern, and feeling a sense of volition, or control over choices and actions. Did you notice the “height of oppression” part? That could be us, if we are not careful. The goal is to parent without oppressing our child’s authentic sense of self. Sounds good, right? But how does it work?

The Theory and Science of Autonomy-Supportive Parenting

According to Self-Determination Theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017), three basic human needs must be fulfilled for overall well-being: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy-supportive parenting is theorized to work through fulfilling these needs in our children; conversely, not meeting these needs seems to put our children at risk for psychological and behavioral problems. When these needs are met, we experience “need satisfaction;” when not met, “need frustration.” As I’m sure you have discovered, parenting seems to be a constant tension between both, especially when a parent’s needs differ from their child’s.

In other words, we all crave being skilled, socially connected, and in charge of ourselves. I predict that most of us who have ever parented a toddler can agree that these pursuits indeed seem fundamental to being human.

Autonomy

One could argue that the drive for autonomy is actually at the root of many a parent-child conflict, from toddlerhood through adolescence. We want to preserve our agency and governance as parents, and they want their own. We believe we are in charge, or should be, and our children live in perpetuity of wanting to be more in charge than they are. I will never forget when I asked my 2-year-old, “who’s the boss here?” and he promptly sat on the kitchen floor and peed. I had my answer.

There is a place for the natural structure of power in families, and since adults are supposedly wiser and more capable, they should be setting limits as an essential part of raising children. However, it is possible to maintain this hierarchy while encouraging and nurturing our children’s sense of agency in our homes and in the world. This sense of agency and self-governance has been shown in the research over and over to be critical for general well-being and positive psychological functioning across developmental stages, so the hard work of figuring it out has big payoff.

In the research across ages and settings, autonomy represents a potent blend of strong internal motivation, personal freedom to be one’s self, knowing that authentic self, and acting with a fundamental sense of responsibility toward others. Not surprisingly, those who feel more autonomous have consistently been shown to also report higher self-esteem, greater self-actualization, stronger integration of their personality (key to knowing one’s true self), more positive mental health outcomes, and greater satisfaction with interpersonal relationships.

Competence

A sense of competence strengthens internal motivation, which lies at the heart of building skills, and ultimately, autonomy. The research shows that internal motivation contributes to optimal problem-solving and performance; this understanding of what to do and how to do it (eg, develop a new skill) combined with feeling competent then leads to more internal motivation. It’s a powerful loop that can be the positive engine of skill development as a part of healthy child development.

Our job is to allow our children to do for themselves (with scaffolding, meaning pushing a bit on what they can already do to keep building skill, but expectations need to match readiness!) so they can build this competence. This entails letting them make mistakes and tolerating the discomfort we feel if and when they fail, or we risk failing them in the long-term.

Relatedness

Relatedness represents perhaps the most psychologically profound part of the human experience: to feel like we belong. This sense of belongingness has been heralded as both central to well-being and to some of the most serious problems when it is missing (eg, gang involvement, depression, violence). 

When it comes to the parent-child relationship, viewed as the foundation of future relationships, parents first build that sense of belonging and connection in our homes. Children who feel accepted by their parents and that they belong in their families have been shown to be more resilient with stress in general, and more well-adjusted.

“I am not an ‘autonomy-supportive’ parent; I practice autonomy-supportive parenting the best I can each day. The beauty of that distinction is after a more controlling day, I can wake up the next morning and try again. ”

A majority of us have the intention to create close, trusting, and safe relationships with our children; however, it’s not something that magically blossoms with some fairy dust. It’s a lot of work in the day in, day out reality of parenting, but completely worth it when we realize how critical it is to our child’s optimal growth and health.

In fact, relatedness has to exist for the rest to happen. Strong, connected relationships allow for a child to safely develop their sense of self. As their primary “socializing agents,” we can use strategies on a daily basis that facilitate both autonomy and competence for our children’s long-term growth.

Ooh – What Are Those Strategies?

The great part is you will likely be familiar with most of the strategies wrapped up in the autonomy-supportive parenting framework. Where the magic happens, however, is how these strategies are applied because even with our best intentions, we may execute some in a controlling way that ends up not autonomy-supportive. My next blog post will dive into the specifics of the strategies, and autonomy-supportive execution.

Growth Mindset

My favorite aspect of this parenting approach – one reason I’m writing an entire book about it! – is because of its inherent flexibility. Even the researchers in this field regularly acknowledge, and sometimes write journal articles about, the reality that we all parent daily on a continuum. Some days, we are more controlling; other days, we are more autonomy-supportive. Our own stress, need satisfaction or need frustration, everything else happening in life preoccupying us, and our children’s behavior, all affect how we parent each day.

I am not an “autonomy-supportive” parent; I practice autonomy-supportive parenting the best I can each day. The beauty of that distinction is after a more controlling day, I can wake up the next morning and try again.

Crystal Ball

Look into the future and just imagine: your children doing their own laundry (!), cooking the family dinner, remembering to bring everything they need to school, packing their own luggage for vacation, telling you how they resolved an argument with their best friend. Imagine the relief of the pressure on you to do and think and remember all things, and the pride of watching your child take charge of their life, one developmental step at a time.

Now imagine that as this self-sufficiency unfolds under the umbrella of an autonomy-supportive home environment, that what is transpiring transcends the daily grind becoming easier: your child is figuring out their authentic self, who they want to be in the world, on their terms. They are developing a sense of autonomy to last a lifetime.