The Economics of Discipline

Last night I channel surfed for half an hour before heading off to bed.  One show caught my attention briefly.  Here's the premise.  Three teenage kids are auditioning to appear in a reality TV show.  One of the kids, in truth an actor, brags that he's been drinking all morning and that the vitamin water he's now sipping is spiked. Interactions among the three kids are monitored by a hidden camera and shown to their mothers in a separate room.  Now a network official walks in and tells the group that they need to drive to another building for the audition.  She then hands the keys to the guy who has supposedly been drinking all morning.  The key question is whether the other two will actually get into the car with the "inebriated" guy and let him drive.  That's exactly what they do. When the car arrives at the interview site, the mothers, flummoxed and aghast, confront their children.  Why, they want to know, did they get in the car?  But there was no good answer.  As the episode draws to a close, the host offers advice to parents: First, tell your children never to ride in a car with a driver who has been drinking.  Second, be clear about the consequences, such as revoking driving privileges, should they ever do so.  The advice makes a certain amount of sense, yet I believe is flawed in one respect.  Spelling out clear consequences for bad behavior sets up an economy than can undermine its purpose.  Behavior A can be traded for Consequence B multiplied by the Chances of Getting Caught C.  My view as a parent is that bad behavior should not be weighed against such a calculus—not that there shouldn't be consequences for doing wrong things.  But in the context of loving relationships, the legal model is a poor one.  The response to bad choices should not be cooly objective, but rather subjective because it hurts those we love.  The prospect of disappointing loving parents, even making them angry, is authentic and personal.  If this stance is nurtured from a young age, I believe it can be the most effective deterrent to misguided, foolish, and immoral behavior.