The Hypocrisy Fallacy
by Glenn Caleval
If there is a perfect person in the world, let the news ring from the mountains for the Lord has returned!
Internet parents -- in fact all parents -- are frequently confronted by a child denouncing some rule or discipline as hypocritical. What is amazing is the huge amount of guilt that parents allow such charges to cause them.
You need to confront such charges directly and in no way allow them to deter you from the best course of action for your child.
Let us take it as given that in some matter you are by the literal characterization “hypocritical.” Let us take an example where teenage son has walked up on dad viewing the Playboy site. This discovery is used to insist that teenage son should be allowed to use the web to view pornographic sites as well. After all anything else would be hypocritical wouldn’t it?
Maybe. But so what?
Parents who smoke desperately do not want their children to smoke. Are they hypocritical? Possibly. But they are also clearly correct.
The key here is to recognize and explain the logic of the situation. Whether or not a thing is good, bad or indifferent has nothing to do with who is promoting that thing. The truth or falseness of a statement does not depend on the virtues of the person making the statement. It is either true or false. It matters not a bit whether or not it is Adolf Hitler making the statement or the Pope.
So first off, the point needs to be made that if a color blind man says the sky is blue, it is no less blue for the fact that he cannot see it. Similarly a sociopath who is obsessively cutting himself with a knife is not wrong to tell others that cutting yourself is painful.
So, the message to the teenage son is simple: Even if dad IS being hypocritical, it does not reduce the value of the rules. The rules stand on their own.
“Do as I say, not as I do” is a perfectly sensible approach when what I say will promote health, safety, prosperity or happiness.
As these debates with kids can be truly moronic, try a lame example for emphasis.
“If I murdered someone and then told you murder is wrong, would you think that it makes murder okay?”
But do not spend too much time trying to get the child to accept the explanation. It is in fact important to make the explanation because despite appearances, what you say to children does hang around in their heads even over their most strenuous opposition.
Once you’ve made a fair effort to get them to see the logic, however, you must go to the core of the matter: dad is not a hypocrite.
There are LOTS of things that adults can legitimately choose to do that children, including teenagers, are simply not equipped to choose.
An adult can choose to go to work instead of school or indeed vice versa. So long as the choice does not hurt anyone else, an adult is free to make that choice and enjoy the consequences.
Most importantly, an adult is equipped to understand whether or not his or her choices do pose a risk of harming others. Teenagers do not realize the full impact of their actions, for example, while cruising a porn site having identity information stolen and putting the entire family at risk.
A child is not free to choose not to go to school. He is so NOT free that society has actual truancy laws to underline the fact that he is not free to make the choice.
Whether he wants to accept it or not, teenager has to be told, and this must be non-negotiable, that simply being alive long enough to make it into adulthood makes a real difference. The years matter. It’s called experience.
Merely living in the world gives one experience upon which to base choices. And at adulthood, no one else is responsible for protecting us from the consequences of choices. Parents are responsible, both morally and legally to protect their children.
Ultimately it is not more complicated than that.
Dad is equipped to handle his own impulses, emotions and understanding of the images he chooses to view. He is also equipped to evaluate the risks. Teenager is not.
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