What's a Parent's Role?

Take our Authoritative Parenting Test

Find a family therapist near me

Every child needs an integration of structure, love, and wisdom.

Plato described the goal of parenting in a single sentence in Book 9 of the "Politeia."

Parents can provide a model, but only the child can integrate it as their own.

The goal is not a well-behaved child. It is a genuinely self-governed adult.

In 2003, I published a book for parents called Pearls of Wisdom. Children have three fundamental needs, and a parent’s job is to meet all three: Structure, Love, and Wisdom (SLW). Take it SLoW. Structure means providing for a child’s basic needs and giving them clear boundaries to guide them. Love means not just affection but the careful balance between fostering attachment and fostering independence. Wisdom means helping a child develop the judgment to discern what is good and beneficial from what is harmful and unhealthy.

Most parents don’t think of it this way, but what every good parent is working toward (whether they realize it or not) is a child who can eventually govern themselves. We usually call that autonomy. Plato had a more precise name for it.

Plato was already a central source in that book, and is quoted throughout. What I did not yet have was the recognition that he had named the governing function as a distinct fourth element of the psyche. The concept was there: The book opens with a quote about the integration of the personality, and SLW rests on the idea that the three needs only work well when they are balanced together (SLW+Integration). That loving, governing order that good parenting provides, when internalized by the child, is what Plato calls a healthy auto politeia, or self-constitution.

Plato clearly describes the human psyche as having three parts: the appetitive part, which drives hunger, comfort, immediate gratification, and the avoidance of pain; the spirited part, which is the seat of emotion, loyalty, and attachment; and the reasoning part, which deliberates and makes decisions.

Structure addresses the appetitive part. A child’s appetites for pleasure and fun are developmentally normal. What they need are boundaries: clear rules, consistent expectations, a household that tells the child what the world asks of a person. Without structure, appetite governs by default. That is appropriate in infancy. It becomes a serious problem in adults.

Love addresses the spirited part. The spirited part is not just anger, though it includes the capacity for righteous anger. It is the part of us that feels loyalty, experiences guilt and pride, cares about doing right, and wants to be seen as worthy. A child whose spirited part is well-formed through genuine love develops the moral sensitivity and emotional range that make a full human life possible. A child whose spirited part is ignored or misdirected (through indifference, harshness, or false approval) will struggle in life.

Wisdom addresses the reasoning part. The reasoning part needs content: genuine exposure to what is true, to what has stood the test of time, to what good judgment looks like in practice. Fostering wisdom in a child means stimulating a lifelong desire to learn, helping them develop a philosophical view of life, and finely tuning their sense of what is good, what is not, and why.

What Plato Said About the Goal

In Book 9 of the Politeia (what is mistakenly called The Republic), he pauses to say exactly what parents and educators are trying to accomplish. The passage is at 590e, and it is easy to miss.

“And it is plain, that this is the purpose of the law, which is the ally of all classes in the state, and this is the aim of our control of children, our not leaving them free before we have established, so to speak, a constitutional government within them and, by fostering the best element in them with the aid of the like in ourselves, have set up in its place a similar guardian and ruler in the child, and then, and then only, we leave it free.” (590e, Shorey trans.)

What's a Parent's Role?

Take our Authoritative Parenting Test

Find a family therapist near me

Three things are happening in that sentence. A constitution is established within the child—the auto politeia, the self-governing order that is the whole point of formation. The reasoning part is cultivated so it can govern well. And the spirited part is shaped into its guardian function, watching over the constitution from inside. The appetites are not mentioned because they are what this structure governs. All four parts are present; three named, one implied.

What Parents Can and Cannot Do

Parents can establish the conditions: a structured environment, loving example, and the transmission of wisdom. These are substantial tasks, and they take years.

But the ultimate nature or governing style of the self-constitution is something only the child can determine. It requires the child to encounter reality on their own terms, to test the emerging structure against actual experience, to fail and adjust and come to their own conclusions. A governing order that forms through pure compliance is not genuinely theirs. It is borrowed. It will not hold when the external structure disappears.

This is why over-controlled children so often struggle in early adulthood. The external authority held the structure together. The internal one never had room to form.

And under-structured children face the reverse: appetite running the show in an adult body, with no stable governing principle and no capacity to hold a course under pressure.

Internalized Integration Is the Goal

Integration, as I used the term in 2003, meant something specific: not that the three things were simply present, but that they worked together under an internal governing order. None of the three works without the other two.

Plato’s term for this integrated state is auto politeia—self-constitution, self-governance. It is not perfect order. It is not a child who never makes mistakes. It is a child who, when they eventually leave your household, has at least the foundation of a governing faculty of their own: an internal structure that is built on what you gave them but must be completed by what they work out themselves.

A child who reaches this is on their way to becoming, as Plato puts it, a true friend to themselves. They begin to recognize that what they want in a given moment is not always what is good for them—and they have enough of a governing structure to act on that recognition.

Plato’s conditional is worth holding onto: “and then, and then only, we leave it free.” Not when they turn 18. Not when they leave the house. When the internal governing faculty is on duty. And then (this is the harder part) we actually leave them free. We trust the constitution we helped build, even knowing it will differ from ours, even knowing they will make choices we would not make.

The most we can give a child is a well-shaped beginning and room to finish it themselves. That has always been the job. Plato just gave us the most precise description of it.

Plato. Politeia. (1969). Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Harvard University Press.

Sunde, C.H. (2003). Pearls of Wisdom. Millennial Mind Publishing.

There was a problem adding your email address. Please try again.

By submitting your information you agree to the Psychology Today Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy

© Psychology Today