15.24: The Shu of Confucian Parenting
September 19th, 2009 
Chinese Philosophy, Life, Parker 
Chris
In my thread below this one, “Tao of Kids,” I was reflecting a bit on the seemingly Taoist message (in poem 42) that using legalistic procedures of correcting and punishing a misbehaving child will likely not lead to changed behavior. If anything, it leads to more resistance (and to the cultivation of cleverness). Instead, positive reinforcement seems to do the trick.
I wondered whether this can be connected to the need (in Taoism) for a person to surrender their own ego- on the need to give up on the desire to forcefully impose on the child your own will, and to step back from the egoistic urge to strike back at the child after he/she defies you. Instead, a Taoist parent might replace that urge with simply praising behavior that is good. I also mentioned in that thread that I thought here were Confucian points in that discussion too, so in this thread I’d like to think a bit about extending the discussion to Confucianism. I’ll say a few things about that below.
Not punishing is not an easy thing to do (for me, anyway). I don’t deal well with my children defying me when I tell them to do this or that. It’s just me. It’s one of those buttons can be pushed on me pretty quickly that sets me off. As I was thumbing through the Analects, thinking of this theme, I came across 15.21. It reads: “The Master said, ‘Exemplary persons (junzi) make demands on themselves, while petty people make demands on others.”
Of course, passage 15.21 makes a broad point, but it seems to fit the theme of Taoist wu-wei action in parenting. In resisting the urgings of your own ego, and of your own petty desires to enforce a specific code on others by making harsh demands on them, you pull back and make demands on yourself — namely by not giving in to such a petty impulse. You stop yourself from “striking back” at defiance and overcome the need to do it. By learning to do this, to make demands on yourself (in overcoming the desire) and not on others (but forcing them to toe the line through punishment), you are left with the more natural route of modeling and praising good behavior, a route that seems more natural and which seems to work out just right. All of which is pretty wu-wei.
Parenting and Shu
I should add here that it is clear that the passage of 15.21 appears a few sayings in the text before 15.24, which is one of the central passages in Analects for the doctrine of shu, so it might be connected to it. Perhaps there’s a Confucian point about shu and parenting?
To those who don’t know, shu is understood as the art of being flexible when in a position of power, specifically when dealing with those who are subordinate to you. Of course, Confucius means more specifically here flexibility in terms of ritual (li), so he is typically referring to the need to allow people to adapt to the particularities of their own unique circumstances in ways that might require some modifications of what is ritually expected of them. In fact, one way of reading Confucius’ claims about those (leaders, typically) who fail at shu (such as Zigong) is that such people have egoistic drives (such as the enjoyment of wielding power) that lead them to insist on robotic performances of ritual from their subordinates. Thus, since they never really have the well being of their subordinates in mind, they can’t seem to overcome those petty inclinations for control.
What I am wondering is whether the observations about parenting above (and in the other thread) open up a possible further reading of the meaning of shu. After all, in the typical reading of shu, the subordinate is trying to do something right when the superior is flexible. So, typical readings of shu read it as needing to be applied when the subordinate is perceived by the superior as doing their best (when they are loyal, or zhong). The superior must be capable of recognizing this (a type of practical wisdom on the part of superiors) and thus capable of “opening up a space” for the subordinate’s virtue to flourish in just the right way through on the spot adaptation.
Immediately it looks like shu and parenting don’t fit. In the case of parenting a disobedient child, the child is not doing what is right – instead, they are being defiant. So they are not trying their best and the typical response would be: so why be shu? I wonder, however, whether parenting reveals that the meaning of shu can (or should)
To start, let’s look at shu in terms of its general formulation, which is not doing others, what you don’t want them to do to you. So shu is understood in this more general formulation as the silver rule. By these lights, flexibility against a backdrop of effort by the subordinate should be seen as one application of shu, but not its definition (which would be the more general silver rule).
So now the question is: can the observations above about parenting fit the silver rule? It seems that it can fit. Even when a person is acting badly, this is no excuse to treat them in a petty way, which is a way in which you yourself would not want to be treated. Basically, when a child is defying you and you react in terms of pettiness, you forget your role as a parent because the child’s well being is no longer a concern. Instead, it’s the satisfaction of our own desires. In this way, this way of talking links up with the discussion of being flexible with subordinates, because non-flexibility is always motivated by a desire for petty control and a failure to be concerned with the other’s development.
So what does shu council? I wonder whether 14.34 is a good saying here to think of applying shu to parenting:
Someone remarked: “Always repay an injury with a good turn.” What do you think of this saying? The Master remarked, “What then, do you repay a good turn with? You repay an injury with straightness, and you repay a good turn with a good turn.”
In other words, when the child defies you, it is perhaps best not to punish or overly correct, which would be to repay an injury with an injury (since it is motivated by pettiness, and has little salutary effect). Still you should not repay it with a good turn (praise, reward). That leaves an obvious third option: ignore the child and do not allow his/her behavior to take root. This maintains “straightness” (non-petty inclination while keeping the child’s best interests at heart) while not praising or benefiting (a good turn) the child in any way and thus doing the child harm (which would not be shu). On the other hand, when the child is good (a good turn), repay this with a good turn (praise).
By the way — all of this theoretical hubbub to the side — I’ve been successful at maintaining shu parenting for about 53 hours now. Still effective!
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