TCS highlights the importance of consent in human relationships, and explains how coercion impairs creativity, which is the ability to think, learn and solve problems in the widest sense. TCS represents a profound criticism of prevailing theories of education and parenting, and provides a positive alternative. TCS advocates, but is not defined by, the absence of coercion. With the TCS approach, children spend their childhoods without anyone making them do things against their will or anyone doing things to them against their will. Feeling love for another person does not confer the right to act towards them in a way that would be wrong if you did not love them.
Love is no justification for tyranny.
TCS also provides the theory behind the practice that allows parents to persevere in the face of difficult situations where they would otherwise be tempted to choose coercion.