Word: parentism Part of Speech: noun Etymology: From parent + -ism. 1. Discrimination against parents. Labels: uncountable Example: I've come to label an attitude that lies in most of us and dominates in some as 'parentism' - that is presuming deficiences in people because they are parents. Example: Why indulge the reader's ageism, sexism, or (the neologicstic) "parentism"? 2. Pathological or unhealthy parenting. Labels: uncountable Example: Five irrational cognitive, emotive, and physical behaviors are described, and it is suggested that Rational Behavior Therapy, utilizing such techniques as rational self-analysis and rational emotive imagery, can help parents rid themselves of "parentism." Example: A popular form of parentism is motherism. Motherism occurs when being a mother permeates and guides my entire life so that I identify totally with being a mother and fail to realize myself in other ways. 3. Parental determinism; the belief that parenting is responsible for the character and behavior of the child. Labels: uncountable Example: Why do so few Americans recognize the effects of “parentism,” if you will? Why is there still no popular reform movement directed against the problem of wildly unequal starts? Example: Working for many years with preservice teachers, we have been faced with these forms of parentism on a regular basis. 4. The promotion of having children as a social ideal. Labels: uncountable Example: Amongst you, O civilizees! parentism ruling in exclusive development is judged praiseworthy, because it accords with the civilizee régime; but at a few paces from your civilizee countries, and from Morocco to Pekin, parentism is no longer praiseworthy; the system of seraglios and eunuchs, with the sale of women, the custom of separating mothers from their male children when nine years old, leaves no development for parentism, for the enjoyments of home and of the family; the only one that remains is for masculine tactism, or the passion of the pleasures of touch. Example: Many of these baby boomers are fed up with what they consider to be "a tyranny of parentism, " according to Leslie Lafayette, founder of the 2,500-member Childfree Network, one of several groups formed since the 1960s to support the choice to be childless. 5. The granting of absolute authority to parents. Labels: uncountable Example: Hence in this case, it can be demonstrated conclusively that Freud was blinded by parentism, that he consistently misinterpreted the defensive communications of the parents as the inevitable psycho-sexual development of the child. Example: in their criticism of the tyranny of parentism and their plea for moderate liberty in the choice of a wife or of a husband . 6. Paternal or maternal feeling and behavior. Labels: uncountable Example: I debated the matter—Reason was driven from her post and parentism prevail'd. Example: In regard to the Teeth, page 30, Dr. Redfield remarks to me, that hte upper incisors depict in man, not the social faculties of friendship and ambition, but those of familism or parentism, whose very strong development is first observed in early childhood, in the love of pets and dolls — playing at father and mother, especially in little girls. 7. The assumption of a parental role in the context of a relationship other than the parent-child relationship. Labels: countable, uncountable Example: Joady would joke in an attempt to escape Susan's image of parentism, although she knew all of their differing tactics were intended as loving nudges to keep Gerda from "declining." Example: Childbirth educators can also suffer from parentism, deciding what is best for their clients. 8. A cliché used by parents with their children. Labels: countable Example: I've even got subtitles for parentisms like "you're going to poke somebody's eye out with that". Example: By far the most bewildering parentism was heard when I tried something dangerous, such as walking along a wall. 'Get down off that wall,' my mum would say, 'or there's going to be a crying match.'