As noted in this post last month, parenting issues are of interest here because bad parenting is one of the actual "root causes" of crime.  Ruben Navarrette has this column on the parenting style that produced a brat so incredibly spoiled that she sued her parents for support and education even though she is an adult.

Sean Canning, a former police chief, admits that he was better at laying down the law with the officers under his command than with his own daughter.

"I'm a liberal, liberal parent," Sean told the New York Post. "I wish I could have grown up in my house."

You have to wonder if the chief has figured out that, with young people, being too lenient often does more harm than being too strict.

From media reports, it seems that the Cannings wanted to raise a child with a lot of self-esteem.

Mission accomplished. When you sue your own parents, you're no shrinking violet. The trouble is, what Rachel Canning has is what psychologists call "cheap" self-esteem. The real thing comes from striving, failing, persevering and eventually succeeding -- not from having your parents clear a path for you.

What is astonishing and disheartening to me is how many educated and intelligent people do not know the basic fact that permissive parenting is just as bad as authoritarian.  We have known that since Diana Baumrind's pioneering research in the 60s. 

This guy was a chief of police and he didn't know that.

The optimum balance, BTW, is what Baumrind called "authoritative" parenting, the kind we saw modeled on television from Father Knows Best to Andy Griffith to The Cosby Show.