Three views on the liberal/authoritarian divide.

Barbara Johnston

Public relations officer of the Catholic Secondary Schools Parents Association and director of the National Parents Council Post-Primary

"The War for Children's Minds put words on the way I've raised my 17-year-old daughter. I have encouraged her to think for herself and choose her own values, rather than accepting authority unquestioningly. With my first two kids (boys aged 22 and 24), I took the authoritarian way, saying 'you have to do this because I say so'.

"I found myself losing my temper with the boys and hitting them, and I realised this doesn't work. If anyone stood back and thought critically about the education system, they would realise what kids are already telling us, which is that it's not healthy for them. They don't learn to think for themselves. They are fed information and meant to regurgitate it at a particular place and time. Stephen Law suggests a different way, that we should be allowing our children the freedom to lead their own education, to take off on tangents, to explore, ask questions and get the satisfaction of really researching, thinking about and understanding something. That doesn't mean that you don't have boundaries for them to push up against. A parent has to be very clear about what his or her own values are, so that the parent can explain those values to the child.

"I think that schools should have a religious ethos, even though I'm a pagan. It's not the particular ethos that's important, it's the fact that there is one."

Dr John Sharry

Child and family psychotherapist and author of Parent Power: Bringing Up Responsible Children and Teenagers

"My own view is that the key to parenting children successfully, in order to prepare them to make good moral decisions, is balance. You neither want to constrict children by imposing too many rules and values, but neither do you want to leave them without any moral guidance or role models. I think it is important that parents communicate their values to their children (rather than leaving them to their own devices), while also empowering them to think for themselves and to make their own minds up. Children should be taught to respect and listen to traditional sources of authority (though not absolutely) yet also be able to critique and reflect about them. Whatever tradition or religion we bring a child up in, it is helpful to teach them respect for other religions and traditions. Even if we bring children up in an atheistic or secular house, it is important to help children to understand and respect the role of religion in other people's lives.

"Ultimately, we want to prepare our children to make concerned moral decisions that are respectful of themselves and others and the wider society in which we all belong."

Dr Pat Dolan

Joint manager of the Child and Family Policy and Research Unit, NUI Galway

"I don't think that it's as simple as an autocratic versus a laissez-faire approach. The biggest influence on children is not the wider religious/moral wing or the liberal/media wing or a unilateral debate about which is better. The biggest influence is parents, who surpass adolescent peer influences.

"Parents pass on their values to their children by modelling their own values, such as altruism. There's more debate about religious and moral values than there was in the past, which is very healthy for children. Where it becomes unhealthy is when children have not been adequately informed to make decisions.

"Ninety per cent of children grow up and do fine. Of those who do have difficulty, 90 per cent of those grow out of the problem when as they age.

"Most children are resilient and, while we live in a vastly changing society, we shouldn't underestimate their ability to cope.

"I'm not sure it's true that Ireland is less moral than in the past. I think we go through bouts of outcry over issues such as sex abuse, but we don't speak out about children living in deprivation in poverty-stricken homes, or the issue of adolescents being held in adult psychiatric hospitals. Sex is the topic that moves us."