Tough love is the act of treating a person sternly or harshly with the intent to help them in the long run.

Description

Bill Milliken described tough love through the expression, "I don't care how this makes you feel toward me. You may hate my guts, but I love you, and I am doing this because I love you." Milliken strongly emphasizes that a relationship of care and love is a prerequisite of tough love, and that it requires that caregivers communicate clearly their love to the subject.

Maia Szalavitz Maia Pearl Szalavitz (born March 29, 1965) is an American reporter and author who focuses on science, public policy and addiction treatment. Early life and education Maia Szalavitz was born March 29, 1965. She was raised in upstate New York. She ...

believes, based on her own experience, that this may be difficult, since some people experiencing addiction consider themselves unworthy of love and find it difficult to believe others love them. In most uses, there must be some actual love or feeling of affection behind the harsh or stern treatment to be defined as tough love. For example, genuinely concerned parents refusing to support their

drug A drug is any chemical substance that causes a change in an organism's physiology or psychology when consumed. Drugs are typically distinguished from food and substances that provide nutritional support. Consumption of drugs can be via insuffla ...

- addicted child financially until he or she enters

drug rehabilitation Drug rehabilitation is the process of medical or psychotherapeutic treatment for dependency on psychoactive substances such as alcohol, prescription drugs, and street drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, heroin or amphetamines. The general inte ...

would be said to be practicing tough love. Tim Hawkes has described tough love as putting "principles before popularity" and allowing loved ones to learn through failure.

Reception

The term has been appropriated to justify authoritarian parenting and boot camps for teenagers which

characterizes as abusive. The

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

noted that "get tough treatments do not work and there is some evidence that they may make the problem worse". Szalavitz believes tough love rhetoric encourages unnecessarily harsh rules, "brutal confrontations", and a presumption that pain produces growth. The British think tank

Demos Demos may refer to: Computing * DEMOS, a Soviet Unix-like operating system * DEMOS (ISP), the first internet service provider in the USSR * Demos Commander, an Orthodox File Manager for Unix-like systems * plural for Demo (computer programming) ...

asserts that ''tough love'', understood as authoritative parenting in contrast to

authoritarian parenting A parenting style is a psychological construct representing standard strategies that parents use in their child rearing. The quality of parenting can be more essential than the quantity of time spent with the child. For instance, the parent may be ...

, is beneficial in the development of preferred character traits in children up to five years old."Tough love 'is good for children

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...

, 8 November 2009.

History

The phrase "tough love" itself is believed to have originated with Bill Milliken's book of the same title in 1968.

Description

Reception

History

See also

Explanatory notes

Citations

General and cited references

External links