My Boyfriend Is Very Wrong About What Makes Someone a Good Parent. I’m Not Sure I Can Marry Him.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My boyfriend and I are talking about having kids, and I’m starting to wonder if our expectations are so different that we shouldn’t get married. We had very different childhoods, and our upbringing and backgrounds have deeply influenced what we think is good parenting.

He was a very bright solo child to a single mom in the state’s best school district. She was strict when she was at home, but he was home alone or with his extended family a lot. He experimented with drugs young, got good grades but nearly didn’t graduate for disciplinary reasons, and didn’t make it further than his first semester of college thanks to excessive partying. He worked and went back to school in his mid-20s. He has a degree and a solid job now, and is strictly sober. He admires “tiger parents.” He talks a lot about how the ideal parent is a strict disciplinarian, academically oriented, and pushes kids hard to set them up for future success. He thinks his teachers and his mom let him coast on his ADHD diagnosis, and vows that his kids will not “get exceptions.” He thinks he would be more successful now if he’d had consistent parental pressure.

I, on the other hand, was one of multiple siblings in an OK school district, with two parents who both worked. I spent time roaming in the woods with my siblings as a kid. My parents paid attention to us but were busy. They encouraged me in sports, music, my job, and school; they were proud of me as a B student. I drank and went to parties as a teen, but as long as I didn’t do anything stupid, they looked the other way. And even though I didn’t have great social skills, I was never alone. Between two parents, older siblings, and neighbors, there was always someone to take care of me. With the help of a scholarship and loans, I got an undergraduate degree and then eventually a job in my field. I think ideal parenting is more like what I got: love first, plenty of encouragement and attention, and an expectation to work hard, but not a demand for perfection. Also, I think it’s a good thing to have some independence to try stuff and make mistakes young, while the consequences are smaller. I don’t think the pressure cooker style is good for parents or their kids. You don’t have to be the number one student or athlete to build a good life.

I’ve nannied, babysat, and looked after my younger siblings, so of course I think my approach is better. He doesn’t have any child care experience, but has a very intense personal experience, and thinks that without pressure, kids fall apart. Is this a gap we can bridge, or are we just too different?

—Not Gonna Be A Tiger Mom

If both of you dig in your heels, all hope is lost. But if you are both sincerely committed to being open-hearted and open-minded, you can bridge this gap.

I’m not saying it will be easy. My husband and I brought very different ideas about child-rearing to our marriage (some conscious, some lurking under the surface). We clashed sometimes. Some examples: I wanted our daughter to try as many different things as she chose to—and she chose a lot of things—and her father felt strongly that this was encouraging dilettantism, and that it would be far better to pick one thing and work hard at it. His bent was authoritarian; mine was not. But I also believe from the bottom of my heart that because we came at parenting from very different places, our daughter was much better off than she would have been if she’d had two parents in lockstep—or had been raised by only one of us.

With two different mindsets about parenting, the real-life consequences take a variety of forms. Sometimes you can meet in the middle. Sometimes one of you will prevail. Sometimes one or both of you will do some soul-searching and recognize that your impulse in that particular moment or scenario is not necessarily in the best interests of this particular child.

The main thing to remember is that there is no one right way to raise children. Children who are loved, nurtured, cheered on, kept safe and healthy, respected, given age-appropriate responsibilities, and offered structure, opportunities, and the support to explore their abilities and gifts (not an inclusive list) will thrive. If you and your boyfriend can make a pact to remember that 1) neither one of you is altogether “right” (and neither is altogether “wrong”) and 2) his and your convictions about how to do things are reactive (to your own experiences—either, “This is what I had and look at me, I turned out fine!” or “This is what I had and look how badly it went!”) and are about you (both), not about about the actual child you are raising together, you’ll be OK. But talk this through now. It’s important. I wish my husband and I hadn’t waited until after our child was born to do that. It would have spared us a lot of day-to-day struggles. (But then even so, after all, we’re still together 33 years later, and our long grown-up child is thriving.)

More Advice From Slate

My cousin, Sara, and I grew up together and have always been really close. My husband and I don’t believe in allowance. Our 11-year-old son Ben has chores that he does because he’s part of our family, and it benefits the household. If he wants to make money, then he can do a special project, like cleaning out the garage or gutters, or we encourage him to let neighbors know he is available for pet sitting, yard work, snow removal, etc. Sara’s kids get an allowance and since Ben is over there so much when her kids are doing chores after school, she gives Ben some things to do and pays him as well. She didn’t ask me about this, and I found out when Ben had money one weekend, and he told me where he got it.