Parenting & Family Quote by Cheryl Ladd

Cheryl Ladd’s phrasing lands like someone trying to re-legitimize a word that’s gotten culturally suspicious. “Discipline” is often heard as punishment, control, even cruelty; she insists on it as a form of care, then immediately reframes it as instruction: “teach your children to take responsibility.” The intent isn’t to romanticize strictness, but to rescue authority from the stereotype of authoritarian parenting. In that sense, the quote is less about rules than about consequences, the basic social technology that turns a child’s impulses into an emerging moral compass.

The repetition of “important” and the doubled “very, very” reads like defensive emphasis, as if she’s speaking into a climate where parents fear being judged for drawing firm lines. That subtext matters. Modern parenting culture often prizes emotional attunement and gentleness, sometimes to the point where boundaries feel negotiable. Ladd positions discipline as the missing counterweight: not a crackdown, but a scaffolding for agency. Responsibility is the key word; she’s not saying “obedience,” she’s saying “ownership,” which aligns with a more contemporary, autonomy-friendly ethic.

Contextually, as an actress whose public image was shaped in eras that cycled through permissive backlash and “tough love” revivalism, Ladd’s statement plays like a bridge between generations. It’s the language of someone acknowledging today’s sensitivities while still arguing that parenting’s job is partly to prepare kids for a world that won’t negotiate with them.