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Who is in the driver's seat of the minivan next to you? Sorry, it might look like her, but, it's not really Mommy. Thanks to the vogue for "consensus" or "democratic parenting," our children are now the ones who decide whether they are ready to leave without kicking up a fuss, and when they're ready for bed.

Not only are we unable to say "No!" to our three-year-olds (who don't suffer the same difficulty), we are asking them where we should go on vacation and which restaurant we should go to for dinner. If there is anything we could have learned from our own mothers, surely it is that being a mother means never having to say you're sorry.

Our mothers' wrath could be swift and arbitrary, perhaps even, to our childish sensibilities, unfair. Yet one never heard, as one does today, on the street, or on the new parenting reality shows like Supernanny, Mommy's pathetic apology for losing her patience with a horribly misbehaving child. Until now, any self-respecting mother felt no qualms reducing her offspring to jelly with a single raised eyebrow -- if only as an exercise of her mom mystique.

My mother, who raised three of us without fear of our childish disapproval, cannot believe how much mothers today seem intimidated. "If the kid is having a tantrum, you just laugh and pick them up, for goodness sake," she'll say, observing a scene at the grocery store. "You're a lot bigger than they are."

For her, and others of her generation, it was always perfectly clear who was the child and who was the adult. But today's moms don't want to be anything like their own mothers. At the same time that we have elevated mothering to a new cult status (celebrity bumps, babies named after Persian poetry, mommy-and-me violin classes, anyone?), we also seem to be happily trading away all the authority that comes along with the role.

Could it be that our youth obsession has us so wrapped up with trying to stay "yummy," we have forgotten that we're actually the ones in charge?

Rex Kay, a lecturer in psychiatry with the University of Toronto, sees our generation's little Peter Pan problem as a rejection of the role of authority. "Through the 1960s and 70s, when this generation was growing up, we were being told not to trust authority," says Kay, who concludes that when we became parents, "we had a strong desire not to be like those in authority and developed a mistrust of ourselves as authority figures."

In the opinion of Andrea O'Reilly, a professor of women's studies at York University and the founder of the York-based Association for Research on Mothering, this refusal to grab hold of the parenting reins is simply self-defeating. "The real feminist position is that the revolution starts in the kitchen," O'Reilly says. "Motherhood is the most powerful job in the world."

In her view, a mother who is conflicted about being the boss isn't only likely to fail her children, she is also "feeding into a larger mindset of hip mothering that has hijacked the role."

The result for parents, according to Kay, is that on the one hand it relieves them of responsibility, but it also "takes away a lot of the positive identification that comes with trying to be a responsible adult. All you're left with is a sense of mistrusting yourself and feeling put upon by the incessant demands of the job."

Whereas, for our children, our refusal to step up to the plate and use the power invested in our motherhood is, in Kay's expert opinion, "placing more responsibility on our children than they want or can adequately handle."

The other day, in response to persistent questioning from my 12-year-old about something that was really none of his business, I surprised myself by simply telling him so. What was even more surprising was that when I blurted out, "You know, you don't have to know everything around here," he wasn't only silenced, he also seemed to walk away satisfied.

When I related this to Kay, he understood completely. "Of course he's relieved. He can say to himself, 'You know what, I don't have to worry about that, my parents are handling it.' " In Kay's view, a significant part of what we do as parents is "hold out an image to our children of what it means to be an adult. Sure, there's a lot of responsibility, but there's also wisdom. What you're giving them by using your adult authority is a sense that there's a reason to grow up, that it's something worth achieving."

A little life lesson, just in time for Mother's Day, that might also benefit more of us mothers who are too afraid, or too unsure of ourselves, to call on the ancient power of their mom mystique.

kvonhahn@globeandmail.com