If a parent strongly values morality...honesty being included...we have to admire those who refuse to sacrfice their beliefs, even to get their child off the hook. Call it tough love.
Yet, those without those innate values have no problem whatsoever in telling lies to protect their child. Even some people who hold moral values can weaken when it involves their own offspring.
The "tough love" parents deserve admiration, IMO: they are actually trying to save their child from destroying his/her life.
Let us accept that we won't see eye-to-eye in every instance.
Makes me think of that great scene in Lonesome Dove where Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones find their best friend Robert Urich riding with outlaws.
They tell him: "You know the rules, Jake. You ride with an outlaw, you die with an outlaw." Then they solemnly hang him from the same tree as the badmen. A very certain sense of right and wrong not many can achieve.