Is This the End of Gentle Parenting?
If you spend enough time around other parents – or, heaven help us, on parenting social media – you've probably heard the terms gentle parenting and positive parenting. Maybe you've even used them yourself. They’re everywhere.
But ask five parents what gentle parenting actually means, and you may get five different answers.
That's partly because gentle parenting isn't a single, standardized parenting method. In fact, researchers only recently began studying parents who specifically identify with the term. So, as a backlash against gentle parenting gathers steam (piling backlash upon backlash in what’s starting to feel like a never-ending cycle), where does that leave parents?
What is gentle parenting?
Gentle parenting generally emphasizes understanding children's emotions and developmental abilities, maintaining connection, and teaching rather than relying primarily on punishment.
It’s often used interchangeably with positive parenting, but they’re not quite the same.
Positive parenting is a broader term with more established roots in child-development research. The CDC's positive-parenting guidance includes things like encouraging desired behavior and building strong relationships, but also giving clear directions, establishing rules and following through with consequences.
And then there's permissive parenting, which is something different altogether. One thing that’s mportant to note is that criticism against gentle parenting often is a misdirect intended for permissive parenting.
Gentle doesn't mean permissive
One misconception is that gentle parenting means never saying no, never imposing consequences, or always letting children decide what happens next. It gives you the feeling that the parent is completely run over by the child, out of fear of hurting the child in any way by saying No.
That's permissive parenting, not gentleness.
A useful explanation from Psychology Today places gentle parenting within the well-established "authoritative" tradition: high levels of warmth and responsiveness combined with reasonable expectations and boundaries.
Think of it this way: your three-year-old can be absolutely furious that it's time to leave the playground. You can acknowledge that disappointment and still follow through on leaving the playground, by saying, “I know you’re disappointed and upset because you want to stay here longer, but it’s time to go home now so we’re going to go.”
You allow and acknowledge the child’s feeling. The boundary you’ve set remains.
Why is everyone arguing about gentle parenting right now?
Parenting philosophies have always swung like pendulums. One generation looks at how it was raised and decides to do things differently. Then the next generation notices the shortcomings of that approach and starts correcting in the other direction.
If you hear yourself repeating a mantra of not handling conflicts like your parents handled them with you, you may understand the swing.
Lately, it’s been gentle/positive parenting’s time to shine. So, naturally, the backlash is gathering steam.
Some parents and professionals worry that the emphasis on validating feelings has drifted into over-explaining, negotiating every limit, or avoiding conflict and becoming reluctant to let children experience frustration.
On the other side, those who promote positive parenting argue that critics are confusing empathy with permissiveness and presenting an unnecessarily harsh alternative.
The debate has become intense enough in France, for example, that hundreds of early-childhood professionals have signed competing public letters about positive parenting and disciplinary practices. The resulting media battle has left parents caught between experts offering dramatically different prescriptions. (This New York Times article dives deep into a culturally contentious debate).
Leaning into what the research says
Media and social media love a label. It’s like marketing 101 but for parenting. If you step away from labels, though, the picture becomes a lot less dramatic.
First off: Research has concluded that children benefit from warmth and boundaries.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends clear and consistent limits, age-appropriate explanations, modeling good behavior and calmly following through with consequences. It also recommends avoiding spanking, yelling and shaming.
The CDC similarly advises parents of young children to establish a small number of clear, realistic rules, repeat them frequently and consistently follow through. It also makes an important developmental point: young children sometimes break rules simply because they forget them.
A two-year-old isn't a small adult who's deliberately making your morning difficult. They're two. They're still learning what the rules are, how the world works and what to do with some very big feelings.
Sometimes they need to be reminded that smearing yogurt all over their chair isn’t something we do; sometimes they know they’re not supposed to but they need your attention, or they’re tired, or they’re curious, and the only way they can express that is with the medium of yogurt. Helping them get to a more appropriate use of food is part of your ongoing job as a parent.
Can gentle parenting include timeouts and consequences?
As a parent, you’ve probably encountered situations or advice that have felt unnecessarily black-and-white. And if you’ve ever found yourself in a conversation about timeouts and “punishment”, that dichotomy reaches peak levels.
The thing is, it shouldn’t have to be.
A timeout itself isn't automatically psychologically damaging. Brief, appropriately used timeouts can be a strategy for discipline. Some parents sit with their kids during this short time out, which is used to break an unwanted behavior and remove the child from the situation.
A long, isolated timeout, however, can quickly turn into something hurtful (without actually “fixing” the behavior – or fixing it but adding new issues). Discipline, after all, is supposed to teach, not to scare or humiliate a child into submission. The gift of parenting is that you get to figure out how to help your little one become a person in the world, for life.
So, should you be gentle parenting?
We’re not here to tell you how to be a parent. We just want to acknowledge what you’re hearing at the proverbial parent water cooler and arm you with enough insight to make the choices that are best for your family.
Maybe the best tool we can give you is the chance to separate the label or perfect parenting method from actual behaviors that help you help your kiddo. There are useful principles you can take from gentle parenting without having to proclaim from the rooftops that there is one perfect script to follow.
You can listen to your child's feelings without letting those feelings determine every decision. You can establish boundaries and follow through. You can recognize that something is developmentally difficult for them while still expecting them, gradually and repeatedly, to learn how to do it.
You can do your best, and have that be enough.
Parents are already carrying a lot
One thing about parenting philosophies and Perfect Parenting Playbooks (now there’s a book we’d endorse burning) is that they rarely take into account the reality of being a parent. Behind the camera of an Instagram reel is a real life of 9-5 work, school pick-ups, cooking dinner, soccer practice logistics, tired parents, pinging cell phones, and a pile of laundry, but it doesn’t show.
How are you meant to calmly respond to a meltdown with pedagogical answers, warm hugs, endless patience, and thought-through consequences, when this toddler throwing things at you is the last straw on an already precarious pile of demands on your energy? Is it any wonder parents continue to express uncertainty about their parenting and burnout in their daily life?
Why would we add to that with yet another impossible standard?
Meet us in the middle
The TL;DR of the discourse in gentle parenting is that yes, it’s been the talk of the town for a while, and yes there’s a brewing backlash against it (why else would the Guardian pitch the rise of FAFO parenting?), as there so often is with any parenting style that takes over.
But this current backlash probably isn't the end of gentle parenting. More likely, it’s another stage, evolving as we learn more about what works and what doesn’t – and with children, we usually don’t find those answers until the kids are all grown and moved out.
That’s the tough truth about parenting, you don’t know the end results until it’s too late to start over. That may not be what you want to hear, when what you want is to give your children the sun and the moon, but on the other hand: how lucky is your child to have a parent who tries their very best?
So let us invite you to meet in the middle, find a good enough. Because we’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: what a child needs isn’t a perfect parent, it’s a good enough parent. And that’s probably a more realistic goal for you than anything else.
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