Gentle Parenting: Is It Best?
If you are in social media and follow ‘mumfluencers’ or any parenting accounts, for sure you must have heard of gentle parenting. You may swear by it, you may hate it, or you may not be sure about what it really means.
Whatever your feelings towards this popular parenting style, do you really know what the research says about it?
We explain everything you need to know about gentle parenting.
Who Came Up With Gentle Parenting?
British author Sarah Ockwell-Smith introduced the term ‘gentle parenting’ in 2015. Since then, gentle parenting took a life of its own on social media and You Tube, fuelled by ‘parenting experts’ and ‘mumfluencers’.
At the time of writing this article, a Google search on ‘gentle parenting’ generates 1.68 million hits and around 850,000 hits in Instagram.
Do you know how many scientific articles are there on gentle parenting? One. Just one.
So, I wonder… All this advice that parents are getting is based on… what evidence exactly?
From a theoretical point of view, it is not clear what parents understand by ‘gentle parenting’ and moreover, it is not clear if it is really a distinct parenting style. Furthermore, there are no studies, and I mean no studies, that have examined whether gentle parenting is good or bad for children.
What Does Gentle Parenting Mean?
Gentle parenting does not really have an official doctrine. Ockwell-Smith defines it as a ‘mindset’ and a ‘way of being’ with an ‘emphasis on your child’s feelings’.
These are considered its four main tenets:
- Empathy: Parents should always acknowledge their children’s feelings.
- Respect: Children deserve the same respect as adults.
- Understanding: Parents’ expectations of their children should be in line with their children’s developmental stage.
- Boundaries: Parents should establish boundaries to foster a stable, healthy, and loving environment for their children.
In terms of discipline, a gentle parent never uses rewards and punishments. Instead, they validate their children’s feelings. They always try to understand their child’s motivations when they misbehave.
You may be thinking: “What’s not to like about this? I agree with those four points.” As a principle, I agree too. But parenting is not that easy. Let me explain my reservations about gentle parenting.
There Is No Scientific Research on Gentle Parenting
I cannot emphasize enough that there is no scientific research examining gentle parenting. Researchers have not examined how children raised by gentle parenting do in comparison with children who are not raised by gentle parents.
At the time of writing this article (November 2024) there is only one study examining gentle parenting. This study [1] examined 100 parents in the US with at least one child aged between 2 and 7 years old. Almost half of them (N = 49), identified themselves as gentle parents. They reported high levels of parenting satisfaction and felt competent to raise their children. However, some of them were very critical of themselves and did not feel as competent. One third of those who identified as gentle parents, reported high levels of parenting uncertainty and burnout.
What does this study tell us? That whereas some parents are doing OK following the gentle parenting guidelines (although it is not clear what this means), other parents may be finding gentle parenting too demanding.
In sum, we cannot really conclude if gentle parenting is good or bad for children because no studies have examined it. And we cannot really conclude if gentle parenting is good or bad for parents because we only have one study examining it. There is simply no data.
Most parenting styles (e.g., gentle parenting, lighthouse parenting, dolphin parenting, tiger parenting…) are not based on scientific evidence. They are created by influencers, social media, and the press.
In contrast, there is plenty of research on the four traditional parenting styles: Authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and neglectful. There is also decent research on helicopter parenting.
I Have More Reservations on Gentle Parenting
I Find It Incredibly Judgemental
Gentle parenting followers advocate that theirs is the only way to raise emotionally competent children. Really? What about the millions of emotionally competent people who were not raised by ‘gentle parents?’.
Moreover, no one wants to be defined as ‘ungentle’, right? So, by default If I say that I am not a gentle parent, does this mean that I am so kind of unsensitive, harsh mother?
Gentle Parenting Is a Form of Intensive Parenting
We do not generally consider gentle parenting as a form of intensive parenting but from my perspective, we should. Why? Because it considers that parents have a lot of influence on how children turn out to be, it is very much child-centred, and it ignores parents’ needs (more on this later).
Advocates of gentle parenting argue that when our child is misbehaving, throwing a tantrum or needs us, we must always be there for them. This sounds fantastic in an ideal world, but I don’t think is neither realistic nor a valuable lesson for our children. First, you are giving your child the idea that everything revolves around them. Not true. Second, when we drop everything whenever our children need us, we are not teaching them to wait or to self-regulate. Finally, intensive parenting is negative for parents’ mental health [2].
Is Gentle Parenting Really Helpful?
Gentle parenting tells you how to react to your child’s behaviour. (e.g., “I understand you don’t want to put your shoes on, but we need to go to school. I know you are finding it hard.”). What if my child doesn’t change his behaviour at that time? If my child doesn’t choose to put his shoes on, what do I do then? Do I keep repeating the same line, over and over? Am I meant not to take him to school?
It Seems that Parents Go from Gentle Parenting to Permissive Parenting
Probably because it is difficult to discipline children following the gentle parenting advice, it seems that parents may end up not enforcing clear rules to their children.
It Makes All Emotions Equally Important
Gentle parenting dictates that we should always discuss and validate our children’s feelings. The issue is that when we validate every single feeling that our child is having, we are making them equally important. I am not saying that you should ignore your child’s emotions. I am totally up for discussing my kids’ emotions when they come back from school being upset or when they are lashing out at their sibling constantly. What I am saying is that discussing for 15 minutes in the morning why your child does not want to put their shoes on, may be going too far. Sometimes, children need to do things because that is how life works.
My Main Concern Has to Do with How Gentle Parenting Relate to Parents’ Own Wellbeing
Given that there is no data on how gentle parenting relates to parents’ wellbeing, we can only rely on anecdotal evidence. Based on what parents are saying on social media and the press, it seems that gentle parenting sets unrealistic expectations for parents, especially for those who take it to the extreme.
I totally agree with gentle parenting telling not to use any forms of physical discipline with their children. There is a lot of research showing that physical discipline is not beneficial for children. However, expecting parents never to lose their cool, never to yell in frustration when they have asked their children 33 times to brush their teeth is totally unrealistic. Moreover, research shows that occasional yelling is not linked with negative outcomes for children.
Even more, modelling to our children that we should never lose our cool, that we never yell, that we are always composed, is giving them an unrealistic view of how people behave. Our role as parents is to teach our children how to deal with their own negative emotions and with the negative emotions of those around them. We fail to do that when we never show them that we also get it wrong, that we make mistakes, and that we sometimes lose our cool.
If There Is No Scientific Evidence, Why Are Parents Adopting the Gentle Parenting Approach?
It is not clear, but it has been speculated that gentle parenting is a reaction to the way many parents themselves were raised. Millennial parents were raised in a more authoritarian manner, and they are adopting gentle parenting as a reaction. Indeed, in a 2023 Pew Research Center report [3], 44% of parents said they wanted to raise their children differently to how they were raised. They wanted to be less punitive and more gentle.
Gentle parenting may simply be a rejection of the parenting styles of previous generations. This is not new. Through generations, parents have gone from being told to treat their kids like adults (Watson in the 1920s), to move away from harsh parenting (Dr. Spock in the 1940s) to the very intensive way we are raising our kids these days. The difference is that until recently, parenting advice always came from scholarship. New parenting styles, like gentle parenting and the others we have already mentioned, seem to come from the media.
A Final Word
In general, I don’t like labelling parenting styles. Other than the four traditional parenting styles, I don’t think they are useful.
Ultimately, we must remember that parenting is not about ‘producing’ a child. Our focus when raising our children, should be to create a strong, solid relationship with them. That is the most important predictor for our children’s wellbeing. Any parenting style, such as gentle parenting, that completely ignores parents’ needs and focuses solely on the needs of the child, is doing parents and children a disservice.
And please, try as hard as you can to ignore Instagram posts promoting gentle parenting. They are usually high on shame induction and low on nuance.
