26-02-2025
From the naughty step to no punishment – how ‘gentle parenting' went too far
Britain's strictest teacher, Katharine Birbalsingh, has no time for 'gentle parenting'. The headteacher of the Michaela Community School, in Wembley, has become famous for her school's remarkable results, as well as her outspoken views in support of discipline, uniform, written exams and other vestiges of an earlier educational era. In an interview this week, Birbalsingh claimed parents have been 'infantilised' by modern literature that prioritises the child's feelings, rather than empowering them.
'The culture and the language that's being used means parents feel that they're not in a position of authority over their child,' Birbalsingh told The Times. 'If you're looking for books to give you advice on what to do as a parent, it's almost impossible to access the kind of advice you would have gotten 50, 60 years ago. The stuff you'll get nowadays will be much more along the lines of gentle parenting, being friends with your children, not holding them to account.'
Every era has its own parenting neuroses, about how to balance healthy child development with being kind and loving. For baby boomers there was 'latchkey parenting', where children were home alone without adults. Millennials had ' helicopter parenting ', where parents were too involved in every aspect of their little darlings' lives, given its most extreme expression in Amy Chua's 2011 bestseller, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which coined ' tiger parenting ' for parents relentlessly pushing their children to succeed.
While some of the older advice is out of date; many parents today will relate to Birbalsingh's position. Gentle parenting's advocates believe that attending to a child's motivations and feelings, rather than guiding them with punishment or shame for the behaviour, equips them better for adult life. Writers and influencers like Sarah Ockwell-Smith, and Becky Kennedy (Dr Becky on Instagram) have gained huge followings with their calm, patient advice on how to be calm and patient with children. The naughty step is out, talking feelings through is in.
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But there are signs the trend may have passed its peak. Birbalsingh argues the philosophy has contributed to a post-covid world where children are increasingly ill-equipped for school. Parenting forums and surveys suggest that frazzled parents are tiring of deferring to their children's every whim. Sometimes children hit their little brother not because they are working through some unresolved trauma, but because their little brother is being annoying.
Here are some examples of advice, from then and now…
Perhaps the most drastic shift from traditional parenting advice to gentle parenting is in discipline. In the Intelligent Parents' Manual (1943), the authors write that 'there are certain rare occasions when a spanking or a well-administered slap on the hand is not only excusable but beneficial.
'A child who has been behaving in a truculent way all the afternoon, purposefully doing all the things he knows are forbidden, and who as evening comes makes a terrific scene about going to bed, may possibly profit from spanking.'
Gentle parenting makes the furthest swing of the pendulum in the other direction. In LR Knost's The Gentle Parent (2013), she writes that if parents 'want to help stop the bullying epidemic,' then they should not 'act like a bully.' This means they 'don't hit, threaten, ignore, isolate, intimidate, ridicule or manipulate your child.' Elsewhere she writes that 'effective parenting, and more specifically, effective discipline, don't require punishment.' It wouldn't have flown in the 60s.
One curious aspect of gentle parenting is the way some advice has almost come full circle. Cuddling and kissing is one example. In John B Watson's influential 1928 book on the Psychological care of infant and child, he writes: 'Never hug and kiss children, never let them sit on your lap. If you must, kiss them once on the forehead when they say good night. Shake hands with them in the morning. Try it out.' Within a week, he adds, 'you will be utterly ashamed of the mawkish, sentimental way you have been handling it.'
A similar sentiment is evident in the Intelligent Parents' Manual, 15 years later, which advises that 'too many caresses, too much emotion lavished, may accustom a child to so much pleasure in being touched and handled that all future relationships may seem cold and unsatisfactory by comparison.'
Most modern parenting advice has encouraged cuddles and kisses. But in the far reaches of gentle parenting social media, even this is becoming too much. GentleHealingMom advises that parents should not insist on physical contact with reluctant children. In one post, she says: 'Gentle parents teach this: I don't have to hug or kiss anyone if I don't want to. I'm allowed to say no and stop. It's MY body, I get to choose.'
A hundred years on, it's similar advice to Watson's, except this time the power is with the children rather than the adults.
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Similarly the question of whether feeding and sleeping be at the discretion of the child or the parent has flip-flopped over the years. Dr Benjamin Spock, in his radical 1946 book Baby and Child Care, advised parents to 'say good night affectionately but firmly, walk out of the room, and don't go back'. His comments were echoed by Dr Walter Sackett jr in his Bringing Up Babies: A Family Doctor's Practical Approach to Child Care (1962). 'Absolutely no night feedings, no matter how young the baby, nor how much it cried… if we teach our offspring to expect everything to be provided on demand, we must admit the possibility that we are sowing the seeds of socialism.' Heaven forbid.
Gina Ford's 1999 book The Contented Little Baby Book argued that the best solution was to set strict, rigid limits for parents and children, dividing up the day into discrete units so the child learned its routine. Gentle parenting goes a step further, putting the question back on the parents. 'We sleep train our children in order that we fit into our modern lives more easily,' writes Sarah Ockwell-Smith. 'We fool ourselves into believing that it is our offspring that have 'sleep problems' rather than opening our eyes to the real problem – that is the disharmony between the primal needs of our young and the expectations of the modern world. Who really has the problem?'
Something to think about at four in the morning when you have been woken for the fifth time.
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The part of sleep training parents dread is learning to resist their child's cries. Easier said than done. The principle has been around for a long time. In 1894, Luther Emmett Holt wrote that the child 'should simply be allowed to 'cry it out'. This often requires an hour, and in some cases, two or three hours. A second struggle will seldom last more than ten or fifteen minutes, and a third will rarely be necessary.'
Gentle parenting holds that when they cry, children are working through emotional issues they lack the language or maturity to express. 'It's not our job to stop children from crying,' writes Pam Leo. 'The crying is the healing, not the hurting. When we stop children from crying they have to stuff the hurt inside instead of releasing it.' Again, fine in theory. Like other aspects of gentle parenting, this advice brings to mind Mike Tyson's boxing maxim that 'everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.'
The tantrum may be the most exasperating moment as a parent. Even the progressive Dr Spock advised parents to hold the line. 'If a tantrum erupts anyway, don't back down or give in,' he wrote. 'If you do, she'll eventually catch on that tantrums get her what she wants, and she's likely to begin using them as a deliberate tactic.' For gentle parents, tantrums are like like tears, only more extreme. 'Tantrums are not bad behaviour,' writes Rebecca Eanes in the Newbie's Guide to Positive Parenting. 'Tantrums are an expression of emotion that became too much for the child to bear. No punishment is required. What your child needs is compassion and safe, loving arms to unload in.' Maybe after they have had a few minutes to cool off.
The classic Dreikurs and Goldman advice on children's independence is to encourage it at every step. In the mid-1960s, they argued that parents should 'never do for a child what a child can do for himself'. Only by doing things themselves whenever possible would children acquire the skills they need for adulthood. Later, Peggy O'Mara, founder of Mothering magazine, encouraged parents to embrace their child's dependence, which they will grow out of in time. 'It is in the nature of the child to be dependent, and it is the nature of dependence to be outgrown. Begrudging dependency because it is not independence is like begrudging winter because it is not yet spring.' Gentle parenting strikes a balance, encouraging independence within set boundaries: cleaning up toys, putting away groceries. Freedom but not anarchy.
Perhaps the most famous parenting maxim of all – along with 'spare the rod, spoil the child' – is that children should be 'seen but not heard'; gentle parenting, broadly defined, is in effect a rebuke to these aphorisms. Children, as Katharine Birbalsingh agrees, should be taught how to behave. As Emily Post wrote in Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home in 1922, 'any child can be taught to be beautifully behaved with no effort greater than quiet patience and perseverance, whereas to break bad habits once they are acquired is a Herculean task.' Gentle parenting abhors the silent, well-behaved, potentially repressed child. Children ought to be encouraged to speak their minds and assert themselves, even at the expense of manners.
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The glut of parenting advice is self-perpetuating. Parenting tips echo other societal anxieties. The advice from the mid-20th century on being less strict with your little darlings came at the same time as other aspects of society were becoming more liberal. Gina Ford's strict regime was designed to help busy mothers 'have it all' – manage bedtime with a career and a social life. Being saturated in advice from social media, podcasts, articles and every other angle, parents will inevitably dwell on how they parent, and hunger for more advice. At its core, gentle parenting encourages self-reflection in the parent. As Becky Kennedy writes:
'When you orient a child to focus on the impact of her feelings on you instead of the reality of the feelings inside herself, you are wiring a child for co-dependency.'
If parents risk co-dependency with their children, they are increasingly co-dependent with parenting advice.
