What ‘gentle parenting’ does for your kids

Gentle parenting brings together both warmth and boundaries, experts say. (Hispanolistic/E+/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

“Back in my day,” some grandparents say to their adult children, “we didn’t let our kids speak without being spoken to or talk back to without a spanking or question every parental decision without a consequence.”

What did happen to time-outs? Or “I’ll give you something to cry about?”

There’s a certain segment of parents who reject that form of parenting for something they say may work better, called “gentle parenting.”

If you hear the term and roll your eyes, and we know that’s likely — pause for a second. Gentle parenting is often misunderstood and taken to mean coddling, said Dr. Brian Razzino, a licensed clinical psychologist in Falls Church, Virginia. That’s not the case.

Gentle parenting –– or what many people mean when they talk about it –– is often about teaching skills for adulthood and enforcing boundaries, and it has a lot to offer families, he said.

This strategy is becoming popular as nearly half of parents say they are trying to raise their children differently than how they grew up, according to a 2023 report from the Pew Research Center. Those parents said they were looking to give their children more love and affection, having open, honest conversations and yelling less and listening more.

The problem is that many people, even those who call themselves gentle parents, differ on the specifics. Here is what you need to know about the latest parenting trend.

The main parenting styles

Psychological researchers have identified four main parenting styles: neglectful, authoritarian, permissive and authoritative.

Neglectful parenting has neither high levels of warmth toward the child nor rules on a child’s behavior, said Nicole Johnson, a licensed professional counselor in Boise, Idaho. A kid may act out and break a toy and not get much response from their neglectful parent, who might not have attended much to how they were playing anyway.

Authoritarian refers to parenting that focuses on obedience and punitive response –– think “because I said so,” Johnson said. The child who broke the toy would likely be yelled at and sent to time-out by the authoritarian parent without much conversation beyond that.

Permissive parenting focuses on warmth toward children, but without much structure or boundaries, she added. That parent would acknowledge that the child probably broke the toy out of frustration but wouldn’t follow up on consequences.

Authoritative parenting seeks to strike a balance between structure and warmth.

“It’s more focused on the idea of improving their ability to understand what’s going on with themselves, their own feelings,” Razzino said. “The parents are really focused on having that empathy for the child and respect when they when they talk with them, and that their feelings are valid.” Still, they are “maintaining some very firm, clear limits.”

Gentle parenting is not listed among the main parenting styles. While it is popular on social media, it is a relatively new term that hasn’t been described much in the scientific literature.

What do influencers mean by ‘gentle parenting’?

Researchers Annie Pezalla and Alice Davidson sought to investigate what parenting influencers on social media meant when they talked about gentle parenting in a 2024 study.

“Those who identified as gentle really prioritized emotion regulation. These are parents that are wanting to maintain calm at all costs, if at all possible, (including) their energy and emotions,” said Pezalla, visiting assistant professor of psychology at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

“They do look like authoritative parents, for the most part, to us, like they’re trying to hold boundaries and practice consequences with their kids,” she said, “even though they showed the kind of no-holds-barred affection to their kids that typically permissive parents show.”

Gentle parenting, like authoritative parenting, emphasizes the importance of boundaries while maintaining warmth and empathy, she said. However, the concept plays out differently in different families.

In her research, Pezalla asked parents who identified as gentle parents about their practices. While some resembled authoritative parents, others acted in ways that fell more in line with a permissive style, she said.

Ultimately, much of what people refer to as gentle parenting on social media is just another term for authoritative parenting: maintaining connection with the child, teaching them to regulate their emotions and behavior, and enforcing boundaries as a caring authority figure, said Razzino, who is also the author of “Awakening the Five Champions: Keys to Success for Every Teen.”

Are we being too soft on kids?

Imagine a child is throwing their food off their plate and onto the floor. A permissive parent might say, “please don’t do that,” and then do nothing else to enforce a boundary. An authoritarian might glare sternly and immediately move to a time-out or spanking or to send their child to bed hungry.

An authoritative parent, which is what many people mean when they identify as a gentle parent, might say, “I can see you’re feeling playful, but food stays on the plate. I can give you something else to do with your hands while we have dinner, but if you throw it again, I am going to have to take the plate away,” Razzino said.

Some people critique this way of parenting as being too soft on kids, saying that the world is harsh and kids will need to learn to deal with that, Johnson added.

But the goal of this parenting style isn’t to shield your child from accountability; rather it is to get to a calmer place for the parent and child, give kids tools for making good choices, and then enforcing a boundary with logical consequences, she said.

Logical consequences are ones that relate directly to a behavior: If you smack your friend with a truck, the playdate will be over, Razzino added.

For the people who understand gentle parenting as a form of authoritative parenting, there are two parts: validating that you understand the feelings they are experiencing and teaching that not every way of expressing those feelings is acceptable or productive, Johnson said.

It is important to neither skip the validation step nor get too bogged down in it, Razzino added. At some point, it is important to move from talking about the feelings to making plans on how to regulate the difficult emotions and what consequences will happen if the unacceptable behavior continues.

And this approach has been shown in research to be effective in raising more healthy, resilient, successful adults, Razzino said.

One 2022 study found that children raised with an authoritative parenting style were more likely to achieve academically. Another study in 2020 found that a lack of this parenting style was the most important factor in low life satisfaction.

We need to go easier on parents

There is a downside to authoritative or gentle parenting. Staying calm, validating your child’s feelings, explaining a boundary and the consequences of breaking it, and then following through with a rational consequence is a lot of work, Pezalla said.

It’s even more work if you weren’t parented with a lot of warmth and empathy, Johnson added.

With so much pressure to parent perfectly, many parents feel burnt-out trying to adhere too strictly to gentle parenting practices, according to Pezalla’s research.

Gentle parents “are working so hard to be emotionally regulated 24/7 that they are burning out,” she said. “That’s what we found in the article that we published … they’re stressed out of their minds.”

Some online parenting influencers will say that you can’t use the word no, that you have to say no, that you should pause in a grocery store meltdown to give a hug, or that you need to scoop your child up from the store floor and not allow them to continue the tantrum there, Pezalla said.

Instead of worrying too much about following the one right philosophy, Pezalla recommends prioritizing the four things she has found to be what every kid needs growing up. Those include structure, warmth, acknowledgement as an individual who may need something different from their siblings, and an approach that prepares for parenting as a long game, she said.

“Everything else is like static noise to me,” Pezalla said. “It’s like the same general authoritative parenting styles, just, we’re calling it something different.”

And don’t worry if you mess up, lose your temper or change your mind on your parenting approach, Johnson said.

Kids don’t need a model of a perfect human, they need to see an adult who is trying their best to be a positive authority figure, striving for empathy, practicing regulating themselves, and taking accountability when they get it wrong, she added. Hopefully, that model will be a roadmap so they can grow up doing those things, too.