Hard truths about 'gentle parenting'

This episode delves into the "gentle parenting" style, examining its principles, popularity, and the challenges it presents to both parents and children.

1. Gentle parenting emphasizes emotional regulation, validation, and physical affection.
2. This parenting style is increasingly popular among highly educated, majority female demographics.
3. Empirical research on gentle parenting is scarce, making it difficult to measure its effectiveness.
4. Social media has amplified the visibility and perceived efficacy of gentle parenting techniques.
5. There are concerns that gentle parenting may not adequately prepare children to handle real-world challenges due to a lack of firm boundaries.

1: Introduction to Gentle Parenting

Cheryl Sutherland introduces the topic and discusses its relevance and popularity. Dr. Alice Davidson outlines the basic principles of gentle parenting.

• Alice Davidson: "Gentle parenting has exploded in popularity partly because it's not well defined."

2: Research Insights

Dr. Davidson shares insights from her study on gentle parenting, detailing the characteristics and self-perceptions of gentle parents.

• Alice Davidson: "84% of these self-identified gentle parents were female, highly educated, and mostly white."

3: Critiques and Challenges

The discussion shifts to potential issues with gentle parenting, including its impact on parental stress levels and child development.

• Alice Davidson: "This approach is not so gentle on the gentle parents."

4: Societal Impact

The broader implications of understanding and implementing various parenting styles are explored, emphasizing community and support.

• Alice Davidson: "None of us live in a child-free or parent-free world."

1. Emotion Regulation: Parents should focus on regulating their own emotions as a model for their children.
2. Validation and Support: Validate children's feelings and provide support without necessarily indulging every emotion.
3. Community Engagement: Utilize community support and resources to share parenting responsibilities and reduce stress.
4. Set Clear Boundaries: While being supportive, it's crucial to establish and maintain clear boundaries and routines.
5. Reflect and Adapt: Continuously reflect on parenting approaches and be willing to adapt strategies based on what works for the child and family dynamics.

There’s a conversation happening amongst parents that is drumming up a lot of controversy. It’s around the idea of gentle parenting, which is a catch-all term that generally refers to parents who try to stay calm, place a lot of importance on their child’s emotions and show a lot of physical affection.

Dr. Alice Davidson is a professor of developmental psychology at Rollins College, and is one of the few academics to have actually studied gentle parenting. She shares what she has found out.

People

Alice Davidson, Cheryl Sutherland

Companies

Rowlands College

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Alice Davidson

Content Warnings:

None

Speaker A
How about Cap'n crunch's crunchberries with breakfast?

Speaker B
Whoa, dad, we're on crunch island.

Speaker A
He's Jean lef foot.

Speaker B
And he stole our crunch.

Speaker A
Quick, the zip line.

Speaker B
He's getting away.

Speaker A
Throw our last crunch berry. No.

No one steals my crunch berries.

Speaker B
I think you mean my crunchberries. Choose your own crunch venture with capping crunch.

Manika
Hi, it's Manika. This summer on Fridays, we're re airing some of our best and most listened to episodes of the year. Hope you enjoy it. And we'll be back on Monday with a new episode.

Cheryl Sutherland
If you're part of any parenting circle, you've probably heard of this term gentle parenting. And if you haven't, we're going to bring you into this hot topic.

It's a parenting style that has exploded in popularity and controversy, partly because it's not well defined and because social media parenting accounts are giving out polished, bite sized pieces of advice.

Speaker E
Hey. Okay, you're hitting me right now, and I can tell that you're feeling angry and it's okay to feel that way, but it is not okay to hit. Sister, let's figure out what you need, because I'm here to help you, but I'm not gonna let you hit me to get what you want.

Alice Davidson
So, how can we respond to the crying? We stay present and allow the healthy release with things like, it's okay to cry, let your feelings out, and you're really upset.

Speaker E
I'm right here with you.

Speaker G
So the next time your child whines, get down to their level and share words like this. I'm right here. It sounds like you have something really important to tell me. Tell me again.

I promise you, what you hear next will not be a whine.

Cheryl Sutherland
It's a trend that has come under attack.

Alice Davidson
News flash, becky, parents who are regulated don't hit and scream at their children.

Cheryl Sutherland
And become the target of memes.

Speaker H
I know you're frustrated, okay? I know you're having these big feelings that you don't know what to do with.

But if you don't shut the up and put your shoes on, then I'm gonna start having big feelings and I might start screaming. Yeah. So let's slip those crocs on. Okay.

Cheryl Sutherland
Today we're talking to doctor Alice Davidson. She's a professor of developmental psychology at Rowlands College in Winter Park, Florida. She's actually one of the first researchers to study gentle parenting, and she's going to help us understand what this parenting style is all about.

I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail.

Alice, thanks so much for being here today.

Alice Davidson
Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Cheryl Sutherland
So before we get into this parenting movement, I want to lay out why we're talking about this at all, because there will be some listeners out there that are not parents to young kids. So can you just explain why everyone benefits from understanding parenting better?

Alice Davidson
So, you know, I think that understanding parenting approaches is important whether you're a parent or not, because none of us live in a child free or parent free world. You know, parents of young children are our colleagues, our friends, community members, and we should care about their wellbeing, not only because it's relevant to our interactions and relationships with them, but also because we want to support them and make sure they're doing okay. I think, you know, this topic of parenting approaches, and the research I'm pursuing with my colleague, doctor Annie Pizzala, is important also because parents seem to be increasingly stressed and burned out. And, you know, this is a trend that was exacerbated by the pandemic and also with the proliferation of unvetted expert parenting guidance information on social media.

We think it's time for parents to be studied in their own right. You know, what are they doing? How are they doing? And so our research is shining a light on the parents specifically.

Cheryl Sutherland
So let's talk about this hot trend in the parenting world, which seems to be the style which is called gentle parenting. You've actually studied it. So how did you go about doing that?

Alice Davidson
Sure. So Annie and I recruited 100 parents of at least one child between the ages of two and seven who resided in three geographic regions in the United states. So the Midwest, Southeast, and Southwest. In addition to asking these parents various demographic questions, we asked them to respond to a host of questions, including describing their parenting approach, how they responded to a recent time when their child acted out or misbehaved. They also reported their self perceptions of parenting efficacy and satisfaction, their religiosity and spirituality. And then we also asked them to select from a list of adjectives to describe how they were parented as a child, and then also to select from that same list of adjectives to indicate their personal approach to parenting, their two to seven year old child. So when they selected gentle from this list, they were then prompted to describe, what does gentle mean to you as it applies to your personal approach to parenting?

Cheryl Sutherland
So you're really giving the options to parents to kind of really describe how they see their parenting styles. I'm just wondering, how does your research compare to what else is out there on gentle parenting.

Alice Davidson
It's so interesting because before now, gentle parenting has not been studied empirically. And that's really one of our primary objectives. When people say they practice gentle parenting, Annie and I want to understand what they mean with scholarship. We want to have shared definitions about what a construct or a parenting strategy or technique is so that we can better understand how it's being used, how effective it is, what are the outcomes for children and for parents? And so it's interesting, because there's been lots of parenting research over many, many decades, and it's interesting that this has just really exploded online on social media, and yet there's really no scholarship on it to date.

Cheryl Sutherland
It's fascinating, definitely for my instagram feed, it's all over my feed. So I definitely.

Alice Davidson
It's everywhere.

Cheryl Sutherland
It is everywhere. Yeah.

Let's dig into your findings. In your research, who are the people that self identify as gentle parents?

Alice Davidson
Of our participants, 49% selected the adjective gentle to describe their personal approach to parenting, consistent with our whole sample. So, you know, including non gentle parents, 84% of these self identified gentle parents were female. They were highly educated. So over two thirds of gentle parents had a graduate degree. They were mostly white. And this was also consistent with our sample. Overall, they ranged from 32 to 51 years of age. So, you know, sometimes I think people maybe assume gentle parents are just, you know, millennials or millennials. Right. But, you know, we see, like, a wide age range, I think, that this is applying to parents of lots of ages.

Cheryl Sutherland
Okay. And you mentioned that you give this option to parents about what they say about gentle. So how did they describe the technique in their words, what were their goals as gentle parents?

Alice Davidson
Yeah. So we coded their descriptions of what gentle parenting means, and we identified three primary themes. The first theme is this idea that, you know, parents talked a lot about regulating their own emotions, so they really emphasized staying calm, not using any physical punishment or any punitive measures.

A second theme they talked about was this idea of helping their child to regulate their emotions. So this involved emotion validation and coaching, you know, things like attending to, listening to understanding, respecting their child's emotional needs. And then we identified a third theme, which was, parents are very affectionate with their children. So these gentle parents described showing loving, emotional, and physical affection to their child.

Their descriptions included talk of being kind and warm and loving and giving lots of hugs.

Cheryl Sutherland
Okay, so that gives us a good sense of what gentle parenting is, but let's slip it around for a second. What isn't part of the gentle parenting philosophy?

Alice Davidson
Yeah, so I would say that it is not at all what we would think of as an old school kind of traditional method of what's called authoritarian parenting. This idea of, you know, do this because I said so, because I'm the parent. That where there's this very clear hierarchy with the parent at the very top, it's certainly not based on any kind of shame or attempt to induce guilt. And it's definitely not involving any dismissal of emotions.

And I mentioned this authoritarian approach to parenting because I think just an important note is there's this parenting typology that this researcher, Diana Baumrind, developed in the 1960s. And she really captured the variance in parenting approaches on a matrix. So, with two intersecting lines, where one line is capturing warmth and the other discipline.

Some parents are low in both warmth and discipline. Some are high in both. Some are a combination.

But the best parenting approach, I'm using air quotes when I say that. Is considered to be the parenting approach that employs lots of warmth and sufficient discipline. And this is called the authoritative approach. So that authoritarian approach, this is where, you know, parenting is very high on discipline, but lower on warmth. So, you know, we want to know if gentle parenting is like Baum rhymes typology, or perhaps simply another name for what John Gottman and colleagues coined, emotion coaching, which emphasizes the importance of naming, empathizing, and working through emotions with your child.

Cheryl Sutherland
So where does gentle parenting fall, then? Is it, like high on warmth but low on discipline?

Alice Davidson
You know, that's what we're trying to find out with this. I think that we don't yet have a clear answer to this. I would say that it's certainly very high warmth.

We found in our study that our gentle parents talk a lot about boundaries.

But boundaries are really tricky because it seems to vary from parent to parent, from child to child, from situation to situation.

Our parents mention the importance of things like rules, routines, limits, structure, staying firm. So sometimes they would talk about using isolated timeouts, which would allow their children to, for example, throw a tantrum, but to do so in a safe place. So I think this is an important aspect of gentle parenting that we need to understand better. How do boundaries fit into this?

Cheryl Sutherland
Okay, so the million dollar question, of course, is, does it work? Like, is gentle parenting effective for kids? What do we know about that?

Alice Davidson
So this is probably going to be an unsatisfying answer, but the reality is, we just don't know yet.

Cheryl Sutherland
Hmm.

But what about the parents? Because you did mention you're putting kind of the parents at the forefront of your research. So what do we know? What did you learn about how good it is for parents?

Alice Davidson
What we are finding in our research is that these gentle parents are so earnestly trying to parent their young children as best they can using the tools they have. There's also this sense that these gentle parents are hanging on for dear life. They describe themselves in our study as exhausted, as often feeling overwhelmed with the demands of parenting as not knowing what they're doing. So, you know, these are some example quotes from our study. So, you know, one parent said, I get very easily overstimulated and overwhelmed all day, every day.

Cheryl Sutherland
The gentle parents are not okay, right?

Alice Davidson
It's not. This approach is not so gentle on the gentle parents.

Cheryl Sutherland
We'll be right back.

Speaker A
How about Cap'n crunch's crunch berries with breakfast?

Speaker B
Whoa, dad, we're on crunch island.

Speaker A
He's Jean left foot.

Speaker B
And he stole our crunch.

Speaker A
Quick, the zip line.

Speaker B
He's getting away.

Speaker A
Throw our last crunch berry. No.

No one steals my crunch berries.

Speaker B
I think you mean my crunchberries. Choose your own crunch venture with cap and crunch.

Cheryl Sutherland
One thing I want to pick up on is you mentioned that gentle parenting isn't old school. And that makes me think about this idea around how parents are kind of not looking to their parents.

Alice Davidson
Right?

Cheryl Sutherland
So do you have any kind of insight into what parents told you about that part about their style versus their parents style?

Alice Davidson
I think one of the things that we're seeing is that this approach is appealing to many parents because I think it seems quite different than how many parents describe being reared themselves as children. So I do think that the appeal of dental parenting is perhaps a backlash to some of the old school, authoritarian approaches.

I think this approach is also very popular right now and appealing to parents because it's been fueled in great part by these parenting experts. I'm using air quotes again and influencers on social media and YouTube. You know, we can watch these one to two minute snippets of curated gentle parenting on Instagram or TikTok when we're searching for answers or tools in our daily struggles as parents. And that can give us, you know, some. Some comfort and some new ideas to employ with our own children.

This reliance on social media platforms as it applies to parenting appears to have increased during the pandemic. You know, this was a time when so many of us, myself included as a parent, were isolated at home, you know, attempting to parent our children without the social networks and resources in place that we relied on.

Cheryl Sutherland
So it's interesting because, you know, the social media aspect does seem like a little bit of a new thing. But I'm wondering about the idea itself. In general, parenting. Is gentle parenting a new idea?

Alice Davidson
Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, I would say that the idea of respecting children and helping children to feel valued and heard is nothing new.

There was a psychotherapist, Alfred Adler, in the 1920s, who talked about this kind of, in the eighties and nineties, we started seeing more of this kind of positive parenting movement and conscious parenting, which was really, you know, focused on trying to be more mindful as a parent, you know? And I think also Gottman's really important work in the nineties, too, on emotion coaching, too, this importance of helping young children to understand and label their emotions, to validate their emotional experiences, to not dismiss them, was really important because, you know, young children just aren't yet capable at regulating their own emotions. They need a lot of help to do this. And so I think respecting where children are developmentally, which is that they don't have the capacity to handle their difficult emotions like we do or we should as adults, I think, is a part of the underlying philosophy of gentle parenting as we're beginning to understand it. The term gentle parenting really seems to have been explicitly named and sort of broadcast out there in the world around 2015, when a british author, Sara Aquil Smith, began publishing multiple books that touted a gentle parenting philosophy.

Speaker B
Hmm.

Cheryl Sutherland
I guess what I'm trying to figure out is whether this idea takes some authority away from the parent.

Alice Davidson
Yeah, you know, I think that that's a question a lot of people are asking. So when Annie and I looked at what gentle parents say they do when they respond to their child's acting out or misbehavior, we identified a variety of strategies, ranging from what we call parent directed approaches. So, for example, they talk about taking away privileges or putting them in timeouthe, as well as these more child directed or co constructed approaches. So things like bargaining with or bribing their child, so giving in to the child's wants or demands, like for food or screens, they also talk sometimes about minimizing hierarchy. So attempting to get on a child's level, either physically, so this can involve getting down to the child's eye level to talk to them, or emotionally, which involves the acknowledging the feelings, validating feelings of a really important point, is that this idea of dental parenting, it's really a multifaceted approach. These parents are not just using one or two of these strategies, but they are using a host of these tools. And I think to get back to your question about does it go too far for some gentle parents? In our sample, there does seem to be this notion of democracy between parents and children and attempts on the part of the parents to, as I mentioned, minimize the hierarchy. And I think in some instances, as the gentle parents are earnestly trying to follow their child's lead, it might skew that equal distribution of power to the child.

Cheryl Sutherland
Interesting.

Okay, so I don't mean to sound harsh, but are there any instances when you can just ignore a child's emotions?

Alice Davidson
Yeah, absolutely.

And there are times when you should.

There are some behaviors that children exhibit that we refer to as junk behavior. And, you know, this refers to minor unwanted behaviors that may be annoying to parents and those around them, but they're not dangerous or harmful. They're benign. So, you know, examples are things like whining, arguing, pouting, baby talk, things like that. And, you know, children might be doing this for a variety of reasons. They're searching for attention, in which case, trying to engage in emotion coaching may actually just reinforce that unwanted behavior, the whining. So, you know, I think in some of these instances of junk behavior, instead of indulging or unpacking the emotions behind the junk behavior, you might just minimize the attention you give to it. And, you know, I think the reality is that whatever emotions exist behind this kind of minor junk behavior will likely dissipate pretty quickly without any parent intervention. So we don't have to unpack every last emotional experience that our children have.

Cheryl Sutherland
I'm going to adopt this junk behavior.

I'm enjoying that one. Okay, I want to shift gears and talk about the dialogue around gentle parenting, because a lot of people say gentle parenting is going to create a bunch of cell centered children. I just want to know from you, given your expertise on parenting, what do you think of this criticism?

Alice Davidson
Yeah, my perspective, which, of course, should be qualified by the very important caveat that we have yet to carry out a longitudinal study of the potential effects of gentle parenting is that in some respects, gentle parenting is perpetuating this coddling of the american mind. To kind of use this frame from a book from a few years ago, this idea that children are fragile. They are not.

Or that we should always trust our feelings. We shouldn't always trust our feelings. And I think that despite the ringing endorsements from gentle parents about boundaries, many children of gentle parents are not learning boundaries nor natural consequences in the midst of really challenging circumstances. And boundaries are so important. Children thrive on structure and routine and limits that helps them to feel safe, that's comfortable. So boundaries are really important.

Cheryl Sutherland
Okay, so this all sounds like it could create a lot of pressure or expectations for parents. What else should parents do? I guess when they lose their cool with their kid? Like, what is your advice here?

Alice Davidson
You know, I think that when you lose your cool with your kid and you mess up, it's perfectly appropriate to apologize and take responsibility.

I think that these situations are really good opportunities to model acknowledging big feelings that can sometimes get out of hand, and also modeling how to repair a relationship after an intense negative exchange or emotional experience.

At the same time, I think in the same way that gentle parenting might be going overboard in the perspective that children are not only equals to the parent, but they're totally in charge with the notion of apologizing. Parents shouldn't necessarily feel the need to apologize to their child for every minor infraction. We are all human beings with flaws and it's good for kids to see us mess up.

Cheryl Sutherland
So just lastly here, Alice, what are some of your overall takeaways on gentle parenting?

Alice Davidson
I would say that parenting is so hard and we are rooting for you.

Annie's and my interest in this topic really came from our professional and personal experiences. We're both trained in human development and family studies. We're also mothers to nine and ten year old children, and we've observed this gentle parenting phenomenon explode around us in recent years. I think it's also important to remember that parenting takes a village.

So don't forget to utilize your support network of family and friends to help you out in the very challenging endeavor of rearing your children. And I think that if your child is safe and supported, it's okay if grandma's or another caregiver's approach is not exactly the same as yours. You know, don't forget that no one is a perfect parent, and a strategy or script that works well for one child won't always work well for another child or in all situations.

Our research found that about a third of our gentle parents critiqued themselves and their responses. So we didn't ask them to do this. They just incorporated these self critiques into their responses when they're talking about their approach to parenting or how they respond when their child misbehaves. And I think self reflection is great. But remember that you are the expert on your child, so don't ignore your intuition when it comes to parenting your child, and try not to lose sight of your long term goals for your child and the values you're trying to instill in the midst of these inevitable, very emotionally intense moments that absolutely will pass.

Children are so resilient. So it's okay if you mess up every now and then. I really strongly believe that with unconditional love and acceptance, your children will turn out just fine.

Cheryl Sutherland
Alice, this is really great advice. Thanks so much for being here today.

Alice Davidson
Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed chatting with you.

Cheryl Sutherland
That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Eva McLaughlin and Mihalstein. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Matt Fraynor is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening.

Speaker A
How about Captain Crunch's crunchberries with breakfast?

Speaker B
Whoa, dad, we're on.

Speaker A
He shone left foot.

Speaker B
And he stole our crunch.

Speaker A
Quick. The zip line.

Speaker B
He's getting away.

Speaker A
Throw our last crunch berry. No.

No one steals my crunch berries.

Speaker B
I think you mean my crunch berries. Choose your own crunch venture with cap and crunch.