The harsh truth about gentle parenting

When new parents arrive home with their newborn and little more than a hospital lesson about swaddling, feeding, and back sleeping, it can feel overwhelming, even terrifying. Parents want to do their best to raise these little people they love. Many millennials, however, are looking away from traditional sources of wisdom to the internet to learn how to raise their kids.

A current trend called “Gentle Parenting” is an internet phenom. It asks parents to supply endless empathy, boundaries, and one tone of voice: think, the calmest, kindest kindergarten teacher. Parents who embrace this parenting style emphasize being positive and affirming their kids’ desires with the expectation that they’ll be confident and emotionally intelligent. In practice, though, the “gentle parents” at the grocery store seem worn out with all their never correcting, always negotiating, and vainly trying to end temper tantrums with manipulative phrases like, “you’re making Mommy sad.” Meanwhile, their children are demanding, disagreeable, and often sullen. With these results, why is gentle parenting so popular?

Ashley McGuire of the Institute for Family Studies credits its spread to social media, most notably, TikTok, where Gentle Parenting has generated almost 300 million posts. Lots of parents like the sound of what Parenting magazine describes as a “partnership”—not between mom and dad—but between parent and child. The approach is “collaborative,” they say, and treats children “like reasonable actors, capable of negotiating with their parents for what they want.” Even some pediatricians and psychologists promote it as “one of the most beneficial parenting strategies,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. But is it?

A recent Psychology Today article says the Gentle Parenting approach to childrearing is an untested and unstudied trend that, like other parenting trends, may seem “right at the time,” but will quickly go “out of fashion.” Corrine Masure, Psy.D., notes that the author who coined the term “gentle parenting” based her writing not on scientific research but her own opinions and observations.

Maybe Gentle Parents are too tired to notice, or too new at it to have realized this, but Gentle Parenting doesn’t work. And it's doing real harm. In his book, Authority, Jonathan Leeman says “failing to discipline and draw boundaries for children creates narcissists—kids centered on themselves and ruled by their feelings.”

The gentle in Gentle Parenting is not a fruit of the Spirit. The Apostle Paul described himself as gentle among the Thessalonians, even as he was exhorting, encouraging, and charging them “like a father with his children … to walk in a manner worthy of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:7, 11-12). Is it loving to raise kids who are emotionally brittle? Is it wise to raise children who are difficult to be around?

God commands parents to teach children the way to go (Ephesians 6:4) and requires children to follow (Proverbs 1:8). Gentle Parenting turns this upside down. It assumes children already know the way and can chart their own course.

Parents should take their cues, not from Tiktok, but from God’s example. Hebrews says “the Lord disciplines the one he loves” (12:6). Parents should, too. That includes instruction, correction, and punishment. A child in the throes of a temper tantrum doesn’t need empathy or calm reasoning. Often what he needs is a spanking. Solomon talks a lot about spanking in Proverbs. He says it drives folly out of the hearts of children (22:15), saves their souls from hell (23:14), and gives them wisdom (29:15). God’s Word is clear: a firm swat to the posterior—not abuse that inflicts injury—lovingly administered by a calm, self-controlled parent adds many benefits to children, and to their parents. A disciplined child “will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart” (29:17).

Willful disobedience is prime time for pointing children to Christ. They need to experience a consequence to understand that sin is a real problem with a real penalty. If they repent and believe in Jesus, God will forgive them because Jesus bore their sins in His body. He offers them Christ’s righteousness in exchange for their sin, but if children persist in their rebellion, they will remain under His wrath. Parents must teach this to their children.

In gentleness, parents, discipline your children. It’s the path to understanding just how amazing grace is, and the only hope for eternal life.