The Problem with Gentle Parenting: It's Cringe

What if all the most annoying people are right?

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ve probably seen this cartoon before:

I’ve noticed that this cartoon functions a bit like an ink blot test for most people. Whichever parenting style most represents your own (or, if you’re not a parent, the style you like the most) is perceived as being lambasted. I recently re-posted this on Twitter and got people saying “All of these moms are soft, my mom used to beat me with a wooden spoon and I turned out great!” or “Gee, it must be so AWFUL to VALIDATE your child’s feelings…I feel bad for your kids.”

The truth is, there’s no value judgment. I mean, the 1963 mom is obviously being an asshole, but I didn’t really have a point I was trying to make. The idea for this cartoon, down to the names and the specific word bubbles, came to me in a dream. This stuck out to me, because normally my dreams are like this:

Anyway, I created this cartoon when prompted by my dream (Not referring to bearded Betty Boop, although perhaps one day I will use this somehow.) I published it, and it did pretty well, as do most of my cartoons that satirize the progression of time. But one thing I noticed was that people weren’t sure who the butt of the joke was supposed to be—was it the emotionally distant 1963 mom, the firm but calm 1993 mom, or the “sad beige” Instagram mom of 2023? I didn’t really know, honestly. The joke was all of the above, and also none of them. But I couldn’t deny that I had, probably subconsciously, drawn the 2023 mom to encompass the most annoying components of modern-day, social-media-fueled gentle parenting, down to the gratingly neutral color palette and over-filled lips.

If you’re a parent, and even if you’re not, you’ve probably seen tons of content on Instagram and TikTok about gentle parenting. Sometimes it’s helpful, like ways to distract a toddler during a meltdown while in the middle of your spotless, terra-cotta toned living room adorned with small succulents. Sometimes, it’s insane, like the assertion that bedtimes are abusive, or that your child will develop an eating disorder if you “withhold food” (the withholding food in this scenario being “you can’t eat dinner until you’ve washed your hands.”)

Because I probably have some adult-onset oppositional defiance disorder, and I immediately react with disgust to anything that I see too often, I predictably reacted with disgust. This was stupid. Time outs are not abuse. I hated this shit. Every gentle parenting video I saw seemed more focused on guilting the parent, and less on actually benefiting the child. I saw one influencer post an infographic that said something like “People say gentle parenting isn’t gentle on the parents- but I disagree! It absolutely should be gentle on them too!” I got excited that perhaps I found a reasonable gentle parenting influencer. I got to her page and she had recently posted that sleep training—even “soft” forms that don’t result in long stretches of crying—are severe emotional abuse that is pervasive in our culture of “childism” (which I guess is like being racist against all children or something. Weird! I don’t like this!)

One of the main things I noticed about gentle parenting Instagram is that the main rule is: whatever is most inconvenient for you, whatever is least safe, and whatever takes the longest amount of time, is the right choice. Independence in the form of encouraging your child to sleep in their own bed or not breastfeeding them into kindergarten? Bad. Independence in the form of putting your 18-month-old in charge of measuring baking soda for the homemade bread you’re making? Great, even if it takes forever, includes copious tantrums, and gets baking soda everywhere. It’s like the diet saying “If it tastes good, spit it out.” If it’s easy or makes your life better, it’s probably bad for the kid, and he’s going to wind up going no-contact with you (and he’ll be completely justified!)

(Speaking of no-contact, I’ve noticed a lot of the most judgmental advocates of gentle parenting, including someone I blocked on Twitter for making a thread about how my mom probably doesn’t love me- are not parents. They are in their early 20s people who don’t want kids at all and hate their own parents. I encourage them to get help, genuinely, but no, I will not be listening to their opinions on this stuff or agree to be their outlet for whatever they hate about their own moms.)

Anyway, at the time when I discovered all these influencers, I was the mom of one toddler, and basically winging it. He threw lots of tantrums, which I knew were “developmentally normal” but were also extremely annoying and disruptive. He hit me a lot. I posted to a few gentle parenting mom groups about it and noticed a common theme: any child behavior is deemed “developmentally appropriate” even if it’s obviously a bit naughty, and any behavior that’s too naughty to justify is automatically diagnosed as some form of autism that requires expensive consultants and therapists (for the record, we had our toddler screened for autism, and he doesn’t even test close. Mom groups told me that I should keep doctor-hunting until I found one who agreed with them that my child was autistic.) When all else fails: mama, it’s your fault. Maybe your three-year-old is throwing stuff at you because he notices that you are emotionally dysregulated. Maybe you need therapy so you can learn to stop being so emotionally abusive. <3 Also, get that fussy baby to a chiropractor!

The core gentle parenting idea that you shouldn’t yell at your kids or impose too many rewards and consequences is probably right (at least most of the time) but it took me a while to come to terms with this because I couldn’t stand conceding anything to a group of people who are easily some of the most annoying, obnoxious and sanctimonious people on the face of the planet. It didn’t help that I don’t actually have a lot of mom friends, so most of my exposures to moms come from Twitter and Instagram. I’m imagining myself showing up at my son’s preschool pickup and spouting off some stuff about how your child will be a feminized soyboy if you don’t slather him in beef tallow. Being a “very online” mom means I can’t even tell if the stuff I’m reading is, like, real.

I finally got to the point where I embraced the core tenets of gentle parenting while still making fun of the components that I think are stupid. Yes, it’s good to not yell at your kid or to apologize when you do. No, I don’t think that yelling at your kid is as bad as hitting them (a claim made by a lot of prominent gentle parenting influencers.) Yes, I think toddlers benefit from being included in the daily household activities. No, I don’t think that means you need to take three hours to prepare dinner while your two-year-old spills flour everywhere and tries to eat raw eggs. (Enter insane trad mom Twitter: why would you stop him from eating raw eggs? Don’t tell me you’re anti raw milk too!)

Being very online often feels like living two lives: the one with your children, spouse and (maybe) friends in the real world, and then the other world on Twitter or some other form of social media where everything seems a bit like a fever dream and everyone casually and confidently says things that you’d normally expect to see spouted by a deranged psycho on the subway. To embrace gentle parenting, I had to leave the influencers I hated in the dream world, relying on them only for good comedic material and not for advice.