Honest Parenting // Why Gentle Parenting Is On The Decline

According to trends, gentle parenting is declining, which is a welcome sigh of relief for many of us. But why is this the case for 2025?

Gentle parenting has been around since 2015 but has become a lot more popular since the social media parenting experts and mumfluencers started coining the hashtag. There haven't ever been any scientific articles that back up the new theory of gentle parenting as a form of parenting that works, so where did all this hype come from?

Gentle parenting is essentially about making sure that you have more empathy, respect, understanding, and boundaries with your children. It’s essentially putting the child in charge as a child-rearing philosophy based on these key understandings. It encourages nurturing, respectful relationships between parents and child without yelling, punishment, or authoritarian control. Simply put, you better not have a bad day and start shouting, or your gentle parenting is not happening.

As a parent of three small girls, gentle parenting can seem like a very unachievable idea on a daily basis. I'm all for being empathetic and listening to my children, but frankly, when it's a bad day, you're stressed, and the kids aren't listening, my gentle parenting goes out the window. Of course, none of us wants to be described as an un-gentle parent, but it feels very much like being a gentle parent is a square box and I’m a round peg.

This style of parenting centres around the child, which is of course a great way to parent, but not entirely realistic. We all have our ways of parenting, and some days we don't have the time to sit down for 15 minutes and discuss why our child should put their socks and shoes on before school. Kids need boundaries, and they need to understand when and where it is a good time to discuss their feelings and take the time to emotionally connect. It's okay for our children to see that sometimes we get it wrong. We make mistakes, and we lose control of our emotions. This is all entirely normal and something that children should be learning.

It would appear from some research that gentle parenting is more of a reaction to the way that we as adults were parented, mainly by those millennial parents who were raised in households of much more authority. The practice of gentle parenting means that they are pushing against these boundaries and creating a much gentler space for their children to grow. But is this the correct way to be parenting? No one wants to be a pushover parent, right?

Some quite possible parental burnouts can be caused by the continual push to be a gentle parent. Some find it extremely exhausting to maintain such a constant, traditionally led approach, especially those who are working parents, with multiple kids, or without any kind of support system, which can be very common in this country.

Luckily, it looks like there is a movement to evolve this style into something new. We are all constantly being thrown new challenges, new tech, and new AI developments (Terrifying). Should your child be on TikTok? Should they be given a phone by the time they're 9? We're all just trying to keep up with everything new thrown at us.

The new approach to parenting is ‘authoritative parenting’. This style mixes both gentle parenting and those with firmer boundaries and expectations. It's a middle-ground approach that appeals to both those with authority and those who like the more permissive style. To be completely honest, it all feels like a lot, every day is completely different, and we're all just trying to do the best we can, gentle or not.

Rather than defining it in a box of 'gentle parenting', I have recently tried to take on some slower approaches to parenting. It can be extremely difficult when you're very busy to actually recognize what your children need, but a lot of behaviour is communication and when children do act out, it's usually from a point of not recognizing their emotions rather than just being ‘naughty’. Children lead by example. So, it's no surprise that if we are gentle and we behave nicely, modelling these emotions to our children, this is something that they will learn as they grow into adulthood. It helps kids to process their feelings instead of shaming or suppressing them and creates that connection, not control or fear.

Gentle parenting is not meant to be about being permissive or a pushover, but often, I do feel like it can seem like that. If we lose complete control and give it all to our children, it's very hard for us to set boundaries going forward, which are extremely important for children to understand. It enables them to regulate themselves throughout the day and understand what possible situations or discomforts could be coming.

Whether you're a gentle parent, an authoritarian parent, or simply ‘just-get-through-everyday-parent,’ know that whatever you're doing is probably enough.