Gentle Parenting

Gentle Parenting

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Gentle parenting is a popular approach to raising young children that stresses affection, staying calm and helping children understand and manage their feelings. It spread largely through social media and parenting advice rather than research. The first systematic study of what it involves, by Anne Pezalla and Alice Davidson, was published in 2024, and its authors noted that the approach had until then "received no empirical scrutiny".

What it is

In the 2024 study, 49 of 100 American parents of children aged two to seven described themselves as gentle parents. Their accounts shared a strong emphasis on parental affection and on emotion regulation, both the parent's ability to stay calm and the child's ability to manage strong feelings. The authors found that gentle parenting stood apart from established measures of parenting in its emphasis on boundaries, but that parents enforced those boundaries in different ways. Most gentle parents reported high satisfaction and confidence. A highly self-critical subset reported lower confidence, and statements of uncertainty or burnout appeared in more than a third of the gentle parent group.

In effect

Because the label itself has barely been studied, the evidence that bears on it comes from research on its ingredients. Elizabeth Gershoff and Andrew Grogan-Kaylor's 2016 meta-analysis of 75 studies linked spanking, which gentle parenting rejects, to worse outcomes on 13 of 17 measures, with no reliable benefit. Research on Diana Baumrind's parenting styles links warmth combined with firm limits, the authoritative style, with slightly fewer behaviour problems, and warmth without limits, the permissive style, with more in most studies. Trials of emotion coaching courses for parents have reported fewer child behaviour problems.

What it does not say

No study has yet measured whether children raised by self-described gentle parents fare better or worse than others. The 2024 study measured parents only, through self-report, at a single point in time, with a small sample that was mostly White and highly educated. Nor does the term specify how limits are set. A version that keeps firm boundaries resembles authoritative parenting, while one that avoids every confrontation resembles permissive parenting, so the label alone does not tell you which a family is practising. Its vocabulary of connection draws on attachment research, which begins with John Bowlby, but his 1951 report Maternal Care and Mental Health concerned children deprived of care and was not guidance on everyday discipline.

Sources

  1. Pezalla, A. E., & Davidson, A. J. (2024). "Trying to remain calm...but I do reach my limit sometimes": an exploration of the meaning of gentle parenting. PLOS ONE, 19(7), e0307492. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0307492
  2. Gershoff, E. T., & Grogan-Kaylor, A. (2016). Spanking and child outcomes: old controversies and new meta-analyses. Journal of Family Psychology, 30(4), 453-469. doi:10.1037/fam0000191
  3. Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of authoritative parental control on child behavior. Child Development, 37(4), 887-907. doi:10.2307/1126611
  4. Pinquart, M. (2017). Associations of parenting dimensions and styles with externalizing problems of children and adolescents: an updated meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology, 53(5), 873-932. doi:10.1037/dev0000295
  5. Bowlby, J. (1951). Maternal Care and Mental Health. Geneva: World Health Organization, Monograph Series No. 2 (second edition 1952).