Gentle Parenting, whether or not it always goes by that title, has taken our culture by storm. Millennial moms who are now raising the majority of today’s 0 to 10-year-olds want to parent in a way that is empathetic and positive, with a strong focus on the developing feelings of their children. None of that is wrong, at least on the surface, but the aftermath of this parenting style is often anything but positive.

The distinctions between various parenting styles are often blurry, but here is one description from a gentle parenting perspective that defines two dominant camps. The goal of gentle parenting is to “raise confident, independent and happy children through empathy, respect and understanding, and setting healthy boundaries.” Instead of “traditional parenting” which focuses on rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior, those who subscribe to gentle parenting focus on “improving a child’s self-awareness and understanding of their own behavior" (source).

There are shades of gray here, and I think few parents walk around claiming an explicit label for their methods of child-raising, but as an elder millennial who just arrived at ten years of parenting, I can attest to the fact that many well-meaning moms seem to parent from a feelings-centric model. I focus on moms here because that’s who I interact with the most.

Here is what I’ve heard women around me say to their children:
“Help me to understand why you hit your sister.”
“Honey, I see you are having some big feelings right now.”
“Would you be willing to take five belly breaths?”

These moms, in an effort not to dismiss or curtail their children’s emotions, affirm everything their child feels, stooping to talk calmly when their child lashes out in anger or frustration. Some mothers do this fairly well, validating feelings but still offering correction or discipline when needed.

However, many moms, in an attempt to be empathetic, drift into what I would consider unbiblical parenting. The mom fails to discipline (which makes the parent-child relationship illegitimate according to Hebrews 12) and acknowledges big emotions without helping the child to regulate them. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control and this means Christians must learn to regulate and sometimes even deny their emotional impulses by the power of the Spirit. When we tell our kids it’s okay to be mastered by their emotions, we are lying to them about what the Christian life should look like.

Further, when we fail to correct sinful behavior in our kids, we are robbing them of the “peaceful fruit of righteousness” that comes from discipline. Hebrews 12 says that “all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.” Despite the attempts of gentle parents to keep everyone happy and somehow enforce boundaries at the same time, the Bible suggests such methods are not real discipline. Consequences should be unpleasant (though not harsh). A child should experience something negative when being disciplined so that he may correct his behavior (and ideally the posture of his heart) and become more holy as a result.

Some moms swing into an extreme branch of gentle parenting where they don’t give their child direct commands or use the word “no,” which is a special kind of misery. I have heard from young women who have nannied for families where they aren’t allowed to say no to the kids in their charge but instead must spend their days trying to manipulate good behavior through affirmations and negotiations. I think I’d rather work at Walmart…

I don’t think every aspect of gentle parenting is wrong. As I was researching for this article, I found a few good phrases to keep in my back pocket for dealing with tantrums. However, we must judge the intentions of gentle parenting by the fruit it produces. This is what I’ve seen as the result of full-fledged gentle parenting:

Kids who demand all of their parent’s attention, regularly interrupt adult conversation, don’t know how to play independently or even with a sibling, have almost no regulation of their emotions, and begin to assume and project all of their mom’s crippling anxieties about parenting.

My friends who lean into the gentle parenting camp are great. I love them. But I feel like I haven’t had a good conversation with them in five years because we are interrupted by their kids every two minutes while we’re talking. In giving their kids everything, these moms don’t have much else to give anyone else.

An additional layer in the Gentle Parenting movement is that women often adopt the philosophy as a reaction to the failings of their own parents.

First, I recognize that some of these women did suffer through real abuse or abandonment during childhood. I don’t want to overlook the pain of these mothers or their sincere desire to be the amazing type of parent that they never had.

Second, any responsible adult is going to reflect on what was good and bad, healthy and unhealthy about their childhood, and use those reflections to inform their parenting. Most of us have a few traditions or behaviors we’d like to carry on from our parents, as well as many things we want to do differently.

The problem with parenting as a response to the way that you were parented is that it quickly escalates to dishonoring your parents, which the Bible strictly forbids (Matthew 15:4). Of course, it’s acceptable to talk about wounds from your parents with a spouse, a counselor, or a few close friends who will encourage you to forgive and find healing in Christ, but simply airing your grievances against your parents to publicly justify your parenting choices is not respectful.

I cannot tell you how many young moms I’ve heard explain their intentions for gentle parenting with a disclosure of their own parents’ mistakes. Whether it was their workaholic father or emotionally cold mother, these women explain how their parents’ errors still haunt them. Now they want to be the most intentional, affirming, empathetic, warm, and positive parent ever, as if this can somehow atone for the sins of an earlier generation.

But these remembered slights often get blown out of proportion. Somehow the dad who was a little too anxious about money is in the same lot as the child abuser. The mom who yelled too much is on par with a raging alcoholic who left home for months at a time. This is not the way of Christ. The God of the universe removes our sin from us as far as the East is from the West.

Many moms who practice gentle parenting fixate on real or perceived traumas in a futile attempt to redeem the past by their own maternal achievements.

This self-salvation is always a dead end. These moms create a caricature of the always-calm and gentle mother and then writhe in hopelessness over their failed attempts to be that parent. Usually, it’s the “gentle” moms who are the most anxious about motherhood. And, ironically, they offload all that stress onto their children, who become similarly anxious and high-strung.

This is when gentle parenting begins to hurt everybody. For a parenting style that is focused on being positive, the effects seem to be negative for all parties. The moms I know who tend toward this kind of parenting are completely overwhelmed. Their kids overwhelm them. They don’t enjoy being interrupted all the time. They are drowning in the waves of “big feelings” that flood their house, their car, and their life every single day. These moms rarely want more kids or dream of having a big family, even though children are a blessing and big families have been the norm throughout Christian history.

If you are parenting your kids so well that you don’t want to have any more children is it really a positive experience?

I feel bad for the women who subscribe to this philosophy and drown in their anxiety each day. I feel bad for their husbands and friends who take a back seat to their children’s constant demands for attention. And I feel bad for their kids who have not been loved and protected with the firm, calm, consistent discipline that the Bible commands.

At the end of the day, gentle parenting strikes me as pretty brutal for everyone involved.

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