Of all the different parenting styles minted in the last decade or so, gentle parenting is perhaps the most controversial. The idea is that parents take a less authoritarian approach to raising their children: they talk to and treat them as individuals with their own point of view, and avoid telling them what they should be doing instead.
Its adherents say that gentle parenting nurtures warmer, more mature relationships with children, and that turning parenting into a collaboration makes things less stressful long term. But for others, it looks a lot like letting your child be the boss, with no discipline and no boundaries.
Does gentle parenting fail children? Parents Victoria Richards and Stephanie Lowe give their perspectives.
Do you remember being punished as a child? Chances are, if you’re a millennial born to boomer parents like I was, you were smacked.
I still remember the feeling of sheer, obliterating panic – even terror – as I bolted up the stairs to get away from a sharp slap on the backside; of knowing I was only making it worse by locking the door and barricading myself behind it, but doing it anyway. Sure enough, when I eventually gave up and came out – usually because I was hungry – the smack would still be there, waiting.
