One of the best decisions I ever made as a parent was to ignore the parenting advice of the “experts.” When I first became a mother, I was overwhelmed by so many books and theories. Instead, I decided to skip the whole thing. Even now, after giving birth to five children, I have no regrets.
But now even I can’t escape bad parenting advice. It hits me on social media in the form of what has become loosely known as “TikTok parenting.”
As if TikTok wasn’t insidious enough, TikTok and other social media platforms are increasingly becoming a source of parenting advice, most of which skews toward millennials and young parents, and understandably so. I’m stuck in a sea of popular parenting guides, most of which range from the difficult to understand to the trivial. The Internet has taken an already dizzying amount of parenting advice and multiplied it exponentially. On the other hand, parents can’t avoid it as they scroll through their feeds in the form of reels, memes, or short stories.
“Gentle parenting.” “Responsive Parenting.” “Sensitive parenting.” Although described in attractive terms, much of what passes as “expert advice” is some of the worst advice and gaslighting I have ever seen.
In one Reel that streamed from my Facebook feed, a woman named Isinna B. Sadanna, a self-proclaimed “self-employed child care expert” in India with a million followers, said, “When we raise our children, If you correct them too often (her examples include saying things like “stop running” and “don’t sit like that”)… “they will rebel and start throwing more tantrums.” Because they become dissatisfied with themselves.”
The meme on Instagram’s Responsive Parenting handle is written in soft pastels and reads, “Parents who choose to empathize with their children rather than judge them contribute to creating a society that empathizes with others instead of criticizing them.” “
In perhaps the most alarming example I’ve ever seen, a mother asked this question on a parenting blog I follow: With some TIKTOK parents asking for an end to bedtime, should bedtime be pushed back to 10 or 11 o’clock? ”
Bedtime—is it bad? Discipline—is it bad? Is it bad to correct children?
No, TikTok parenting is no good!
Parents who want to raise happy kids and stay sane should run, not walk, away from their TikTok parenting pages and trust their instinctive ability to stay in tight control.
The internet’s hottest parenting trend may be so-called “gentle parenting,” which boasts nearly 300 million posts on TikTok. A quick Google search will tell you that gentle parenting is all about empathy, warmth, and respect. However, many parents have come forward who have tried this approach and found that they are producing children who are unable to control themselves and drive their parents to the brink of insanity.
One such critic wrote in The New Yorker: “Under the schema of gentle parenting, a child’s every behavior must be viewed through the lens of anxiety and threat detection, reinforcing the parent’s dual role as child psychologist and emotional security guard. ”
Another mom who tried this said:
They worry that the gentle parenting style popularized by Millennials (meaning never saying “no” or raising your voice) will create a generation of spoiled, self-centered brats. They are facing a backlash from exhausted and confused mothers.
Like other parenting fads popularized by TikTok and social media, gentle parenting treats children as weak and essentially avoids parenting basics like punishment and obvious bedtimes. This is done in the name of this gentler approach somehow alleviating childhood anxiety, as children’s behavior can be traced to trauma and stress. Not a lack of discipline. Even worse, when a parent tries to bend authority using firm traditional methods, it makes the parent feel almost abusive and suggests that the parent is reinforcing a cycle of cheating. .
Instead, the fear seems to fall directly on parents, who share a flood of almost unnerving posts on their feeds and pages. “There are a surprising number of parenting experts on TikTok, many of whom exploit parents’ fears to increase engagement,” one mother wrote in an article for The Cut. And the implication is that you can crack the code by simply adopting one of the guru’s jargon (think “no thank you!” instead of “no”) or using those words with a tantruming toddler. I’m doing it.
As another mother wrote in an article, “TikTok’s version of parenting is a nightmarish fantasy.”
What I think is so insidious about this new version of online mom life is that it pretends to be the opposite of what motherhood really is, but ends up pretending that parenting is intractably difficult. But if you buy money, you’re pushing the same narrative that raising children is difficult. If you choose the right products or follow the right influencers, you might just be able to push through.
Meanwhile, research published here at IFS shows that children do best with a discipline-based, traditional parenting approach. For example, Dr. Jonathan Rothwell notes that “political ideology is one of the strongest predictors” when researching positive mental health in teens. Conservative parents raise teens with the lowest rates of mental health problems, not because of politics per se, but because:
Conservative or very conservative parents are most likely to adopt parenting practices related to adolescent mental health. They are most likely to effectively discipline their children while showing love and being responsive to their children’s needs. Liberal parents score the lowest, even worse than very liberal parents. This is mainly because they are the least likely to successfully discipline their children.
Rothwell says that children raised in homes with “authoritative parenting” develop “self-control, social skills, success in school, adherence to rules and reasonable social norms, as well as greater self-confidence and creativity.” It cites decades of research showing that it is likely to be effective.
This echoes the findings of a book on parenting I’ve actually read, the semi-satirical Raising Bebe by Pamela Druckerman, which now has a cult following. I wasn’t surprised. After comparing French and American children and their parenting techniques, they found that the fundamental difference is that American parents lack authority and boundaries within the home. The French have set firm and clear boundaries, and it is clear who is in charge. “Strict rules and emotional control seem to be key elements of a child’s life in France,” one critic wrote in the New York Times. “For mothers, too, it’s a refusal to make parenting an all-consuming occupation.” As a result, children sit quietly at restaurant tables, are less picky eaters, and don’t interrupt adults every five seconds. A culture was born. All the pop psychology scattered around the internet isn’t there.
Raising children is hard enough without the constant stream of iPhone psychologists gaslighting parents into relinquishing basic parental duties in order to set the law in the home. Parents who want to raise happy kids and stay sane should run, not walk, away from their TikTok parenting pages, even if it means telling their kids to “stop running.” You should also trust your instinctive ability to stay in control.
Ashley E. McGuire is a contributing editor at the Institute for Family Studies and the author of Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female (Regnery, 2017).
