[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Our last 15 minutes or so of the show will be with a guest, but for those of you currently parenting children at home, 212-433-WNYC, on the question, how gentle should your parenting style be? Why do we ask? Last month, The Cut, part of New York Magazine published a piece titled The Rise of the Accidentally Permissive Parent, documenting how the "gentle parenting movement" may be creating a generation of boundaryless children whose needs are being put above the needs of their parents. Respect, rules, and punishments have fallen to the wayside. This theory goes as parents try to right the wrongs of their own childhoods through raising their own children in this way.

Listeners, does this sound like you or are you an advocate of gentle parenting? What does that mean to you? Do you find that you try to be a gentle parent, but then your children are out of control, and you can't keep them within various boundaries when you want to? Give us a call. 212-433-WNYC.

Parenting is hard, and we're not here to judge how people parent. For those of you of a certain age, you might say, "Haven't we been having this conversation at least since Dr. Spock in the 1950s, and later T. Berry Brazelton, and now Dr. Becky? This debate is as old as the hills," but we want to hear from people currently raising young children at home. 212-433-WNYC.

If your children are grown, sit this one out. This is for parents of kids in the house right now. Did anybody read the piece on The Cut called The Rise of the Accidentally Permissive Parent? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Joining us now is the author of that article, Elizabeth Passarella, magazine writer and author of the essay collections It Was an Ugly Couch Anyway and Good Apple. Elizabeth, welcome to WNYC. Thank you for coming on for this.

Elizabeth Passarella: Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: We can enter so many places. Do you want to enter on how parents trying the gentle parenting methods are sometimes reacting to the way they were parented when they were kids?

Elizabeth Passarella: Yes, I think that is so true. The term gentle parenting, you hear things like respectful parenting, you hear intentional parenting, conscious parenting. You mentioned Dr. Becky, she calls it sturdy parenting. They all, I think, fall under this larger umbrella of parents who-- I'm a firm Gen Xer. I'm 47, I have three children who maybe grew up with stricter, more traditional parenting. Maybe there was corporal punishment in their home. There was because I said so or children should be seen and not heard type of parenting.

I think that we as a generation of parents are simply trying to do it a little bit gentler, and that's where that word is coming from. We're trying to be a little bit kinder, a little less reactionary, and yet, I do think that gentle parenting as a term is just a very murky stew. The problem is that there is just a lot of noise about what that looks like, and so yes, we are trying to as a reaction against maybe the way we were parented, do it a bit differently, validate our children's emotions a little bit more, show a little bit more kindness and empathy and understanding for what our children are going through. Yet, I do think that there is a lot of just confusion about what that looks like.

I spoke to two psychologists who did a small study, Alice Davidson and Annie Pezalla. They've done this small study that asked a group of parents what their parenting philosophies looked like. They said, "If you identify someone who is trying to be a "gentle parent", what does that actually mean?" The terms they heard most often were, these parents are trying to, from the beginning, regulate their own emotions. They're trying to be calm in the face of chaos. They're trying to name their children's emotions and validate those children's emotions. "You seem angry or I can see that you're upset right now," trying to help them cope.

Then there's just a lot of affection, a lot of warmth, a lot of love, a lot of hugs. They're trying to not be angry and not yell and scream. I think that most gentle or respectful parenting experts would probably say there's much more to it than that, but I do think that that is a good roadmap, a good overview of what parents are looking at and what they think that this looks like.

Brian Lehrer: Then in the media, in addition to your article being shared a lot, we see these memes of 10-year-olds running wild in Sephora making a mess of their testers while their parents sit by and don't do anything. The kid on the playground who snatched a toy from your kid's hands, and then didn't say sorry, and the parents didn't make them. That's what goes around as, Oh, this is what gentle parenting is creating.

Elizabeth Passarella: Yes. Listen, I have one of those 11-year-olds who loves to go to Sephora. I just want to say that I am in it with these parents. I understand. Parenting is really hard. I think that what has happened, and again, I don't want to associate when we talk about the rise of the accidental permissive parent, this permissive parenting that a lot of us are seeing in our lives, I'm not putting those on the same plane as gentle parenting.

I think that what's happened is gentle parenting and the proponents of it, what they're asking a parent is really hard. Sometimes you're sitting in the middle of a tantrum. You're waiting things out. You're trying to again, stay calm, and measured, and regulate your own emotions. That's difficult. You're trying to be patient while your child has a tantrum, you're trying to set really firm boundaries and hold to it, but sometimes that can take a long time.

What has ended up happening, I think, and, of course, I see this in my own life, too, is that the easier way out is to be reactionary, to yell, to say things like I'm selling the dog, whatever it is, which we are trying not to do or to give in. I think to stop the whining, to stop the negotiating or the arguing, you give in because parenting is hard, and we are exhausted, and overworked, and overstressed.

I think this permissive parenting and this bad behavior that a lot of us are seeing in our lives and teachers are seeing in school sometimes is not gentle parenting. It's gentle parenting gone wrong. It's people trying and feeling overwhelmed, and not exactly knowing how to implement it because it is very difficult. Therefore, they are in an exhausted, throw-up-your-hands kind of way. They're letting those children's emotions take over, and then that's where you get that bad behavior.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear some parent stories in our remaining time. Heather in Morris County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Heather.

Heather: Hi, how are you? Thank you for taking my call. I actually chose my children's school. I have children ranging from 11 to 4, because they use what's called a positive discipline method, which I think is fantastic in theory, but like you said, the pendulum can swing to becoming, especially after the pandemic when we were all so dysregulated that it becomes permissive. We actually even saw that in the school.

The pendulum is swinging back towards the middle of kind and firm. We need to learn as parents what that balance is of kind but firm. I think we also ourselves are learning all of these skills as parents when we haven't really been taught the tolerance, the self-regulation, the emotional regulation ourselves. We need to learn how to model what those boundaries are ourselves before we can teach our children or the students in schools in the case of my children. We have to go back to learning ourselves.

Brian Lehrer: Nicely put, Heather. Thank you. Hope in Amityville has a story, I think. Hope, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Hope: Hi. Thank you so much for taking my call. It was so funny to hear this because this morning as I was getting my daughter ready for school, my dad picks her up, and she just starts having a tantrum. She's three years old, and she has a new baby brother at home. We tried to be very sensitive to that, but now she's kicking and literally screaming her way into the car. My dad tells me, "This is an important moment. You cannot let her win this." She has snot come out of her nose and tears, and I send her to school with him. He says, "I'm proud of you," and I'm like, "I don't know if I'm proud of me." I don't know if I did the right thing. I don't want to be permissive, but I also don't want to gaslight her feelings. I want to be there for her, so I didn't know. It's hard to find that balance.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth, you're hearing a lot of stories like this in your reporting?

Elizabeth Passarella: So many stories like this, and so many stories that I've heard from other parents and experienced in my own life for sure. Yes, I think that is the hard thing, is when are we are giving in, and when are we holding a line that's important. I think that it's going to change depending on your temperament and your kids' temperament. There was one psychologist that I spoke to, Rebecca Hirschberg, and I loved what she said, and I've repeated it to myself many times, is you need to have a household a high level of love and a high level of limits. The proportionality of that will change throughout the day or the week. There are going to be days where you need to enforce the limits more, and there's going to be days where you need to throw those out the window and cuddle on the couch and watch a movie and have high levels of love and maintain that connection.

I do think that what a lot of people struggle with in the gentle parenting movement is, okay, yes, I do want to validate my children's feelings, but I have to get to work and my children does have to go to school. I hear you and I sympathize. I think that it is really difficult, but I think that I would probably, and I'm a more traditional parent in my own household, but I would say that our kids do really need us to win, and they do need to know that someone's in charge. I do think it makes them feel safe and it makes them feel confident to know that there is an adult who is in charge. I think we can do that in a gentle way, but also really hold those firm boundaries. I do think that's important.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Eric in South Orange who told our screener he's an advocate for not yelling. Eric, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Eric: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for taking my call. I just wanted to make the point. For me as an advocate of gentle parenting, I think one of the things that I've adopted is I just never yell at my kids, which is not to say I'm never angry at them and they know that I'm angry at them, but I just have decided that raising my voice in a punitive way almost feels to me like violence to them and I can convey to them that what they're doing is unacceptable.

It's not necessarily that the substance is soft of the parenting, but the style is soft. For me, I just never yell at them. I don't think either of my kids has ever heard me use my full shouting voice because I feel like in a way that's an act of violence towards them. The result of it is they're both very responsive. When I say that's not okay, I'm upset. If you keep doing this, we're going to have a problem. I can just say it in a voice that's not yelling and obviously, that relies a lot on me having to do work and myself and my own emotional regulation and not letting the mercury hit the top of the [unintelligible 00:12:03] [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: If you're going to do that, then you have to do it in a way that still communicates that you are going to set this boundary in some way, right?

Speaker 3: Exactly, yes. I'm very clear about the fact that what they're doing is not acceptable and there are consequences, but it just never takes the form of what I believe to be something that is destructive in a way.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. I think our last comment is going to come from a text message. Listener writes, I am a parent of a three-and-a-half-year-old in practice respectful parenting [unintelligible 00:12:33] Magda Gerber's approach. One big thing in disciplining in this mindset is that no one learns in moments of feeling shame. I'll never force my kid to say sorry, for instance, but will model that apology instead.

Interesting. Not forcing your kid to say sorry. What did you want to say in response to that and the last caller?

Elizabeth Passarella: Sure. I was going to say, first of all, Eric, bless you for not yelling at your children. That's a really hard thing to do. I have a temper, I'm a yeller. I think what I would say to parents who maybe don't have that much self-control is we all are going to screw up. I think what we need to model for our children also is just the importance of apologizing, asking for forgiveness. I think this is one thing that my generation didn't get from our own parents quite as much as we wish we did. It's just that I'm sorry, I screwed up. Do you forgive me? I think that can go a long way for parents who are struggling and are trying to be kinder and gentler, but also mess up a lot. I just want to say that.

In terms of not saying you're sorry, listen, there are a lot of gentle parenting experts who would advocate that, who talk about that. I do think the existence of shame, shaming your children into doing something is not really going to teach them a great lesson, but I also think some of the critics of gentle parenting would say, okay, we're focusing so much on the child who was done wrong, and whether or not we should make them say they're sorry. What about the child who was wronged, who was hit, who was bitten, who was hit on the head with the dump truck? How are we experiencing their feelings?

Listen, it's difficult and I think that you are going to have to trust your gut and make decisions that might look different from other parents. I would tell my child to say they're sorry.

Would I drag them kicking and screaming over there and force it out of them? No. Maybe we take a little time out and then come back. Maybe we'd write a note down the road or color a picture for that child to express that, but I do think that, yes, that is what the critics of dental parenting would say, is but what about that other child? They should get some revolution for that.

Listen, it's hard. We're not always going to do it right but I think that no parent is trying to raise disrespectful children. I think we just need to give each other a lot of grace and try not to be judgmental.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it, and hopefully a little bit of help for some of you struggling with the complexities of parenthood. We thank Elizabeth Passarella, magazine writer and author of the essay collections, It Was an Ugly Couch Anyway and Good Apple. Her piece in the cut is titled The Rise of the Accidentally Permissive Parent. Thanks so much, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Passarella: Thank you for having me.

Copyright © 2024 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.