Is ‘gentle parenting’ driving a behaviour crisis in schools?

“Are you ready to be nice?” one parent asks her daughter in a viral TikTok video. “We’re going to sit out here until you’re ready to be nice."

“Hey, no,” the parent says, calmly, when her daughter responds by throwing a chair at her. “Hands are not for hitting. We don’t throw stuff.”

You may have seen similar scenarios parodied in videos on Instagram or TikTok, with captions like “when gentle parenting goes wrong”.

Gentle parenting is a style of parenting that has gained popularity in recent years, particularly among millennial parents. It encourages caregivers to act with compassion and understanding, rather than with punishments or force.

In the TikTok videos, the joke centres on how ineffective this approach is, and while the intention of this content is to make people laugh, teachers might feel there is a grain of truth here.

Some national coverage has blamed gentle parenting for a decline in children’s behaviour, and some in education agree.

“Gentle parenting – or at least what gentle parenting has become online – is making teaching harder,” says primary teacher Lee Parkinson (known online as Mr P) in a recent Instagram reel.

But could gentle parenting really be contributing to what some have dubbed a “behaviour crisis” in schools?

Worsening behaviour in schools

According to anecdotal reports from teachers, pupil behaviour does seem to be getting worse. Two in three teachers told the NEU this year that behaviour was having a negative impact on their lessons regularly or all of the time – up from one in two in 2022.

Behaviour was a bigger concern for primary school teachers last year than workload, and the proportion of primary pupils being suspended was on the up, according to the latest figures.

As of 2023-24, persistent disruptive behaviour accounted for four in 10 permanent exclusions.

“Within a lesson, you’ve got a lot of children shouting out, not wanting to wait their turn, getting up and deciding when they’re going to go and do things,” a primary school teacher from the North West says.

“I’ve been teaching for 25 years and that low-level behaviour is just so much worse than before, and part of the problem is, if you address that behaviour, you get a reaction from the parent that we never used to get.”

Amy Forrester, behaviour lead at Cockermouth School, a secondary in Cumbria, adds that schools are now encountering more children who “have never been told no”, and who find it difficult to regulate their emotions when they experience this for the first time.

“Schools as a whole are having to identify where that’s happening and support children in understanding boundaries and not getting their own way all the time. In the teaching profession, that’s a shift we’re probably all having to make,” she explains.

The Department for Education’s divisive behaviour tsar Tom Bennett has been at the forefront of the narrative that parenting is driving changes in behaviour – he told The Times in April that some parents have “very weak boundaries” with their children.

“I see a lot of parents who often want to avoid the overly punitive or authoritarian experiences that they may have had themselves in their own childhoods. The gentle parenting notion is kind of a response to that – whether it’s an overcorrection or not is probably the heart of the debate,” he tells Tes.

Is it fair, though, to equate gentle parenting with having weak boundaries?

What is gentle parenting?

The term gentle parenting was first coined by Sarah Ockwell-Smith, author of several parenting books, and it gained popularity with the publication of her The Gentle Parenting Book in 2016.

Ockwell-Smith defines gentle parenting as “having empathy for what children are experiencing, having respect for children, and having boundaries and discipline”.

However, as those videos on Instagram and TikTok show, gentle parenting has taken on a much looser definition in the popular imagination – one that simply involves being “soft” on your kids, as opposed to authoritarian.

Regardless of how we define it, gentle parenting does seem to be becoming more common.

In surveys (albeit, relatively small ones), up to three in four millennials reported that they practised gentle parenting in 2024. And Professor Ellie Lee, director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies at the University of Kent, says the number of parents attempting to practise it has definitely increased in recent years.

On Instagram "the gentle parenting hub" account has more than 200,000 followers, who can read short pieces of advice on child-rearing that are ostensibly “science-informed”.

Gentle parenting isn’t, however, a term that is well used in research. Lee explains that its closest resemblance in academic work is “positive parenting”, which also emphasises the importance of communication and warmth. However, most research simply splits parenting styles into three approaches: authoritarian, authoritative and permissive - as first set out by psychologist Diana Baumrind in the 1960s.

Baumrind’s research held authoritative parenting up as the ideal medium between control and autonomy.

“What she argued is that authoritative parenting combines both warmth and demandingness,” Lee says. “She was very, very clear that discipline is absolutely central to demandingness.”

Lee is sceptical that gentle parenting emphasises discipline enough to replicate the benefits of authoritative parenting, as identified by Baumrind.

One 2005 review of the literature found that authoritative parenting styles were often associated with higher pupil attainment – though this varied depending on socioeconomic status, ethnicity and culture.

As for positive parenting, Lee is not convinced there are any measurable benefits, beyond helping children be better able to articulate their feelings.

However, some studies have found otherwise.

One 2012 American study found positive parenting practices correlated with children showing fewer "externalising behaviours" (defined as aggressive, delinquent and hyperactive behaviours), though the researchers said they could not distinguish whether this was due to genetic factors.

Another review found that positive parenting interventions that promoted “parental sensitivity, responsiveness and non-harsh discipline” helped to improve early mental abilities and language.

Research involving 5,000 Finnish teens in 2024 found that parental warmth was positively associated with the teenager exhibiting prosocial behaviour.

Misunderstanding the approach

Ideally, if gentle parenting is performed as intended by Ockwell-Smith, it should err more towards the authoritative side of things, says clinical psychologist Dr Jo Mueller. The problem is, she adds, this often isn’t what’s happening.

“I don’t think there’s any consistency really about what people mean by gentle parenting,” she tells Tes. “Because they use the word ‘gentle’, it has gone off track and people have developed their own understanding of what that means – we see misunderstanding from both the media and some parents.”

And in terms of what’s actually playing out in schools, the picture is similarly blurry.

When it comes to declining behaviour, the primary school teacher quoted earlier in this article doesn’t blame gentle parenting exactly. She points the finger instead at what research refers to as “permissive” parenting.

“In gentle parenting, you’re talking to children and validating feelings, explaining things but still saying no,” she says. “Whereas permissive parenting is allowing your child to do whatever they want to do because you don’t want to see them upset. I think that’s what we’re seeing a lot more of.”

Forrester has a similar view. “Gentle parenting as a concept I have no issue with,” she says, “but what we actually have an issue with is what people think gentle parenting is, which is permissive parenting. Gentle parenting is becoming this kind of label for never saying no to children, when that’s not what it is supposed to be.”

The aforementioned video by Mr P also goes on to make a similar point.

Bennett agrees there is confusion around the styles of parenting that are actually shaping the behaviour of today’s pupils.

“The good version of gentle parenting is being calm, being regulated, being the adult and explaining boundaries, not just enforcing them, trying to understand the child’s emotional state. There’s a lot there to recommend it,” he says.

“The problem is that gentle parenting can drift away from the balance between the permissive and the authoritarian, and when that happens, and this is something you see quite a bit, there’s often a reluctance to say no to a child, to set boundaries, or boundaries can become negotiable.”

Meanwhile, Jarlath O’Brien, director of school improvement for Solent Academies Trust, which runs six special schools, points out that most parents do not even think in terms of utilising a specific parenting style, but instead approach their role in more instinctual terms.

“I have come across many parents who exhibit the features of what some people call gentle parenting but have never described it as such – including myself. I would never dream of saying to someone, 'That’s how I parent,' because I don’t subscribe to a philosophy, and I think most parents don’t,” he says.

“I think most parents would recognise aspects of how they parent consistent with multiple philosophies.”

O’Brien adds that as both a special-school leader and a parent, he knows that sometimes boundaries have to be flexible, and that the realities of caring for a child with complex needs will influence how some people feel they need to parent.

A 'societal shift'

There might not be a clear causal link between any particular parenting style and a reported decline in pupil behaviour – but many teachers still believe parents are a factor.

The North West primary school teacher believes that the worsening of behaviour in her school is, in part, down to “a sense of entitlement and expectations from the parents”.

“If I speak to a child about their behaviour, you can bet I’m going to either have a parent come up to me at the end of the day or send an email saying, ‘Why did you speak to my child?’ They don’t think it’s my remit to discipline them.

“I had an incident recently where I’d told a child to stop doing something that was hurting another pupil, and I got an email from the parent accusing me of humiliating her child in front of the class.”

It means stressed evenings and weekends for classroom teachers dealing with emails from parents out of hours, she says.

Forrester believes that there’s been a “societal shift” in the way people interact with services, whether that’s schools, GPs or the wider NHS – and now there’s a lot of distrust in authoritative agencies.

“We have to have much stronger, proactive relationships with students and their parents because when we have to have really difficult conversations, those only go well when you have a relationship in place,” she says.

Yet Bennett says that parenting alone is not to blame for the perceived behaviour crisis in schools (and some surveys estimate the "crisis" may have peaked).

While he sees an issue in the fact that society has tipped towards blurring the distinction “between what’s good for a child and what they would like”, he doesn’t necessarily think parenting is the main factor for misbehaviour, citing the Covid pandemic and deprivation as other influences.

Many experts say children are still struggling with the effects of isolation during Covid lockdowns in their formative years, and around 4.5 million children were in poverty as of March this year, up 900,000 since 2010.

Headteachers have said the level of poverty and instability that some children are experiencing at home is contributing to them having issues with their mental health, behaviour and attendance.

There has also been a massive increase in additional needs in mainstream classrooms, and widespread acknowledgement that many schools are struggling to meet those.

“I think a lot of what we’re seeing in schools is the behaviours of neurodivergent children who perhaps are not masking as much as they may have done in previous generations,” Mueller suggests.

“If they’re getting more understanding and validating messages from home when they find something difficult, they might be taking that into school as well. I don’t know that that’s a bad thing…but perhaps it doesn't feel [positive] for teachers when they are struggling with not enough resources and not enough support and not enough training to manage it.

“So I do worry that what teachers might think is the result of gentle parenting might actually just be more neurodivergent children showing the need that they have.”

The next parenting trend

As teachers continue to struggle, social media's industrial machine for parenting advice keeps turning.

Reacting to the gentle parenting trend, some caregivers are turning to "fafo" parenting ("fuck around and find out"), where you let your child learn the consequences of what they do without interfering.

Meanwhile, Dr Becky Kennedy, founder of parenting support app Good Inside, who has 3.5 million Instagram followers, has been advocating for “sturdy parenting”, rather than gentle parenting, which she says is setting firm boundaries while still prioritising connection with your child.

Both fafo and sturdy parenting will no doubt eventually also be succeeded by new philosophies meant to perfectly hit the balance between discipline and empathy.

“I don’t like gentle parenting,” Lee says. “But I also think people give it a good kicking, as if it’s the single explanation for the mess we’re in now. I think fafo parenting is equally awful and I don’t think it’s authoritative. This is how the whole thing spins. People make these terms up.”

At the end of the day, whatever style of parenting they subscribe to (if they subscribe to any style at all), parents need to back schools up, Lee stresses.

“[Parents] need to understand that even if you think [a sanction] might be a bit unfair…it’s a necessary condition of the process of growing up to feel upset and learn how to manage it.”

Mueller is more forgiving; for parents and teachers to work together more effectively, she feels that the empathy needs to go both ways.

“There is just a difficult tension between parents and schools at the moment, and I think that’s nobody’s fault,” she says. "There’s just a lot of pressure on everyone, and not enough resources to go around.”