Transcription
Be careful. We don't say "be careful" anymore. Instead, say "What's your plan here?" Mommy is getting very frustrated and very upset, just like you. A behavior is right or it's wrong, regardless of what I feel about it.
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Welcome back to Psycho Babble. I'm your anti-feminist psychiatrist, Hannah Spear, and today we're going to expose more bad therapy and the terrible narratives that contribute to our very poor mental health. And today, I'm going to answer another question that I got from one of you. I was asked to give my take on gentle parenting, so that's what I'm going to attempt today. But as usual, please like and subscribe on your way in. I really need your help with that. And if you upgrade your membership to paid, there are some additional benefits uh to that that you will discover in the email for paid members.
I mean, in the 50s, no one, no one was talking about styles of parenting. This, this first came uh into the picture in the in the 60s. There was a woman, I mean, first Dr. Spock, uh, but please don't make me talk about him. And that, that was first when people, people became aware that, okay, there's some, there are techniques and, and they started talking about parenting as a, as a concept. And then there was a woman called Diana Baumrind. She termed the different four parenting styles, well, three, and then another one was added later. You have, um, authoritarian parents. They are highly demanding and directive, and they expect compliance without much explanation or flexibility. And the discipline is very strict. They really make sure that their rules are enforced.
Then you have authoritative parenting, where parents have clear expectations, but they're also responsive and nurturing. So you have a high level of control, but also a high level of warmth. And these parents are very willing to collaborate with the, with the child and don't mind explaining. For example, they use natural consequences and guidance, but make sure that the boundaries are established.
Then you have permissive parenting, where everything goes. These parents are highly responsive to the, the child's wishes and needs, and they, they place very few demands and expectations, few boundaries. Although here, I mean, which parent is going to say, "Oh, I don't put any boundaries on my boundaries on my kids"? A lot of parents will fit into this permissive parenting, but not really, but not be the first one to admit it. This, this parenting style, permissive, was, was big then in the 60s and 70s, where the countercultural movement, it just protested the traditional hierarchical structure of the, the family. So Baumrind, she did some, uh, some research on this and, and she found that authoritative parenting, uh, consistently led to the most favorable outcomes economically, socially, emotionally. And this was, uh, this was found again in 2005, published in Developmental Psychology. This confirmed that children of authoritative parents, they exhibit fewer behavioral problems, uh, than, and, and, and better emotional well-being. And, uh, this research from the Journal of Adolescence from 2011, it demonstrated that permissive parenting during adolescence causes more risky behaviors, and authoritative parenting correlates with better decision-making and emotional stability. So this, we have been able to prove with longitudinal studies, and, and permissive parenting, just simply, we don't have research supporting that this is a good parenting style.
And then gentle parenting came with a woman called Sarah Ockwell-Smith. That was in, uh, 2015, 2016. I mean, she herself doesn't admit that gentle parenting is, is a form of permissive parenting, but, uh, I think if you, if you read her and you have some idea of parenting, you will discover that it does firmly belong in that category. So she focuses on, um, empathy, respect, understanding, and boundaries. She put boundaries in there, but when you go through it, you'll see that, um, she doesn't really talk about consequences. So just, and it's, that's very trendy nowadays. You're talking in all areas of mental health, you're talking about boundaries, boundaries, trauma, narcissism, boundaries and relationships. And that's all well and good. It's so easy to say, "Ah, here's my line, and you just crossed it." But it requires, uh, strength and integrity, um, a power to actually be able to enforce those boundaries. So that's what's missing here.
And you might think, "Yeah, no, gentle parenting, that's, that's, uh, outdated. That's, no one's talking about that anymore." But they are. Cleveland Clinic still has this as a recommendation, and I thought we would take a look at that together. The goal of gentle parenting is to raise confident, independent, and happy children through empathy, respect, and understanding, and setting healthy boundaries. They don't, the parenting style focuses largely on age-appropriate development. It doesn't, traditional parenting style focuses on punishment and reward. When your child does something good or shows good behavior, you reward them with fun activities, treats, and positive feedback. If your child does something bad, though, they might get put in time out, for example, or you might spank them. I mean, who still does that? The idea is to be more like a coach for your kid rather than a punisher.
Here's my first problem with gentle parenting. It comes from this, uh, breaking hierarchies idea, where you, you, you're the child's equal. And they say, "No, no, no, gentle parenting isn't about." It's a misconception in gentle parenting that the, the, the parent is your, is your friend. Okay, fine. It doesn't state that you should be their friend, but by saying things like this, you're encouraging that, that it's a relationship between equals. So I think that is the main difference between gentle and permissive parenting and the authoritative parenting, where it's clear you are the authority, you decide how it goes. As opposed to, here, the idea is to be more like a coach for your kid.
For example, let's say you're getting ready to head out the door for work. You have to drop your child off at school and daycare on the way, but they're throwing a temper tantrum. Classic. We've all been there. You're worried you might be late to work, and your patience is wearing thin. In this scenario, a traditional parenting style might inspire you to scold them, "Stop acting childish and put on your shoes!" You might yell, "You're acting ridiculous and you're making me late for work! Wait until we get back home, okay?" Notice in this example that there's a lot of negative connotation happening. You're focused on your child's action and on the frustration it causes you. By yelling, you're instilling a sense of fear in your kid, and now both you, you're both feeling anxious or angry. Your child's behavior may stop because they'll recognize you as an authority figure. They should, however, their behavior is likely to happen again.
No, I'm focused on us getting out the door. Kids don't always understand that what they're doing is wrong. They just stop their behavior because they're afraid. They don't really understand why they should stop that behavior unless you explain why. A gentle approach would be to stay calm and firm ahead of time before leaving the house to set expectations. Instead of yelling or starting with a negative, you might take a pause and meet your child where they're at. I mean, I thought you were out of time. I thought you didn't have time. And are you going to pause and explain? And maybe you get down to eye level and say calmly, "I'm going to drop you off at school and then I'm going to work. We need to leave on time. I expect you to be ready with your shoes on at the door when I'm ready to leave. If you're not ready, then we'll both be late, and I feel angry. If I get angry, you will lose privileges." Another approach would be to say, "When you don't get ready on time, it hurts my feelings and makes me anxious. Why are you having a hard time?" So you're already late, and you're going to get down on eye level and say, "Why are you having a hard time?" What I mean, this kid, she's, uh, daycare. So this kid is under three or four years old, and you're going to try to explain your feelings.
A behavior is right or it's wrong, regardless of what I feel about it. These adults are projecting their own perceived complexity and uniqueness and preciousness onto their kids. There's a basic misunderstanding of kids involved in this type of parenting. Kids are not as smart as we are. Kids are not as complex as these adults are. They don't want to be our equals. And this Rousseauian idea that kids are born with only good impulses, they are like white sheets, like white snow, innocent, and their bad impulses are because of society that corrupts them. This is wrong. Kids are born with the proclivity for good and bad, and it's up to us to curb their bad impulses as much as we can. And anything else is a huge disservice.
Listen, I think that we need to take one deep breath and be all done yelling because Mommy is getting very frustrated and very upset, just like you. And if Mommy is frustrated and upset, then I can't do a good job calming you down. Me and Sunny have sat here and watched you dance for two hours, and we love every minute of it. We had a fun time, and so did you. And next week, we will come back on the same day at the same time, and we are going to do this for an entire year. But if you keep continuing to act this way, Scotty, you will lose this privilege of dance. I understand that that is frustrating. I know that that is upsetting. But this, that doesn't mean you have to take off your tap shoes. That doesn't mean you have to stop dancing. We can go home, and you can continue to dance in your tap shoes. We are just done dancing here. Come here.
And here you see that they're trying to explain to someone who's under four about someone else's feelings, when a child who's not yet four doesn't have this theory of mind, where they're aware that someone else has a different, uh, perception than they do. So trying to put that on them is, is unfair. But no wonder, because parents who tend towards this, they, they live in a culture where, where individuality and feelings are key. That's the central idea. So of course, they would lean towards the parenting style where they primarily want to foster empathy. And that comes again and again when you read about gentle parenting. It's about teaching empathy, approaching everything with understanding and patience. It's an over-focus also on feminine qualities, which also reflects the culture we have now, where feminine qualities are much appreciated and encouraged. And the masculine qualities of stoicism, strength in meeting adversity, and discipline, these are qualities that are okay, maybe sometimes for some, but not what should govern something like a parenting style. So that's how these people think. So to expect this child that Dr. Estrella is talking about to understand your feelings, say, "When you don't get ready on time, it hurts my feelings and it makes me anxious." What a, what a, what a self-centered, what a completely out-of-touch thing to say to a two or three-year-old who's having a tantrum.
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So they are focusing on something, uh, that the child isn't capable of, while they are robbing them of the buffer between them and the outside world. That's the function of the parent. The world is a terrifying place, which is why the, the, the baseline of a child's emotion is anxiety. A kid isn't calm and always pleasant and always good. A child without its parent is anxious and stressed, stressed, stressed, stressed. And you see this in kids who are in, in daycare too much without their parents. Their cortisol levels are much higher than they, than they should be. So the parent's role is to show the child, "Here is the, here, here is the boundary of your safe world within which you can unfold and play and explore. But I'm standing here, and there's no way you're going to get to that unsafe area." But if that doesn't happen, if the child doesn't believe that they're not able to cross that boundary, if the child thinks, "Oh, you know, you're just saying that," if the child is uncertain, it becomes stressed and anxious. And it, it also becomes very limited in their movements within this safe circle. So you see that children who feel emotionally secure and properly attached, they will play much more imaginatively, much more creatively, than the kids who are insecure in their attachment and feel emotionally unsafe.
Gordon Neufeld, he's so on point here. He says that we've lost the power to parent because we are so absent from our kids. The child spends so much time with other children and with other adults, uh, that they have lost that attachment. We don't, and, and with that, we have lost the power to parent because, as he says, a child who's properly attached is going to want to please you, is going to want that approval for you, for, for from you. So a child who's not attached is very difficult to parent. And he also says that when they don't feel secure, they're so stressed that they can't learn. They can't get new information because all they are focused on is is fulfilling that basic need.
And so gentle parenting has taken some good concepts, some, some great principles from Adler, from Rogers, you know, with the humanistic therapy. And Carl Rogers, he was the first one to to discuss why it's so important to validate feelings and bring that into therapy. And, and these are very important concepts. But what they've done now with gentle parenting is to, to make that the main point, to make understanding, respect, and, and empathy the main point. And that with those things, you can correct the child. So it, it borrows, uh, Adler's and, and, uh, Dr. [inaudible]'s ideas on positive parenting, which has shown good effect in kids. But that effect comes with the added parental authority. You won't see those positive effects if it weren't for parental authority in addition. So that fits the positive parenting fits into an authoritative framework, not a permissive framework.
But over-focusing on, for example, social learning theory, which is that you imitate behaviors, and we do. We imitate our, our parents' habits and mannerisms. And so they hear us saying "please" and "thank you," "please" and "thank you." They also, they will also say "please" and "thank you." For example, but that doesn't apply to empathy. And that's what they've misunderstood. You don't learn empathy from hearing your parents say, "I validate your feelings. This makes me feel anxious. I'm sorry." That's child abuse. Rec, you don't know, don't do that to a little girl. No, empathy is developed through play. Empathy is developed through, if, if you play, you notice, "Oh, what hurts? What doesn't?" You notice other people's boundaries. And for a child to be able to play, as I just said, they need to feel emotionally secure and well-attached.
Kids also learn empathy mostly from their fathers. Fathers have a great role to play in learning, developing empathy. And no wonder, because they supply the masculine traits of discipline, confidence, encouragement. Of course, it's possible that the mother, uh, can harbor these traits as well, but we're supposed to parent together. We're supposed to bring the feminine and the masculine in, no matter who does it. We're supposed to do that together. And this is why when so many kids are being raised without their fathers, or with fathers stripped of authority, with the over-empathic emphasis on the feminine traits, empathy doesn't develop that well. When, when they are providing this firm boundary between the child and the terrifying outside world, they also are supposed to make sure that that boundary slowly moves outward in a manner that is concordant with the child's development.
And so the gentle parenting, so Sarah Ockwell-Smith, she's saying that the, did the gentle parenting is, uh, focused on age-appropriate development, but she clearly isn't, because she's expecting a two-year-old or a three-year-old to understand and care about what she feels. There's, and here comes the other misconception about what empathy actually is. Empathy is a part of the personality trait agreeableness. So a large part of it is is inherited. You have cognitive empathy and, and affective empathy. So cognitive empathy is what you, you'll teach someone if you have a person with Asperger's disorder in therapy, but it's a very different thing to to care about what other people feel. I mean, I'm sure that you've experienced, uh, going through, um, an airport, and you're tired, and you're hungry, and there are too many people there. And even if you are naturally a very compassionate person, you're going to use your elbows more than you usually would if you're feeling calm and satisfied and content. So our own, I'm just trying to say that our emotional state of mind is affects how we, how we care about other people's feelings. And, and with, with children, when they are emotionally disregulated, even if they understand, uh, Mom's angry or Mom's anxious, that doesn't mean they're going to care about it.
So making kids securely attached, feeling emotionally safe, is absolutely key. And a parent who's gentle parenting, who's permissive parenting, they're missing that point. There's safety for the child in knowing that you have authority. It doesn't want to be your equal. And we, and we see it again and again how parents who are, who don't have authority, they're exhausted. And here is a perfect example of that. I found a reel. People who are trying to, who've tried to gentle parent, who are just, they just can't. They just give up in the end. They will completely spaz out. And this is such a good video.
"No, no, no! Please get out the cabinet! Get your [expletive] ass out the cabinet! Put the purse back, honey! Now throw it in there and see what happened! Put the purse back! Now, that's not a, that's not a good choice, Theo. Make a good choice, please. Theo, get out or get out of the bucket!"
Kids are like, kids are like dogs sometimes. I, I really do think, you know, a two-year-old child doesn't, is not that different. Like, for example, you can't say to a child that they'll have a consequence two hours later. Like with a dog, it's not going to remember what it did. It's not going to, it's not going to have any effect. You need to come, you need to, the consequences need to be dealt out immediately, strongly, and related to the act, the action that you want corrected, right away. It, it's not going to work. You can't, you're not going to have TV for a week. My five-year-old doesn't understand the difference between a day and a week. We just had a meltdown yesterday because I had to try to explain that, no, it's three days to your party. And last time you asked, it was two weeks till your birthday party, and he didn't understand. And he thought I was lying to him because, because, "No, Mom, last week you said two, and today you're saying five." Yeah, it was five. I said it was five days. And, and he didn't understand that two weeks was longer than five days, so he accused me of lying to him. The meltdown. And so kids are not as smart as we project onto them, and they just want things to be clear.
I think the reason we're having so much trouble, we're seeing kid tantrums at an age where they shouldn't be tantruming. They're not listening. They're, they're exhibiting, um, narcissistic traits in adolescence. We have, we have numbers on that now that, that, um, we have higher levels of narcissism and, and, uh, in teens. It comes from our over-focus on feminine characteristics without the counterbalance of the masculine. It's that we're parenting without the father, be he absent, uh, emotionally or physically. We're not letting fathers do what they instinctively want to do. I mean, I notice it. I can try and be as strict as I want. It doesn't matter. I can yell, I can time out. Doesn't matter. My, my husband clears his throat once, and they are in bed 10 seconds flat. And I'm going to show you a really funny, uh, video here that ex, that shows exactly that. It's, uh, the difference between Mom's voice and Dad's voice, and I just think it's hilarious. You see the kid when the Mom's talking, and then the Dad comes in, and he says one thing, and the kid just does it.
"Get out of the fridge! Come on! Yes! Come on! Get the [expletive] out of the freezer! You have to sleep!" "No, I want bed!" "You're sick!" "No, I'm not sick!" "No, lay down! Be quiet!"
I mean, it is Freud's devouring mother, it's over-focused on protection, on nurturing, on compassion, taken to a pathological level, which will happen if it's not counterbalanced by what men instinctively will do, if you let them. And we know now that this type of parenting causes anxious kids, causes anxious teenagers. It's, it's incredibly appealing to my generation, this, um, emotional focus of gentle parenting. Uh, but there are huge empirical gaps. We're simply not finding the research, simply isn't supporting, uh, that this is a good parenting style.
A study at Yale University said that the father, that the single most important childhood factor in developing empathy is paternal involvement in childcare. And then we really have to think, what does paternal involvement represent? It represents the masculine traits that needs to, that need to counterbalance the feminine. So I really think that gentle parenting, it is their natural conclusion of preferring feminine qualities over masculine, and not thinking of parenting as a balanced yin and yang between those two. And of course, we had to, if we're going to go with the narrative that a single mother is just as good, and, uh, you don't need a mother and a father, you don't need a man and a woman, you can be two women, and that is just as good. And that parenting is about choosing the right style for your kid, and that everyone's individual, everyone is just super complex and precious and unique. And, and you just need to validate and understand feelings, then empathy will grow. These are all misconceptions. You're picking, you're cherry-picking your psychological principles and, uh, just throwing out centuries of knowledge of, of carefully evolved, uh, knowledge.
And here I just had to include this video that I just found so funny. It's, uh, it's, I mean, it's a sketch. So a woman, a 30-something-year-old mother, she's trying to teach her, her mother, so the grandmother, how to gentle parent. And it, it just, it just shows it so well, the, the difference. So here we go.
"Be careful." "We don't say 'be careful' anymore. Instead, say 'What's your plan here?'" "I don't even know my plan. Do you know your plan?" "Don't stop! Hit your sister! Don't say stop, say gentle. Gentle hands." "Gentle hands? What else is gentle?" "Everything gentle." "Everything? I am so proud of you." "Not supposed to tell kids you're proud of them anymore." "Why not?" "But that's putting the focus on you." "What?" "I'm so proud." "Don't say that." "Should I say instead, 'You should be so proud'?" "I am so proud." "It's back on you again." "Hurry up, we got to go." "Don't rush. We're fine." "Don't rush her fine. I thought we were in a hurry." "If you rush children, it makes them anxious and in a hurry." "You always rushed us, and I'm anxious." "Never rushed you. We were always late." "Exactly, and I was anxious because we were always late." "Am I supposed to say then, 'Gentle,' and this way, 'Good job, good choice'?" "Thank you." "No, say 'Good choice.'" "Watch out. Do you feel safe here?" "I don't feel safe about any of this [expletive]."
So that was it for today. And, um, I'm happy to be here with you. Uh, there is, I think I'll do one more episode before I'll have a break. I'm going to London to, um, to participate in the ARC conference, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenry conference. We're going to really get to work on on recovering from feminism, on battling feminism, helping, helping women live better lives and take, take control of their and their family's mental health. So I'm excited to be, uh, doing some work on that. And, uh, I want to hear from you. I want to hear what you want me to talk about, what you're interested in. Please, uh, like on your way out, and, uh, leave a comment and subscribe. Share it with a friend. And other than that, have a nice day. See you next time.
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