Original Summary

Before Rosie Whitfield became a mum, she imagined herself parenting very calm children. "Then I had two wild boys," she says with a laugh. Following the birth of her kids, Rosie spent hours online looking for the best advice and was drawn to one particular approach to parenting: Gentle parenting, which focuses on empathy and mutual respect with little emphasis on punishment, albeit with boundaries. But she constantly worried her choices, from sleep schedules to handling toddler tantrums, were "ruining their lives forever". Rosie does not blame the gentle parenting philosophy itself but instead says the overall amount of parenting advice online was "overwhelming" and "made mundane parenting choices feel like the absolute end of the world." "I felt like if I was choosing to put the TV on for 20 minutes while I did the dishes or had a coffee, I was choosing to destroy my children's brains," says Rosie, who is originally from Birmingham and now lives in Dubai. Rosie believes her confidence and intuition were stripped away as she questioned every parenting decision. And she is not alone. Government research suggests that around two-thirds of parents with young children feel overwhelmed by the amount of parenting information available and struggle with conflicting advice, with many turning to social media for support. Rosie Whitfield / Rosie Whitfield says she felt overwhelmed by the amount of parenting advice online when looking for guidance on raising her two sons. And it's not just the early years. Research from the charity Action for Children found that many parents of teenagers who initially contacted the charity for help with school avoidance, ADHD or mental health, often went on to describe their own anxiety, exhaustion and uncertainty of how to parent with empathy and patience when close to burnout. Faced with an array of parenting philosophies, or "brands" to choose from, is all of this advice helping parents or making them more anxious? And is there really a best way to parent? Or, as we strive to become the perfect parent, are we losing our intuition? The rise of parenting brands Parents today are confronted by parenting styles including "helicopter parenting", which is focused on closely monitoring and protecting children from harm, and "tiger parenting", which involves strict parenting and high expectations for achievement. There are also "snowplough parents", who try to remove obstacles from their child's path, and "dolphin parents", who aim to be firm but flexible. Author Matilda Gosling, who wrote Evidence‑Based Parenting, says many of the parenting fads or trends complicate what should be a straightforward relationship between a parent and child. "Some parents think 'I need to be a snowplough parent and plough all of these obstacles out of the way'." "But it really complicates what is actually a fairly fundamental part of being human, which is that you are warm and you love your children and you put in place some boundaries around them." Matilda Gosling / Matilda Gosling says parenting trends can complicate the relationship between parents and their children Gosling believes parenting trends often represent a pendulum swing, with one generation trying to correct what it believes the previous one got wrong. "Throughout history, you get these swings from one extreme to the other," she says. Gentle parenting is seen by some as the latest swing away from a strict, detached parenting style popular in the 1990s, which often relied on controlled crying, the naughty step and time out. It is built around understanding, empathy and respect but also emphasises the importance of boundaries. The different parenting styles One of the most widely studied models of parenting comes from developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind. Baumrind identified three parenting styles, later expanded to four: authoritative (high warmth and high control), authoritarian (low warmth and high control), permissive (high warmth and low control), and neglectful (low warmth and low control). "Authoritative is the gold standard," says Gosling who has looked at more than 1,000 studies. Research has found that children raised with an authoritative approach, combining warmth with clear boundaries, tend to achieve better academic results, have higher self-esteem and stronger social skills. But where gentle parenting fits within that framework is disputed. Gosling believes that it falls on the permissive side. "It's very much child-led. The child ends up having so much control that there's no sense of safety coming from the outside." However, Sarah Ockwell-Smith, who is widely credited with coining and popularising the term 'gentle parenting', strongly disagrees. "It [gentle parenting] is not remotely permissive," she says, putting it firmly in Baumrind's authoritative category. Clear boundaries are "super important". Social media, however, is flooded with memes of exhausted parents calmly negotiating with a child having a supermarket meltdown, something Ockwell-Smith finds deeply frustrating. "I have to step away from the Instagram reels and the TikToks because I just want to comment, 'This is not gentle parenting'". "You have house rules, family limits, discipline and consequences. But the difference is we look at discipline as learning and teaching rather than punishing." Toddler tantrums and teenage behaviour, she argues, should be viewed through a lens of ongoing brain development, not 'they're being naughty' or 'they hate me'. But despite the term being popular, Ockwell-Smith believes that gentle parenting is still a fringe movement and that authoritarian parenting remains the dominant style. The pressure to get parenting 'right' Around 80 years ago, American paediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock published a book called Baby and Child Care, which went on to sell millions of copies and became the main source of advice for mothers for generations. The opening line was "Trust yourself. You know more than you think..." The b

中文概览

中文标题： 当育儿建议变得过多

文章讲述家长Rosie Whitfield在网上海量育儿建议中感到不堪重负，尤其“温和育儿”等理念让她怀疑每个决定。政府研究称约三分之二幼儿父母感到信息过载且建议矛盾；Action for Children发现青少年父母也常焦虑倦怠。文章讨论各类育儿风格与“育儿品牌”是否增加焦虑，并引用作家Matilda Gosling观点。

  • 情报分类：综合情报
  • 分类依据：育儿建议与家庭话题，非技术商业等，归综合。
  • 信息来源：英语新闻 / BBC News Top Stories
  • 发布时间：2026/10/4 09:24:05