Gentle parenting, helicopter or snowplough – is there really a best way to raise a child?Many parents feel overwhelmed by the amount of parenting information available14 hrs agoBBC InDepth

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”.

“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.

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?

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.”

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.

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.

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 book challenged strict parenting norms of the time and in the following decades parents were offered more advice from an increasing range of voices.

Research into parenting has increasingly focused on the early years – from pregnancy to the age of two when the building blocks for lifelong emotional and physical health are laid down. For parents, that means more advice to navigate competing messages about what is best for their children.

Professor Ellie Lee, the director of the Centre for Parenting Culture Studies, has studied parenting for more than two decades, including research into mothers’ confidence and uncertainty around infant feeding.

She says a major shift occurred in the 1990s when parenting became an increasing focus of public policy.

“Politicians started to say ‘Parenting’s the hardest job in the world. Children don’t come with a manual. We need to give parents guidance. Parents need more support. We need parent education’.”

Advice began to emerge on almost every aspect of family life, from tummy time, to feeding, to the right buggy, she explains.

Prof Lee argues that while some public health campaigns were necessary, such as advice not to put babies to sleep on their front after research into cot deaths, the growing culture of advice began to make parents paranoid.

“Dr Spock’s ‘trust yourself’ philosophy is now a very counter-cultural piece of advice,” she says. “What we say instead is ‘always seek help’,”

She believes this has made parents more anxious about doing things “right”.

“Some of the things that are now presented as really high stakes are not,” she says, using examples like breastfeeding exclusively for six months or how much tummy time a child needs.

“It’s terrible because parents become completely exhausted.”

Ockwell-Smith says the volume of advice can be “deafening and confusing”.

“Actually, parents should just learn themselves and go on intuition,” she says.

Others point out that there is also a problem of advice being given that is altogether wrong. Ruth Watts is a health visitor who began sharing content on social media after becoming concerned about misinformation online.

She had seen “experts” advise parents to wean babies onto solids early, offer treatment advice for tongue tie or allergies without medical training, and tell parents to put babies in their own rooms before six months.

Many families, she argues, are working longer hours while at the same time health services are being stripped back, leaving more parents looking online for breastfeeding, behaviour and sleep support.

“We are looking for that kind of personable, conversational approach from people, rather than reading a website.”

Many factors shaping family life remain outside parents’ control. A child’s temperament, special educational needs, family support, finances and their own upbringing can all influence family life.

While some say parenting hasn’t got harder but expectations have, others argue that parents today are facing more complex challenges than in previous generations with growing concerns around young people’s mental health.

There are also debates around children spending more time on screens and less time outdoors, while schools are reporting increasing behavioural challenges and lower respect for rules and authority. Prof Lee believes parental confidence is at an all-time low.

“I think parents feel very nervous about disciplining children now because they’re worried about how it’s going to make them feel,” she argues.

The confusion around the “right” way to parent has led some parents to turn to courses for help.

Aymara Lamche-Brennan, who has a 22-year-old daughter, four-year-old son and six-month-old daughter, signed up for a course during the summer when another mother at the school gate mentioned she was attending.

“When I had my daughter, I was 19 and I didn’t really think much about parenting styles, she was with me everywhere and I just kind of rolled with it, but what I really want to know now is what simple wins are there with parenting?”

Aymara said the Circle of Security course she attended gave her practical tools so she could help her children organise their feelings, take charge when she needs to and recognise when she was becoming stressed.

“It’s not telling you how to parent. It’s helping you think,” says Jennifer Peters, a former social worker and director of the charity Connected Lives which runs courses across London, Derbyshire and Cambridgeshire.

She says most parents want the best for their kids but they don’t always know how to get there, and that guidance can be helpful.

“I don’t think people need to be bombarded with information but the group experience helps you think, ‘oh, it’s not just me’ and lets you take a step back from it all,” Peters says.

Back in Dubai, Rosie says the arrival of her second child changed everything as she realised her sons were “polar opposites” and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.

A recent trip home to Birmingham also provided some perspective. Her eldest son was throwing a tantrum, and Rosie found herself wrestling with a familiar worry.

“If I send him upstairs, am I damaging him emotionally? Is he going to develop an attachment disorder because of this?”

But her mum said, ‘Just send him upstairs. He can’t hit his brother over the head with a horse [if he is upstairs]. Follow through with your actions.’

Rosie is taking this “generational advice” on board and has started “venting on social media” to show other mums that they are not alone.

Looking back on her first few years of being a mum, she said she wished she had known one thing.

“There isn’t the perfect parent.”

Top picture credit: Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. Emma Barnett and John Simpson bring their pick of the most thought-provoking deep reads and analysis, every Saturday. Sign up for the newsletter here