Understanding Modern Parenting Styles: From Tiger to Lighthouse and Beyond – Greg Bruce

I’m paraphrasing, but
it basically said, “Have kids if you want, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Parenting is 90% feeling overwhelmed and 10% feeling worthless. and as with any situation involving human suffering, many, many self-proclaimed experts rushed to the scene to offer their assistance, usually asking for money.

The problem with experts is not that they are necessarily all wrong, but that listening to them requires time and attention that you don’t have as a parent.

And where before you might have only had to read these experts’ long-winded books, now you should also follow their Insta, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, X, Substack, blogs and podcasts.

What you need is guidance to help you cut through the noise and find your way to your goal. advice that really helps. This is that guide. Here are the seven best parenting styles in reverse order:

7. Tiger

Essentially: denying your children the opportunity to do something they love while forcing them to do something they hate in the hope that it will bring them success. The definition of success is subjective, of course, but as defined by leading Tiger Parent advocates, it consists of all A’s, followed by a high-quality college education, followed by wealth, followed by grandchildren who can be scolded for their inability to master the piano.

Tiger parenting is the most passionate of parenting styles, focusing almost entirely on a hypothetical adult version of the real child you are putting through hell. There should be no mention of contemporary issues such as “feelings” or “mental health” or anything else that might affect their use for Harvard Law School.

RATING: 15/100

6. Lighthouse

This is not something new or proven to work, but it is the most popular parenting style at the moment because parents are desperate and nothing else seems to work.

Its re-emergence in the zeitgeist is largely due to a recent article in the US publication The Atlantic entitled “Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Children.”

The article received enormous attention, probably because of its sensational parenting subtitle: “Sometimes the best thing a parent can do is do nothing at all.”

The article was written by an American school principal named Russell Shaw, who began his article with the incredible claim that he could control his child’s reaction to injury using only the power of his face.

He defines a lighthouse parent as “a constant, reliable guide who provides safety and clarity without controlling every aspect of their child’s journey,” and these are the words I would use if someone asked me to define the word “parent.”

He offers several other suggestions, including that parents should prioritize long-term results over short-term fixes, and this is something that any parent who cares enough to read articles like this has tried often enough to understand. that this is impossible.

Toward the end of his article, Shaw writes, “Authoritative parents are beacon parents,” and then notes that authoritative parenting was first recommended nearly 60 years ago in a widely cited study by developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind.

He never addresses the question of why a 60-year-old theory needed a new name or an article in The Atlantic.

Nearly 20 years ago, developmental psychology professor Stephen Greenspan wrote about authoritative parenting in the academic journal Child Care in Practice: “Good parenting involves the ability to make effective decisions under the pressure of sometimes difficult and confusing situations. The technique of authoritarian education is too static and rigid to provide effective and flexible management of such complexity.”

Preach.

SCORE: 25/100

5. Gentle

The foundation of gentle parenting is empathy. When your children become wild – screaming, yelling, hitting, refusing to listen, etc. – gentle parenting advocates advise you to not follow your instinct, yell back and tell them they are being ridiculous and what if they don’t stop it straight up now, they will go straight to time out and will not receive a week’s pocket money.

Instead, you should first try to understand; acknowledging and empathizing with their feelings, while seemingly pushing your own feelings deep, deep inside where you can hopefully bring them out much later in therapy.

Jessie Stern, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Virginia, recently told the self-proclaimed “world’s number one digital parenting resource” BabyCenter that gentle parenting is an “empathic discipline.”

No one would argue with the importance of empathy for your children, but do you know who else needs empathy? You. And who creates the content promoting this? I can’t say anyone, but I can say not your children.

Positives: Validating children’s feelings is probably helpful.

Problems: Their feelings don’t make sense.

Say: “I see that you are having a hard time.”

Don’t say, “The US Surgeon General was right about you.”

SCORE 45/100

4. Durable

It’s the self-proclaimed style of the world’s most ubiquitous parenting expert, Dr. Becky Kennedy, who came up with it in response to people describing her as a proponent of gentle parenting. Who cares? I think something about boundaries, but if you really want to know, you’ll have to read her book or attend one of her seminars, presumably during the time you’d normally spend sleeping three hours a night.

Kennedy is a psychologist who has long subscribed to the traditional reward/punishment model. Then one day, while advocating for it to some clients in her practice, she admitted that she no longer believed in it.

After that, she “got to work taking everything I knew about attachment, mindfulness, emotion regulation, and internal family systems theory,” and started a new life rebelling against sticker charts and timeouts.

I would never criticize Kennedy because my wife loves her and won’t let me unfollow her on Instagram, and because she is also the source of my favorite parenting quote: “Good parents spend time away from their children.”

As someone who likes clear instructions, I also like that she gives parents scripts to use with kids when they’re being terrible, although I also sympathize with the following criticism in New York Times review of her 2022 book Good Inside.

TimeReviewer Judith Newman imagines a scenario in which a child screams and kicks an airplane seat, and hypothesizes a scenario Kennedy might suggest for communication: “I know you’re bored right now and kicking feels good, but what could it be?” What’s the best way to deal with boredom?

Newman, who is a parent herself, then writes: “I’m sure similar scenarios work with some real human children. These children don’t belong to any parent I know.”

I decided to test this scenario for myself recently when my 7-year-old went on an hours-long rampage during which he hit both of his sisters, called me a moron, and yelled at his mother. Each time, I would first try to make contact, speak calmly, saying something like, “I know you’re feeling X right now…”, but I would never be able to finish the sentence because he would either yell at me or walk away. room, screaming at me.

After the fourth or fifth time, one of his sisters, whom I was trying to help, interrupted me angrily, saying, “Dad! Stop! We don’t like it!

I started to say, “I heard that you don’t like my use of parenting scripts…” but as soon as I started speaking, my wife looked at me and I realized that if I didn’t stop talking immediately, no script won’t disappear. be strong enough to deal with the consequences.

SCORE: 46/100

3. Free range

I once knew some free-range parents. They lived next door to some friends of mine who told me the key to making it work was to make sure there were a couple of suckers living next door.

However, it is not without intuitive appeal, especially for parents who want to focus on online gaming while smoking weed. However, if you’re going to do this, you really need to do your research so you can talk a lot of compelling-sounding anthropology-related bullshit when you end up running into the people who babysat your kids while you were playing tennis on the Wii .

RATING: 60/100

2. Helicopter

Helicopter parenting is widely ridiculedbut why? In my opinion, this is primarily a marketing problem. What if we called it “Love Bomb Parenting”? Or “Caring Parenting”? Or “Parenting is here for you”?

Yes, it’s entirely possible that being around your kids too much can have bad consequences for everyone, but it can also be spent too much time validating their feelings while they try to kick you in the balls.

When we’re deep down the rabbit hole of parenting advice, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that our main role is to keep our children safe. It’s okay to be smug about being a lighthouse or a gardener, but how smug will you feel when your child falls off the lighthouse in your garden and ends up on the ropes?

RATING: 65/100

1. Gardener

In his 2016 book The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and ChildrenDevelopmental psychologist Alison Gopnik defines gardeners as parents who provide their children with a protected space to explore. She contrasts gardeners with carpenters who are trying to raise their children into the people they want them to become.

As with free-range parenting, the idea of ​​becoming a garden parent is intuitively appealing because it gives you time alone in your bedroom, but unlike free-range parenting, you can assuage your guilt by telling yourself, that it is endorsed by child development expert and Berkeley professor.

But what really makes Gopnik’s work stand out is her claim that there is no evidence to support the notion that what you do now will affect how your children become adults. In her sweeping argument against anything and everything in parenting, including herself, she writes, “From an empirical standpoint, parenting is a game of spin.”

Agreed.

RATING: 90/100