5 June 2026 - 4:15pm
In the Sixties, developmental psychologist Diana Baumrind created a typology of three main parenting styles, labelled “authoritative”, “authoritarian” and “permissive”. Six decades later, and these seem to have proliferated into dozens of potential personality traits, from “tiger mum” to “panda parent” to “koala caregiver”. Parenting has become almost a psychometric test: do you identify as a “crunchy mum” (a fan of all things holistic, organic and natural), or a “silky” one (more laid-back, and happy to embrace modern medicine and technology)? Are you a “concierge mum”, servicing every aspect of your child’s schedule and social life, or are you a “Beta” parent, welcoming chaos, mess and absolutely zero micromanaging?
Labelling different parenting styles can seem performative, but it is also pernicious: it makes it all the easier to judge, criticise and condemn. Broadcaster Jake Humphrey recently labelled “helicopter parenting” the “worst”, as it does not “build resilient, powerful, self-sufficient people”. Helicopter parenting describes parents who are constantly watching, managing and intervening in their children’s lives, often shielding them from risk. The truth, however, is that all parenting styles are flawed: for every iPhone psychologist saying that more traditional, no-nonsense parenting will help your children learn obedience and responsibility, there’s another who will warn of the damaging effects on their self-esteem and emotional regulation.
The variety of superfluous subcategories is both a cause and a consequence of the “professional” parenting advice that is spewed all over social media: the staggering number of child-rearing “experts” on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube who drum up engagement by preying on parents’ insecurities about everything from sleep training to eating habits to how to deal with tantrums in public. Without the traditional “village” to turn to, in which parenting styles can be modelled in real life, anxious parents instead consume a dizzying glut of conflicting information online, and try to imitate carefully-curated online illusions of parenthood.
Most recently, the parenting pendulum has swung from the benefits of “gentle parenting” — in which parents must pay intense, continual attention to every single feeling their child has about anything — to what is now called the “Fafo approach” (fuck around and find out), which supposedly fosters independence by letting children naturally experience the consequences of their actions. Some say it’s a welcome alternative to the emotional burnout and constant negotiations that come from gentle parenting, while critics argue that it can cause fear and humiliation, and erode trust.
The truth is that parents are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. This need to define and dissect parenting styles may seem superficially helpful, with new parents finding it useful to have guidelines to follow, or craving reassurance that what they are doing is “right”. Yet this online obsession with parenting “identities” ironically strips adults of their autonomy. For example, I know friends who are desperate for a good night’s sleep but afraid to let their child cry it out for fear of emotionally damaging them forever.
The seemingly never-ending list of buzzwords therefore leads to lingering self-doubt, because it encourages parents to neurotically follow trends rather than trust their instincts. It has become less about doing what intuitively feels right for your child and more about fulfilling expectations and holding onto some semblance of control. No wonder, then, so many parents therefore feel like they are desperately failing.
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