Gentle Parenting and the Struggle to Say No

Gentle parenting pits compassion against consequences, but is there a better way?

Gentle parenting is a curious phenomenon. If you go to the playground, the public library, the grocery store, or anywhere else these days, you’ll see it in action. Parents bending down to have a conversation with a toddler throwing a tantrum on the ground. A series of emotionally diagnostic questions after one child hits another. Instagram videos of parents putting their kids back in bed 15 times in a single night, saying they’ll just have to accept the consequences of being tired.

Marilyn Simon is unsparing in her description at UnHerd,

“Gentle parenting, or conscious parenting, professes to foster compassion and emotional self-understanding in a child. It’s about respecting the emotions of a child and the motivations behind those emotions. If a child has a tantrum, hits, or generally misbehaves, it is because she is frustrated — and a parent’s job is to address the root cause of the child’s frustrations. A child should be understood, never punished. This is because for a gentle parent, children aren’t bad. They aren’t even neutral. They are inherently good.”

It won’t come as a surprise if you read the article to discover that Simon is a Shakespeare scholar. Good parenting depends on an accurate understanding of human beings, who we really are, and how we work. No one understood the depth and complexity of human beings like Shakespeare.

Trevin Wax published an article on the topic this week, describing the opportunity for the church when the “gentle parenting” movement runs out of steam. There will come a time when the veneer wears off, revealing the obvious truth: there are deeper issues that haven’t been dealt with. The church, as always, will have the opportunity to speak with clear, relevant, compassionate conviction.

“We do ourselves no favors by downplaying, denying, or diminishing sin, no matter how unpopular it may seem. A patient riddled with the cancer of selfishness will one day tire of the vitamins and tonics doled out by feel-good doctors and yearn for surgery on the soul. When that day comes, we’ll have the opportunity to speak the unsafe truth that every person, deep down, already knows to be true: I have sinned.”

What I appreciate about both of these articles is they take a very difficult and controversial subject and get to the bottom of it. They do not try to adjudicate between different techniques and tactics, spanking or no spanking, styles of punishments, or even imply that only Christians can properly raise kids. They both get down to the essential questions that determine everything else. No tactic will work if you don’t understand how we’re made as human beings.

These articles also connected the dots on a broader phenomenon I’ve been thinking about. It seems like there are even more problems we face that have the same root: a misunderstanding of human nature and the inability to say “no.”

President Trump signed an EO barring men from women’s sports. Photo: @POTUS on X.

On Another Note

There's an interesting crossover between this article and what happened Thursday. President Trump signed an executive order banning biological men from competing in women's sports. It sounds like an absolute no-brainer. Almost 80% of Americans agree with this common sense order. And Americans don’t agree on anything right now! Why did it take so long?

The transgender sports issue showcases a theme in our culture like very few other issues. There is a loud, aggressive, emotionally manipulative group on the other side of the majority, which makes it difficult and uncomfortable to say "no." After all, that's what this situation needed. Somewhere along the way, someone just had to say no. The women's swim team coach, the athletic director, the college president, the Olympic committee, the parents - someone just needed to say no! Some of these people were motivated ideologically, but many more were simply taking the path of least resistance. The can gets kicked farther and farther down the road.

Looking at these issues, we’re forced to admit that, as a society, we have a big problem; we don’t know how to say no. We don’t know how to handle tantrums. For too long, we’ve incentivized continued poor behavior because we won’t endure the short-term pain for long-term gain. One reason so many people resonate with Trump’s first few weeks in office is that he’s willing to say no. My hunch is that there are not that many people who agree with every policy decision the president makes, but there are a lot of people who feel like he’s finally putting his foot down against the excesses and absurdities in our government and culture. There are probably far fewer people who have a well-developed political philosophy on the immigration system than there are people cheering on the deportations because someone is finally willing to do their job and enforce the law.

Trump's x-factor on these issues is he doesn't care what loud and aggressive minorities think. He does what he wants. In this case, he kept a promise to an important part of his base. I won't praise him for any ideological purity on this subject, but his rhinocerine hide enabled him to take a stand when countless others - many of whom do have a religious conviction on this topic - did not.

This is precisely the thing that put Jordan Peterson on the map. He was an obscure professor until he refused to use transgender pronouns. In an interview, when he was pressed, he put his foot down. "I won't participate in a lie." He received a lot of blowback, but he also became an overnight sensation. People envied his courage. He had the fortitude to say no, even when it was difficult.

Gentle parenting and trans sports are very different issues, but they have this in common: a misguided anthology based on the idea that if something comes from the heart, it cannot be wrong. If you really believe it, who am I to argue with you? If that's the way you feel, how can I keep you from expressing yourself? Both of these phenomena believe that the greatest evil is to keep someone from expressing their true self. But on its face, that's an absurd way to live.

Practically, no society can exist with this mindset. We punish criminals not just on the basis of their intent but on the fact of their actions. We actively want to suppress people's darkest desires.

The Bible and Self-Denial

There's a Biblical element at work here as well. The Bible teaches us that our desires are not all right. In fact, sin begins at the level of desire and works its way out. Jeremiah tells us that “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9). Proverbs reminds us, "Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him" (Prov. 22:15). You don't have to take this passage as an argument for corporal punishment to see the drastically different assessment of the heart of a child. Children want to sin. It's our job as parents to help them put sin to death and live free from the tyranny of their passions.

All of this leads up to the summary of the Christian life Jesus gives to the disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matt. 16:24-26). If self-denial is at the center of the Christian life, how could it not be applicable to parenting, social movements, and regular old sinful behavior?

A Better Way

I remember listening to a podcast years ago about parenting, and the hosts made a point I'll never forget. The promise of gentle parenting is that by affirming the desires of your children, you will keep from crushing their spirits. But the reality is you will hand them over to a lifetime of slavery to their desires. The most compassionate thing you can do is teach them how to be truly free - free to do what's right.

Simon comes back to this point at the end of the article; “Since gentle parenting has no capacity for talking to a child about wickedness, guilt, and punishment, it also has no ability to speak about redemption.”

There is no hope for redemption without a clear-eyed acknowledgment of sin. The unfallen world doesn’t need a redeemer. Or as Jesus put it, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick” (Mark 2:17). The pattern God has given us is one of loving care and discipline (Heb. 12:6. Some of the most important moments in our lives come when God lovingly says no.

There are a million caveats about how to do this well and poorly on the practical level, but the bottom line is clear: sin must be driven out. God has given that responsibility to parents. If we as parents can learn to say "no" in a godly way, the ripples will run all through our society. In fact, it may be the most effective social activism any of us ever undertake. On an even more important level, it will be the best thing we ever do for our kids.