This Woman Says Millennials Are Gentle Parenting Wrong And It’s Backfiring For Boys

Millennial parents are doing their best to raise kinder, more emotionally intelligent boys (sorry, boomers, many of you missed the mark there). But one mom says that a popular parenting technique might actually be doing more harm than good when it comes to raising the next generation. Yup, gentle parenting is under fire (again).

Kate (@leftistmommy on TikTok) made a video explaining how gentle parenting, when done wrong, can actually exacerbate the exact inequality millennial parents are trying to stomp out.

“We can not gentle parent our sons into being advocates for women because girls are being raised at a much higher standard when we continue to gentle parent wrong,” she said.

She explained that when gentle parenting slips and becomes permissive, boys are allowed to forget about others’ feelings because parents are too focused on validating theirs — all while girls are rarely granted the same grace.

“We tried to gentle parent, but all we end up doing is validating their feelings constantly — no boundaries, no discipline, no manners, no politeness, no status quo that the girls are subjected to,” Kate said.

She explained that parents need to maintain some degree of authority with their children in order to raise respectful kids — and yes, that is actually a part of gentle parenting.

“We need to be holding them accountable for their behavior, for their actions,” she explained. “We need to be offering them opportunities to pick gifts for people and think of others, extend empathy, be a good friend.”

“It's okay if it's a lesson,” Kate added, pointing out that this kind of conversation isn’t always comfortable, but it is absolutely necessary.

Kate theorized that millennial parents fall into the trap of permissive parenting out of fear of raising kids the same way their parents did — but, by doing so, they simply end up creating the same dynamics with different intentions.

“Nothing is more permissive than ‘boys will be boys,’” she said.

Commenters widely agreed with Kate’s point.

“I’ve noticed that millennials have done an extreme overcorrection of their boomer parent’s authoritative mindsets,” one user noted.

“Yes. Like yes your son can cry but that doesn’t mean he gets to cry all the time to get the girls around him to coddle to his feelings,” another said.

“The new ‘boys will be boys’ has morphed into the moms who claim their boys are ‘feral’, ‘wild,’ ‘free range’ etc,” another user said. “A boy that is never corrected is a man who thinks nothing he does is wrong!”

Absolutely. It’s high time we start raising boys who are comfortable with accountability.