The UK’s self-proclaimed strictest headteacher Katharine Birbalsingh has attacked “middle-class gentle parenting” for creating a culture where children are given too much choice. She says that parents, who no longer feel they are in a position of authority over their children, are not teaching children right from wrong, or how to read and count.
“The [advice] you’ll get nowadays will be much more along the lines of gentle parenting; being friends with your children, not holding them to account,” said Birbalsingh, headteacher of Michaela Community School in north London. “It will be very much about understanding the child, communicating with the child’s needs.”
Birbalsingh is as well known for her school’s exceptional academic results as for her outspoken remarks on ‘woke’ culture and support of discipline that harks back to the past. But do less strict teachers agree with her about the negative impact of gentle parenting?
Senior secondary school teacher Maria Blake* told me that in her 13 years of teaching, behaviour has steadily declined – and she believes that gentle parenting is partly to blame.
“We’ve always had kids that didn’t want to be in lessons, but they used to be there,” she says. “Now, we have a handful of kids who roam corridors refusing point blank to go to lessons. They don’t have respect for authority and don’t think they should go to a lesson if it causes stress. There are exceptions for children with genuine needs and anxiety, but if a student just doesn’t want to do something, we want to be able to encourage and work with them.”
Blake says Parents’ Evenings have evolved, too. “Previously, if we said a child is not doing what they need, the parent would turn to their child. In the past few years, they’ve started turning to us to ask what we can do to encourage them to do better,” she says. “If we point out that a child isn’t reading at home, it might now be met with a shrug rather than asking for reading strategies.”
She has seen an increase in parents refusing to comply with sanctions against their child, justifying their behaviour by saying they just had a ‘bad day’.
“Sadly, parents sometimes question whether children need to be in lessons, too. I’ve been told I need to ‘respect how they feel’ and ‘understand their boundaries’, which makes our job hard,” she says. “School is about teaching children to make independent decisions but also that there are consequences to choices.”
Birbalsingh claims the downsides of gentle parenting are affecting working-class children disproportionately. “If you are able to afford a nanny, or if you have two parents in the home, you might get away with some gentle parenting. But for families that are under financial pressure, social pressure, that don’t have two parents in the home, they simply aren’t able to do what you might be able to get away with.”
Blake agrees that the corridor crowds are predominantly from working-class families. But she sees the effects on all children as middle-class students feel rules can be debated and individualised. “Some children don’t know the word ‘no’ and look at me as if I’m speaking a foreign language. Students used to moan about being caught not wearing uniform but accept our authority. Now they can’t believe we’re questioning them,” she says. “Others act as if I have to listen to their views, but we can’t debate what time school lunchtime finishes or our uniform policy. Sometimes it feels like we’re 50 per cent teacher and 50 per cent social worker as everything is a negotiation.”
Child therapist Kate Silverton, author of There’s No Such Thing As Naughty, says that few trained mental health professionals would disagree with the principle of gentle parenting, which “may be understood as treating children as individuals by offering guidance, teaching, and modelling, rather than relying on shame and punishment. Equally important is the need for emotional attunement during moments of distress.”
However, she is clear that children need boundaries and structure: “without these, the world can feel unpredictable and unsafe“.
Gentle parenting, she says, does not mean that we should never say ‘no’ to our children or that we must always speak in a monotone, overly calm voice when responding to a child’s distress. “I consider my own parenting as firm, but also fun and fair. Parenting is not about not having boundaries, it’s how we place them that counts.”
Primary school teachers are also experiencing a lack of family support for literacy learning, despite the huge advantage parents give children by spending 15 or 30 minutes a day reading one-on-one with them.
“Parents rely on schools to do a lot more,” says primary school teacher Maddie Johns*, who has worked in state schools for more than 20 years. “We’re saying to parents: ‘Please support us with reading at home’, but I also know, as a two-working-parent family, how hard it is to get 20 minutes to read with your child. Parenting has become ‘softly, softly’ with more child-led activities at home and more choices for children. As parents, we’re all trying to empower our children to have a voice, but as a teacher I see children from a very young age who query everything.”
She thinks that in most schools – though perhaps not Birbalsingh’s – gentle teaching methods have rubbed off in the classroom. “Both teachers and parents are afraid to say: ‘no, that’s wrong’. We have a behaviour compass with different types of learning behaviour, including perseverance, creativity and independence,” she explains.
“We’re constantly reminding children of positives and ignoring negative behaviour because of concerns over shaming them. So we’ll say: ‘Try to do this independent task more’, rather than: ‘Can you sit down and do your work’. No one wants children to be scared of teachers, but sometimes the respect is not there.”
Johns can see the positives of gentle parenting, too. “Children realise they have a voice and people do care about them, especially if there is bullying or unkind behaviour; schools have behaviour policies to protect all children; parents are aware of the need to listen to children and give them respect.”
She thinks laying the blame for deteriorating behaviour at gentle parenting’s door is a huge simplification of pressures parents are under and overlooks the negative influence of social media. She believes that Tiktok, for example, has led to an increase in racialised language and gender prejudice as pupils copy the language they see there.
Extended screen time also has a negative effect on classroom behaviour. “During lockdown some children would be on screens for hours – what else could working parents do?” says Johns. “But now, many children don’t know how to respond to behaviour expectations off-screen and we are seeing the impact of that in schools.”
Both Johns and Blake believe the vast majority of parents do still care. However, both are conscious that the realities of family life are changing. “The cost of living crisis is having an effect and our guilt at not having the time to read, for example, can feel overwhelming,” says Johns.
Blake agrees that the pressure on both parents to work is also having an effect. “More middle-class families have two full-time working parents. Gone are the days when stay-at-home parents sat around the dinner table or had a long, relaxed bedtime with their children. I think this lack of calm conversation at home is why kids shout at each other rather than using ‘indoor voices’.
And so many middle-class parents feel guilty about not being as present as they’d like that they don’t want to add any upset to their children by saying no or creating conflict where they should sometimes put their foot down.”
But she also believes there are also positives to the current approach to parenting, one of which is that children are more able to say when they’re unhappy or if something is worrying them – and explain why.
“Last week a teenager explained to me: ‘I don’t want to go to maths because I feel like a failure’, which 10 years ago they wouldn’t have been able to express. Unfortunately, many kids want it to stop there, so don’t have a sense of responsibility or wish to fix it. But I’m hopeful that at least this generation will be independent thinkers – we just won’t know for another decade.”
*Names changed to protect teachers’ anonymity
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