Why I gave up on gentle parenting

And made my peace with f***ing up

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

from “This Be The Verse” by Philip Larkin

Photo by Liv Bruce on Unsplash

I hated Larkin for this poem when I first became a mother. It rang around my head like a warning bell. I was going to screw up my children. Everything I did was, in some way, without me knowing it, going to deeply psychologically damage them.

But, in some strange way, I find it reassuring now. We all fuck up our kids, so the pressure’s off. Let me explain.

The parenting books of doom

My intense dislike of Philip Larkin long predates motherhood. When I was about 17, my English teacher told us - almost weirdly proudly - that Larkin lived, for a brief period, quite near our school. He watched, from his window in the morning, the teenage girls walking to their classes, and was inspired to write a poem. Our rather prim and, shall we say, mature, teacher wouldn’t tell us the details - only that he rhymed the word “school” with the word “tool”. I think it says a lot about the school I went to that the teacher in a position of care over a group of young girls should find it an exciting claim to fame that a great man had written about the pupils at her establishment (albeit at a time that predated the presence of any of us), rather than her being disgusted at a middle-aged man wanking over a bunch of children. But I was unimpressed, and I’ve never much liked him since.

I’m not sure where I came across “This Be The Verse” - it wouldn’t have been at school, my teacher would never have said the word “fuck” - but it was buried somewhere in my subconscious, just waiting to leap out and scream at me when I held my newborn daughter in my arms. Fuck, indeed.

But I can’t blame it all on Larkin. He wasn’t the only one who told me I was going to mess up my kids. And if I’d been listening to him that closely, the ending of the poem tells the reader to end the cycle of intergenerational fucked-upness by not having any kids themselves, so I evidently hadn’t paid him that much heed. But the parenting books… oh, the parenting books. I read them all. I fell in love with the idea of “gentle parenting”, which deeply resonated with everything I believed about treating children with respect, honouring their autonomy and enabling and encouraging them to express their needs. I devoured every bit of guidance I could - books, online courses, Instagram influencers. I memorised all the scripts, and made my husband, parents and in-laws do the same. This was how we would be raising our children, and anyone who was going to be involved with that process would need to get on board.

The trouble is, it doesn’t work.

Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash

Now that my children have reached five and three, I have grudgingly accepted that there is no magic formula for raising them. There’s no script that will make our interactions run smoothly (and make my children compliant - which is what most of these gurus are really talking about - “I can teach you the techniques to get your children to do whatever you want them to do, even if they don’t want to” - and which doesn’t actually seem all that gentle to me). There’s no one-size-fits-all parenting method that will work for every child - or for every parent. But it took me a long time to accept this belief. For most of the last five years, I have felt like I was failing. That I was the problem, because I couldn’t follow the blueprint, because my children wouldn’t follow the blueprint.

I remember one incident when my daughter was mid tantrum and I was trying to follow the gentle parenting script: 1) acknowledge and ok the feeling - “I can see that you’re angry, it’s ok to be angry”, 2) let them know the behaviour is not ok - “but it’s not ok to hit your brother with your toy pony”, 3) give them clear, appropriate consequences “so I’m going to take the pony away right now and maybe we can try again later.” The thing is, I think I got as far as, “I can see that - ” before my daughter screamed “I DON’T CARE!” at full volume into my face. I tried about five or six more times, with decreasing levels of success, before giving up and taking her little brother away into another room where my husband found me sobbing while my daughter continued screaming. I felt like such a failure - I wasn’t doing it right. But, after a few more failed attempts, and talking with other parents who were doing things differently, I realised something - my daughter isn’t a case study in a book. She’s a real person, and she doesn’t follow someone else’s script. Using techniques out of a book or a course on her isn’t genuine, and it’s not true to either of us. We have to find our own way through, as two unique humans who are both wonderful and flawed in equal measure, and who love each other imperfectly but powerfully. I threw the book away and started responding to my daughter on a moment-by-moment basis in a way that felt right for both of us.

It’s not that I don’t believe in gentle parenting anymore, exactly; I still think that the principles are valid, that the approach is sound. But the trouble is, the idea of a right way of parenting necessitates the idea of a wrong way of parenting. And that’s the bit that I just can’t get on board with. It’s not just gentle parenting I’m letting go of - it’s the whole concept of parenting styles.

The business of children

Here’s the uncomfortable truth - parenting is big business. Most new mothers (and let’s be honest, it is mostly mothers we’re talking about) are terrified about keeping their child alive, never mind helping them develop physically, emotionally, mentally socially… and this vulnerability is easy for marketers to exploit. In the UK, mums still do 75% of the childcare, and it’s a similar picture globally; mothers are thought to buy around 70% of parenting books, and they spend $231.6 million on parenting books and $141 million on parenting apps annually. No wonder there are plenty of people wanting a piece of that market.

I’m sure a lot of the parenting “experts” and influencers have good intentions. I’m sure many of them really believe in the approach they’re promoting. But, the fact is, they’re trying to sell you something. Which means that they have to make what they’re selling seem important, vital even - and much better than the alternative. They’re invested in subtly encouraging that belief, that fear, that lies deep in your psyche, that if you don’t parent your children in the right way, you will fuck them up. We’re so worried about getting it “wrong” anyway - we’re so frightened of damaging our children, limiting their future, leaving them with neuroses or negative self-beliefs, that one day they’ll be talking about us to a therapist… It’s easy to convince us that there’s a right way to parent and, if we follow it, we’ll be ok; they’ll be ok. But when it inevitably goes wrong, when we can’t stick to that script, that leaves us feeling worse - we bought into the idea that there was a right and wrong way, and now we’ve not done it right, so our kids are definitely fucked now, and the guilt and shame we feel is too much to bear. I know a lot of the gurus say that it’s ok not to get it right all the time, that we can repair when we lose our shit, but the fact that it’s possible not to get it right some of the time still means it’s possible to get it wrong, and if right is good for our children’s mental health and development then we can’t help but obsess over what wrong means, and how much getting it wrong is too much getting it wrong.

Enough already.

I’ve accepted that I will fuck up my kids. Because, although I hate to admit it, Larkin was right. Every parent fucks up their kids. Every kid is a bit fucked up, and they all grow into adults who are a bit fucked up. There’s a kind of joyful freedom in that. I was raised by a deeply loving and kind mother, who respected my opinions and preferences from the moment I was able to express them. But I’ve still inherited some toxic traits (hello, not being able to rest) and limiting beliefs, and there’s probably some less positive behaviours that I can trace back to my upbringing. You know what? That’s normal. We, as humans, are not meant to be perfect. This is the fundamental misconception that I think so much of our stress and misery stems from. We are not meant to be perfect. We think there’s some ideal - some perfect state of non-fucked-upness, of total togetherness, self-assuredness and contentment - that we have all somehow failed to live up to. That we are all broken and need to fix ourselves. Hang on just a minute, though - if we’re all like this, doesn’t that say something about the natural state of humans? Why do we imagine we’ve all failed to hit the mark? Isn’t it more likely that the mark is unattainable? That it is, in fact, a total lie? Just a good bit of marketing?

Photo by Brock Wegner on Unsplash

I love a bit of self-development as much as the next person, and there’s no doubt that every single one of us can benefit from continuing to work on ourselves, to challenge any beliefs, self-talk or behaviours that hold us back, cause us pain or hurt others. It’s the work of a lifetime to continually evolve and grow. So why do we think we can give our kids a pass to skip all that? Why do we cling to the belief that, if we just find the right techniques, the right scripts, we can fast-track our children past the learning and evolution that is human experience and deposit them into the world as perfectly rounded and totally fulfilled creatures? Because we’re scared, that’s why. We want, desperately, for them to be happy. We don’t want them to feel pain, because we’ve felt pain and it hurts, and we don’t like to think of these beautiful souls that we love so fiercely going through anything like that. It rips us in two when they cry, and all we want to do is make that crying stop, rather than sitting with them while they cry and letting them know that it’s ok to be sad, it’s ok to hurt, and that they can heal.

There are, of course, ways to truly damage children - by abusing them and neglecting them. And some parents do that, and the recovery for those children is painful and hard. But as you’re reading this, I’m confident you’re not doing that to your children. You’re worried you’re not doing parenting well enough, which means you’re a loving parent who tries to meet their needs and realises that it’s impossible to do that perfectly, but you still want to. So you’re never going to mess them up in any serious way, I promise.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I remember saying “I just want her to be happy”. I meant that, with every fibre of my being. As someone who’s lived with depression all my life, who always felt like an outsider, who spent so much of my life feeling deeply unhappy, I wanted, more than anything, for her to feel nothing but joy. I realise, now, how much of life that would have been robbing her of. How much human experience exists outside of that sphere. Life with only one emotion would be a fairly bland and dystopian existence. I want her to feel it all. I want her life to be real, and deep, and expansive. Sometimes it will hurt, but that’s ok. The rocky paths lead to the most glorious views. I believe she can climb them. And I’ll be here for her (for both of them) through any stumbles and wrong turns. My role as a parent isn’t to be perfect, or to let them think that perfection is the ideal - that would be far more damaging, when they realise that expectation is unattainable. My role is to let them be themselves, and find their own way.

Freehand parenting

So if I let go of the idea that I can somehow “fix” them, get them to adulthood completely “undamaged”, then I can let go of some of the fear and shame and guilt attached to the idea of right and wrong ways of parenting. I can get out of my head about how I should be doing it, stop being distracted by someone else’s blueprint, and just go at it freehand - colour outside the lines, let the lines be fluid and untidy and natural. Allow myself to show up authentically as my true self and to see and respond to my children’s true selves. And to acknowledge and meet my own needs into the bargain.

Children are all complex and varied individuals, from their very first days on this planet. I was amazed at how clear my daughter’s likes, dislikes, personality and sense of self were from the first moment she arrived. That was my first big motherhood lesson: babies are not blank slates for us to write their story on, they are not amorphous blobs of clay waiting to be shaped; they are tightly curled buds, waiting to unfurl and reveal themselves if they are given suitable conditions to enable them to do so. They won’t follow the scripts we write for them, not ever.

Parents are also all unique individuals. We don’t all behave in the same way, and to try to force ourselves into a predefined mould, to follow predefined scripts, is not only to deny our own sense of selves, it’s to deny our children access and connection to our true selves. It’s to deny them a real and fully rounded parent, who can model failing and being sad and angry and stressed and surviving and putting it all back together. When we let go of the idea we can protect our children from emotional challenges, we can be open and honest about those challenges, so that, as they grow older, they will understand what these issues are - they won’t be problems that are repressed and hidden, sources of fear and shame - and we can give them the language and tools to identify and manage whatever comes up for them. I can’t give them perfection or blissful, zen-like joy, but I can give us all the gift of self-awareness. Of authenticity.

A lot of gentle parenting experts would probably say that this sense of honest, open authenticity is the core of gentle parenting, but my issue is still with the label. With setting out any method, techniques, framework that is a right approach. With setting out any defined approach. You have to have these things to sell books or courses. “Just be yourself” isn’t advice you can market, and it won’t make much profit. But the truth is, that’s all there is. All we have is our own imperfect selves standing in front of our own imperfect children and admitting that we don’t have a fucking clue, either, but promising them that we’ll figure it out together.

Photo by Bence Halmosi on Unsplash

It’s so tempting to believe that our lives would be better, that we would be better, if only our parents had done something differently. If they’d been better. But life doesn’t work that way. Sure, we’re shaped by our parents, and by every single person we meet, every single experience we have, but that is kind of the point of this crazy human journey. We were fucked up, now we’re working to un-fuck ourselves. Our kids will get fucked up, and maybe we can give them a head start on understanding how to un-fuck themselves, but this is their journey, not ours. And you know what, honey child, you don’t need to be better. You’re fucking awesome already. The only work you need to do is on letting yourself believe that. Your kids are awesome too. If you show them you believe that, maybe it will help them believe it too - but you and I both know that that kind of belief is rarely so easy. They’ll get there.

We can’t be perfect parents, gentle or otherwise, following a formula from a book. All we can do is show up. So that’s what I’m doing. Showing up, fucking up, trying again, doing the best I can, doing what seems best for me and them in the moment. My kids will almost certainly have different ideas, by the time they reach adulthood, about what would have been best. I can’t influence that, and it’s not mine to worry about. I can just keep putting one foot in front of the other, being open to listening, learning, discovering more about myself, my children, the world. Ultimately, that’s all any of us can ever do.