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The Rise of the Accidentally Permissive Parent

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Oh, gentle parenting! What a noble idea, what a deeply difficult thing to actually pull off. If you’ve managed to avoid the parenting discourse over the past few years, allow me to recap: Gentle parenting is the shorthand term for a style of parenting in which children’s tantrums and misbehavior are approached with kindness and empathy: talking things out instead of doling out punishments, sitting with them through meltdowns rather than sending them to their rooms to cool off on their own. It sounds easy enough, but as Elizabeth Passarella discovered, doing it right requires a lot of parental self-management and dedicated time. And what happens if you don’t have enough of either? A kind of non-parenting that’s become all too common: the accidentally permissive parent.

—Genevieve Smith, executive editor, New York 

The Rise of the Accidentally Permissive Parent Some moms and dads who strive to be “gentle parents” unknowingly turn into stressed and indulgent ones.

Illustration: Manshen Lo
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