The biggest difference between Baby Boomers and Millennials as parents is that the older generation preferred a tough-love approach to raising their kids. In contrast, Millennials are more likely to choose gentleness. There are many reasons for this shift; some say it’s a way for Millennials to heal their inner child, promote greater emotional intelligence, and break intergenerational trauma cycles.
A recent study by Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago found that 74% of Millennial parents prefer gentle parenting, whereas Boomers generally used a mix of authoritarian and authoritative styles. This means that when Millennials became parents, they had to set aside certain methods their parents used. One of the big ones was letting go of Boomer parenting one-liners and comebacks that these days can be seen as incredibly negative.
Popular Boomer parenting phrases:
“I’ll give you something to cry about.”
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.”
“As long as you live under my roof, you’ll obey my rules.”
“Because I said so…”
“If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?”
“Back in my day, we had to…”
“Stop being so sensitive.”
“Wait until your father gets home.”
“Do as I say, and not as I do.”
“I love you, but I don’t like you right now.”
A great example of how parent-child relationships have evolved across generations is an Instagram post by Mariela De La Mora (@mariela.delamora), a leadership and business coach. In the video, the 44-year-old mom asked her 9-year-old daughter how a parent would finish a series of sentences that Millennials and Gen Xers heard growing up.
“I’ll give you something…” De La Mora asked her daughter, who responded, “to clean your room?”
“I brought you into this world and…” her mother asked, and the daughter responded, “I love you.”
“As long as you live under my roof…” the mother asked, and her daughter responded, “You’re safe.”
The daughter’s answers were telling because she didn’t expect a parent to say something snarky and authoritative to their child. Instead, she assumed a parent would say something loving and affirmational. It really shows how gentle parenting has changed the mindsets of the younger generation. De La Mora believes that by stopping the use of these toxic phrases, children carry less burden than previous generations.
“Sometimes you don’t realize how far you’ve come until you look around and realize who is walking around this earth more ‘unburdened,’ because of you,” she wrote on the post. “Children or not, there is someone who is more unburdened because of how hard you had to work to reparent yourself. Let this be your reminder.”
“Okay, we millennials are obviously not perfect parents, but I feel that as a generation we have collectively decided to attempt and raise our children in the safest, most self-aware and emotionally intelligent homes,” Karina wrote in the comments. “I never realized how traumatic and heartbreaking these phrases were. Until hearing them end differently,” Amanda added.
There is much debate over whether authoritative or gentle parenting styles are best for raising children. The simple takeaway is that children raised by authoritative parents tend to be more independent and free-thinking, whereas those raised under gentle parenting tend to have higher emotional intelligence. But what De La Mora’s video proves is that, even though there may be good debates over which parenting styles are better, we can probably all agree that some parenting phrases are best left in the past.
