A child crying because he has a strange name.
After politics and religion, parenting might be one of the most hotly-debated topics online. Parents get super passionate about the differences between gentle and authoritative parenting or how parents interact with teachers. It's not hard to find people with strong opinions about parents sharing photos of their children on social media, allowing them to use screens at a young age, or their diets.
Parenting touches on many social, political, and cultural issues, so it makes sense that people are passionate about the topic. Further, our kids all have to play together at school, so we have to live with the consequences of other people’s parenting decisions.
A Redditor posed a question on the AskReddit subforum: What’s a modern parenting trend that needs to die immediately? And over 2400 people responded with the contemporary trends they'd prefer to end sooner rather than later. Many of them are concerned about how children are affected by technology, including social media, AI, and tablets. Others are concerned that modern children are far too sheltered and need to be challenged so they aren’t eaten alive when they enter the adult world.
The roundup includes some complaints about modern parents, but many of the responses offer good food for thought. Parents can easily get caught up in prevailing ideas of the time, before it's too late to course-correct. So there's nothing wrong with a bit of thoughtful criticism to make sure that we're all doing right by our kids.
Here are 15 parenting trends people say should ‘end immediately'
1. Kids on social media
"Kids' Instagram accounts."
"Or Facebooks. Any social media, really. There were a few parents I knew had Facebooks for their kids as online "dairies." They were public and shared almost every detail of the kids' lives up until they either gave up on them or deleted them. Bonkers."
"I've long since lost touch with them but I knew someone who started a Facebook page for her unborn child. She had pictures of her ultrasounds on it and would write posts in the tone of her unborn child along the lines of 'mommy I can't wait to be born and come meet you.'"
2. Kids need unsupervised play
"Heard an interesting segment on a radio program recently about how children NEED unsupervised, unstructured play (ideally outside with other kids). Helicopter parenting and turning every activity into organized competition is robbing kids of important developmental skills and independence."
One of the most significant problems in the modern world, where kids' lives are overly structured, parents are involved in everything, and screens are everywhere, is that they experience little free play. Unstructured play is essential to their development because it gives them agency over their own lives and allows them to negotiate relationships with other kids, take risks, and solve problems.
3. Treating kids like projects
"Treating kids like a project to optimize instead of people who are allowed to be bored, messy, and human."
"It’s the 'gardener vs. the carpenter.' We have much less control over who our children become than we think we do. If there’s a dandelion seed in the ground it’s not going to become a tulip no matter how hard you try. All you can do is make sure the soil is nourishing so they can be the best damn dandelion in the yard."
Kids playing in a park.via Canva/Photos
4. Refusing vitamin K
"Nurse here- Refusing vitamin K for your newborn. I’ve never seen an infant harmed as a result of a vitamin K shot… but I have seen one die as a result of a brain bleed that could have been prevented with a routine vitamin K injection."
"I work at a pediatric hospital. The number of newborns with life-altering brain bleeds that get flown in to us because the mom refused the Vit K is mind-blowing. Like the baby shows up 24 hours old, and their life is over because of a major bleed that will now eat away any brain tissue they have."
5. Gentle parenting
"Gentle parenting turning into no parenting, like ma'am, that child needs boundaries, not a podcast."
"Agreed. I work with young children (2-5), and I see this a lot. Kids need boundaries. If you set a boundary and the child throws a tantrum, SO WHAT? Let them. I think it’s good that parents in general are trying to be more gentle than maybe their parents were to them, but it tends to go too far in the opposite direction."
"Claiming you are doing 'Gentle Parenting' when you aren't. Gentle Parenting is treating your children like human beings with emotions and needs. It isn't a magical buzzword that lets you be a negligent parent with no repercussions."
Gentle parenting is a strategy that emphasizes emotional validation, firm but respectful boundaries, and empathy. Supporters believe that it helps kids with communication skills, emotional intelligence, and trust. Critics believe that it makes it hard for kids to handle authority and can easily slide into overly permissive parenting.
6. Emotional connection to kids
"Emotional enmeshment with your kids. Your kids aren't your best friends. They are your kids."
"My mom treated me like an emotional support animal to the point of damaging relationships with her actual friends and sabotaging my attempts at making friends until I cut her off at 26. Our last conversation resulted in me hanging up on her mid-sentence because she was trying to scare me out of getting to know someone who's now my best friend. It was astounding to realize just how much her latching onto me was making me miserable."
A mom and dad with their young son. via Canva/Photos
7. Unqualified homeschoolers
"Homeschooling when you are in absolutely no way qualified to."
"The least educated, least organized, and most unreliable mom-friend I have is the one who is homeschooling her kids. I honestly think it’s because she is too lazy to wake early to get them to school on time."
8. Let your kids be uncomfortable
"Not exposing our youths to stuff that makes them uncomfortable. This leads to socially anxious teens, who get a panic attack from normal everyday interactions. People who are afraid of their own shadow. Youths who cannot trust that you'll get through the unpleasant experiences."
9. Strange names
"You mean you’re not a fan of 'Myckhenzleigh'?"
"Saw one last weekend, Kahriz. Asked the kids coach 'How is that pronounced?' Chris."
"I came across a Xakary the other day."
10. Overprotective fathers
"This isn't only a modern trend but dad need to chill out with the 'my daughter can't marry until she's 40' rhetoric or the 'hurt my daughter and I'll murder you' stuff. It's not tough to threaten a 16-year-old, and forbidding your daughter to ignore boys until they are not under your control is just going to set them up for unhealthy dating expectations. I have a 16-year-old daughter with a boyfriend. He's a nice kid and he treats her well. They definitely don't have a future together, but I think he's a great 1st boyfriend that is really setting the tone of how she should expect to be treated."
11. Kids and AI
"Letting kids anywhere near that AI. I thought cheating was bad enough in my day but holy sh*t is CheatGPT getting outta hand, our next generation is gonna be braindead if this keeps up."
"Part of my job is skills development training. I getting tired of arguing with the class when they tell me they dont need to learn because 'they can just ask ai.'"
12. Beige children
"Sad beige children. Kids need colors to aid in their mental and cognitive development. Children need a childhood more than beige moms need ugly aesthetic pictures."
"I find parents who always dress their kids super trendy gross. For normal days I just let my kid choose his clothes, IDGAF he's a kid."
13. Raising kids with screens
"Pacifying your toddler by handing them a screen."
14. Your kid is not a pro athlete
"Thinking your kid is going to play professional sports. Look only 7% of HS athletes go on to play college athletics at any level. In sports where there is a draft (Football, baseball, hockey, basketball, softball, soccer) only 2.7% of draft eligible athletes get drafted. That means in those sports IF you play HS ball, you have a 0.19% of going pro. Your 8-year-old is probably not part of that 0.19%. You dont need to spend 10s of thousands of dollars on them playing on the very best travel teams. Let them be kids."
"Bottom line is new parents should just dump money into their kids' 529 the second they're born rather than rely on some scholarship that will never materialize for 93% of them, let alone lead to a pro career."
15. Read to your kids
"Not reading. Read to your kids. Read for yourself. It matters less than feeding them, but not a lot less."
"This is huge. It's basically free and makes a lifelong difference. If the parents can't read, or can't read in the target language, they can still take their kids to libraries or other places that can cultivate a love for reading. I teach community college freshmen. I have no idea who was breastfed or even vaccinated (things people spend too much time obsessing about, one of which doesn't even actually matter), but I could probably guess with 95% accuracy whose families encouraged reading."