Gentle parenting vs smacking

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2025 at Church House and the Abbey Centre, Westminster, on Saturday 18 October.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

In August, the New Statesman ran a front-page article entitled ‘The millennial parent trap: This generation are desperate to raise their children differently. Why?’ Certainly, one of the clearest generational divides between millennials and their boomer parents is found in parenting styles. ‘Gentle parenting’ – non-confrontational and positive-reinforcing – has been adopted by many young parents in opposition to their parents and grandparents’ preferred means of discipline.

In the midst of endless books and articles full of these new theories and methods of child-rearing, gentle parenting is embraced as respecting the emotions of a child and the motivations behind those emotions. If a child is naughty, has a tantrum, spits at toddler friends, even hits a sibling, it’s the parents’ job to try and get to the bottom of why, and to address the root cause of the child’s frustrations. As one commentator notes: ‘A child should be understood, never punished.’ Or, God forbid, smacked.

Because there hasn’t merely been a shift in methods – many now think that physical punishment is so wrong it should be illegal. The slipper, the belt, the wooden spoon – physical discipline that used to be the norm, particularly in Irish, African and Asian immigrant families – is now associated with the bad old days and characterised as on a par with child cruelty.

Smacking bans came into force in Scotland in 2020 and Wales in 2022. There are now calls for UK-wide criminalisation – removing the current allowance for ‘reasonable punishment’. NSPCC representatives, MPs and campaigners say that smacking – even when light and performative – causes physical and psychological harm leaving children with a warped view of violence.

Those who oppose a ban argue that there is a great difference between loving disciplinary methods and the kind of abuse that would harm a child. They also point to worsening behaviour standards among young children, arguing that the shift towards gentle parenting – in which parents don’t discipline at all, whether physical or verbal – is failing to provide the boundaries that children need to socialise.  But gentle parenting advocates suggest their child-centred approach is more holistic, that traditional discipline is too crude and cruel, and lazily avoids teaching children to express themselves and learn to think through what motivates their actions.

But if parenting – as a verb – becomes a demand for psychological sophistication in encounters with one’s own kids, does it undermine parents’ autonomy? Does it weaken confidence in Mum and Dad’s instinctive sense of knowing what’s best for their children? Already, the chatter amongst Gen Zers is that the fashion for gentle parenting makes the prospect of having children so demanding and daunting that they are nervous they won’t be able to live up to the task.

Are traditional methods of discipline, like smacking, so harmful that we should ban them, or are there consequences for allowing interference into private family decisions? Is gentle parenting creating a nation of naughty kids, or is it time to start rethinking how we socialise children without the need for physical discipline?

SPEAKERS
Naomi Firsht
journalist and commentator

Dr Ashley Frawley
sociologist; author, Significant Emotions and Semiotics of Happiness

Emma Gilland
event co-ordinator, Academy of Ideas; convener; Battle Book Club

Nancy McDermott
director, Genspect USA; US editor, Inspecting Gender; author, The Problem with Parenting

Dr Lola Salem
lecturer in French and music, University of Oxford; author; professional singer, Maîtrise de Radio France

CHAIR
Professor Ellie Lee
professor of family and parenting research, University of Kent, Canterbury; director, Centre for Parenting Culture Studies