What's Your Parenting Philosophy? 5 Ways To Help You Understand How You Want To Parent

We are living in a time when we are inundated with parenting advice. There are so many memes, TikTok personalities, and therapists, providing guidance on how to address a tantrum, a strong-willed kid, or an overly sensitive kid.

There are times when I've felt like I am just trying different strategies because they've appeared on Instagram too. These strategies give me the illusion of control at the moment, but I often do not have stamina. 

Most of us have not been taught how to parent in a formal way and, therefore, may have not taken a moment to figure out What is my parenting philosophy? In what way do I believe my children should be raised? Some of us know we don't want to parent how we were parented but aren't sure what steps to take to ensure we don't. 

Quite often, I hear from caregivers that they feel confused and overwhelmed: Do you positively affirm, or does that get your kid hooked on rewards? Is speaking gently when your toddler punches her sibling really appropriate? Do you validate, when you really don't authentically see your kid's side? Do you hop on board the intensive parenting train, centering your child in your life? Ahhhh, so many questions that sometimes never get answered because of the demands of daily life!

Every dynamic is co-created, which means that who you are and who your kid is both matter when selecting an approach to parenting.

A strategy that might work with my eldest daughter often falls flat with my middle child. You get to decide what values, skills, and behaviors you want to teach and how you want to reinforce them.

In the midst of potty training or arguments about curfew, it can be hard not to get caught up in the power struggles and what the parenting role demands of you in the moment.

However, psychiatrist Dan Siegel, M.D., recommends asking this simple question: When your child is 25, what do you hope he/she/they will say are the most important things he/she/they learned from you?

Our current and past cultural backgrounds inform our goals for our children.

For example, if you grew up in a white-dominant American culture, you may really value individualism—versus if you grew up in a collectivist culture, it might not be as important to you that your child can "do it on his own." If you were raised in a culture of Machismo, you might encourage your daughter to be deferential to men. If you were raised in a working-class community, you might promote the value of hard work. Physical punishment may have been completely acceptable in your home or culture growing up, but in your current community might be shunned.

Many of us are in the process of developing a bicultural identity—finding the mix of what we experienced growing up and what we are experiencing now, and then choosing what we want to keep and what we want to put aside.

Mothers who work outside of the home spend just as much time caring for their children as stay-at-home mothers did in the 1970s. How is this possible with the same number of hours in the day?!

With the rise of more research and emphasis focused on understanding children's emotional worlds, parenting has become "child-centered, expert guided, and emotionally absorbing," writes New York Times correspondent Claire Cain Miller.

Many parents want to ensure their children are happy and well-positioned for success in modern life and, therefore, have reallocated their time to entertaining and engaging their kids in a way that is different from at other points in history.

Think signing them up for multiple activities, creating sensory bins, enlisting coaches for getting into elementary schools.

"Intensive," "free-range," "parent-focused, child-centered": There are several types of parenting philosophies to choose from, but I will share the dominant ones that I am hearing about in my community, therapy sessions, and support circles. The below provides general descriptions for you to investigate: 

Intensive parenting

This type of parenting is centered on the children being "happy." Most of the caregiver''s energy goes to the social and emotional development of the child, sometimes at the expense of their own well-being.

Free-range parenting

This philosophy is set on giving children, in developmentally appropriate ways, space to learn lessons and interact unsupervised. It is less focused on teaching a lesson or having a life structured by the parents and instead challenges the idea that life should be scheduled for children.

This is about giving children role models of parents who live full lives, where the kid is a very important part but not the center of the parents' life. This is about asking yourself what you need and your community needs outside the home and modeling that for your child.

It's about acknowledging all of what they need but not necessarily meeting every single need within the context of the nuclear family. It is hinged on the belief that children are capable of being disappointed and that this is a normal part of learning about the world.

It also requires a genuinely collective approach to parenting. In the U.S., parents and mothers often report feeling lonely.

Many parents follow the expectation that caregiving should fall on the parents alone, help (which some may not be able to afford) should be paid, and failures to support children are the fault of the parents. This separateness is at odds with our biology, as we are connected beings who thrive in supportive relationships.

For example, alloparenting—meaning "other parents"—emphasizes that there should be a community of individuals who support the process of child-rearing (cleaning, cooking, caretaking, playing). Some research shows that alloparents provide nearly 75% of the care for babies under 2 in their community and about 80% for children ages 2 to 6. This model of care is highly responsive to children's needs but dislodges the belief that responsiveness is solely the responsibility of the parent. It also implicitly acknowledges that the experience of the parents, specifically mothers/those doing the mothering, matters too.

I ascribe to the community-centered approach to parenting because it keeps me regulated. The more regulated parents are, the more effectively we can parent. If we are not regulated, we cannot implement one of those amazing-sounding parenting interventions we see online.

You may also look at the examples above and choose to amalgamate the different parenting styles, remaining committed to a more intensive parenting approach but creating more room for unscheduled time, or reach out to a friend about creating more family bonds.