Ain’t nobody got time for gentle parenting.

The first time I realized I would probably never teach or work in academia was when I was at a social event with fellow grad students and their families. What I saw that day was simply the worst and most irritating parenting tactics, voices, and results on planet earth. You would not believe how bad serious academics can be at parenting.

Theorists and abstract thinkers have no business setting parenting discourse, recommending parenting tactics, or policing parenting culture because they have no idea what to do when their theory or their concept of what they think ought to be runs up against WHAT IS.

Cartoons Hate Her’s formulation here, “what happens when gentle parenting doesn’t work” articulates the same problem. Theory people are specialists at describing what ought to be, according to the style and zeitgeist of the day. But there is often little connection offered to attach theory to the concrete or commonplace of our lives.

Many of our parenting experts are in the business of selling an alternative reality where you needn’t train or discipline or even do anything unpleasant when rearing children. It’s like gardening or home improvement content: it’s easier to sell a pretty lie than it is to sell reality, because most people don’t actually want to know what successful gardening or home improvement is really like. They want to dream it, and to be fed palatable versions of it. Gentle parenting is like that.

But parents of actual children have to live in reality.