The phenomenon of TikTok influencers “gentle parenting” adults exposes how inherently toxic “gentle parenting” actually is.

A movement borne out of neurotic, hyper-maternal, and ideologically valorized impulses that elevate warmth, empathy, and moral nurturing above accountability or structure. These mothers conceal their self-serving impulses behind “maternal virtues” —though their weaponization proves, categorically, that they are not virtues at all.

When we see a parenting style infantilizing, shaming, and morally policing ideological opponents, this reflects cluster-B and psychopathic tendencies. Demonstrating how these so-called “maternal virtues” are in fact tools of covert control, and has serious implications for why a mother might exert this type of covert control on her children.

Mothers, unable to deal with their own neuroticism, construct a parenting style and scaffolding to justify their inability to tolerate the necessary, often conflictual role of a parent.

Proper parenting inevitably confronts the child’s id-like impulses, producing the negative interactions necessary for socialization—interactions that mothers invested in hyper-maternal control may consistently avoid or distort to serve their own anxieties and self-interest.