Meet TikTok's 'gentle parenting' influencers. The viral genre is rife with controversy, but creators say they're misunderstood.

• On TikTok, content about parenting methods and styles is extremely popular, but contentious.
• One controversial method that has grown in popularity on the app is called "gentle parenting."

When Laura's youngest son poured iced coffee all over a shelf in her home, she didn't yell.

The creator, who goes by "Laura Love" on TikTok, said in a video that while some parents might punish their child for such an action, she decided to ask him to clean up the mess, had a conversation with him about why he shouldn't do the same thing in the future, and gave him some glasses placed over a dish so he could practice pouring liquids in a more appropriate environment.

"Is it really a toddler's fault who has zero impulse control at this age, or is it the parents' fault for leaving the coffee accessible in the first place?" she asked.

Laura is one of dozens of parents sharing their journey with a method called "gentle parenting" on TikTok, gaining millions of followers for sharing tips on the seemingly atypical technique of aiming to teach and understand their young children, who are often still non-verbal, through building up a rapport of communication with them from an early age.

The hashtag #gentleparenting has 3.7 billion TikTok views, and social media has propelled this method — which emerged out of growing psychological research into the most effective ways to promote children's wellbeing and positive relationships with caregivers — towards widespread popularity.

TikTok-famous parents trying and testing these methods told Insider they're bringing cameras into their households to fight the misconceptions that gentle parenting is weak or overly permissive, or reserved for parents of certain backgrounds and lifestyles.

But as they gain traction, they also attract criticism.

Some viewers say that gentle parenting, as seen on TikTok, sets an unattainable standard of "perfect parenting" that leaves some parents, particularly those in full-time work, feeling inadequate and guilty for letting angry emotions get the better of them. Others say the community is oversaturated with white women and excludes fathers and people of color, while some equate gentle parenting to letting children run amok and promoting a culture where parents are not able to maintain control over their households.

Amid these concerns, gentle parenting content has continued to draw a community of supportive TikTok viewers, some of whom say they feel increasingly compelled to implement the methods they see online at home. Creators told Insider the rewarding feelings generated from having others compliment and take inspiration from their parenting choices has alleviated some of their own fears about stepping out and giving gentle parenting a try in front of millions of online spectators.

Proponents say gentle parenting is built on a foundation of respect

Parenting experts largely agree that there are four main types of parenting: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive, and neglectful.

The framework was initially developed by clinical psychologist Diana Baumrind in 1966 and became more widespread in the 1980s when Stanford researchers Eleanor Maccoby and John Martin added the fourth method to the list.

"Gentle parenting," as it is most commonly known on TikTok, falls into the "authoritative" category, which employs high levels of discipline, while also focusing on creating an emotionally stable environment for the child to express themselves.

Many experts believe authoritative parenting is the most effective for nurturing children because of the extent to which it emphasizes seeking to understand the reasons behind a child's behavior. It differs from authoritarian parenting, which is characterized by strict rules, often followed by punishments if they're breached.

Sarah Ockwell-Smith, a parenting coach and the author of "The Gentle Parenting Book" told Insider that older generations, particularly people in their 60s and 70s, are more likely to be authoritarian in their parenting style, having likely been raised in this way themselves, but that authoritative models have become increasingly common in more recent decades due to psychological research on the best parenting practices.

"Research has allowed us to set our expectations of a child's behavior in a way that is far more realistic than previous parenting styles. Where we may have once spanked a young child for having a tantrum, we now know that they are not being deliberately defiant, or naughty, and can instead help them to understand and regulate their emotions," she told Insider.

According to Ockwell Smith, TikTok has propelled the gentle parenting movement into widespread popularity at an extremely fast rate, but she thinks the method was likely to spread into the mainstream regardless, due to increasing research supporting its benefits.

Namwila Mulwanda, a gentle parenting TikToker with 54,000 followers based in Essex, UK, told Insider that although gentle parenting goes by many names on TikTok, including "respectful" and "positive" parenting, she thinks videos about the method are all characterized by the principle that the child is worthy of being treated with respect.

"You also look at life from the child's perspective," she said, adding, "Their brain is not fully developed at all, and they're likely struggling with their ability to express their emotions in an appropriate way."

In one of Mulwanda's TikToks, posted in October, the creator explained how she prefers to use positive language, such as "feet on the floor please," instead of negative statements, like, "stop jumping on the sofa," as a way of helping her child to understand how to behave without being critical.

Kelly Enos, a TikToker with 436,000 followers, told Insider that her commenters sometimes confuse gentle parenting with the "permissive" method, which is when parents are nurturing, but reluctant to introduce limits or disciplinary measures.

Enos, also based in the UK, said she wants to show that you can parent gently while also setting boundaries, and she has posted videos demonstrating scenarios of how she would tell her child to not play in the road or to stop drawing on the wall, using kind and respectful language.

Creators say they want to debunk misconceptions and address concerns about gentle parenting

As the gentle parenting genre has risen in popularity on TikTok, users have started to debate the accessibility of the method, particularly saying that it feels like parents who are more socially privileged — such as those who can afford to be stay-at-home-parents — are likely to find it easier to control their emotions and parent in a gentle way.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis, a parent educator and author of the parenting book "The Good News About Bad Behaviour," told Insider that parents in full-time work, or those living in societies with less family-friendly work policies, might find that they struggle to emulate the kind of gentle parenting they see on TikTok due to a lack of time and resources.

She warned that the popularity of the genre might cause some people to compare their realities to videos of gentle parenting they see on social media, which can be "problematic" when it starts to make parents lose confidence in their own parenting abilities.

Lewis said it is important for parents to balance having influencer role models with making real-life connections with other parents so that they stay in tune with the reality of what other families look like, instead of fixating on what they see online. She also said that while a lot of gentle parenting content seems flawless on the surface, it's important for parents to keep in mind that there's a lot they don't see off-camera and that it's normal to make mistakes in parenting.

Enos, who has been sharing gentle parenting advice based on how she's raising her 3-year-old, George, told Insider that her account exists precisely to debunk the perception that gentle parenting is always "perfect parenting."

The 32-year-old mother has posted videos struggling to engage with her child while dealing with sickness herself and attempting to calm herself down, to show viewers the difficult side of gentle parenting that they don't often see on social media. In one of her videos from 2022, she mentions that she lost her temper and shouted at her son in the car, and told Insider she hopes her honesty can help other parents feel less ashamed when they make mistakes or have bad days.

"I just thought it'd be really refreshing to see somebody doing it, but also struggling through it," she said, adding, "In a lot of TikToks, you tend to see these picture-perfect moments where children will just react wonderfully to gentle parenting, and that's not always how it goes."

Meanwhile, Mulwanda, who has African heritage, has dealt with concerns about privilege and the genre in another way entirely. She told Insider that some parents from the Black community often comment on her videos, insinuating that they think gentle parenting is a highly Westernized concept, believing that failing to punish a child is likely to spoil them.

The TikToker told Insider that she grew up in a "strict" household and that there is a perception that African parents tend to lean more toward authoritarian parenting styles. She believes her content is having an impact on her community because it shows her refusing to pass down generational trauma inherited from her own upbringing onto her child.

"Those patterns are so easily carried down, so I thought, I'm going to do my best to break the cycle and try to be as intentional as I can," she said, adding that many parents of color have commented on her videos that they appreciate seeing a Black mother parenting their child in a radically different way to how they were themselves raised.

Gentle parenting content raises questions, but creators believe it's worth sharing their journeys

Concerns around gentle parenting content sit alongside equally prominent criticism that is rife in other parenting communities on TikTok, as videos posted by parents are among the most controversial on the platform. Creators who have shared clips about raising their children in any way that is considered outside the norm have previously faced intense scrutiny and backlash.

Some criticism that gentle parenting content shares with the broader world of parenting content on TikTok is that it seems to be dominated by women, with a lack of representation of parents from other genders. Experts Lewis and Ockwell-Smith both said this is representative of the societal stereotype that women are more often the primary caregiver and that men tend to engage less with parenting content on social media, rather than an indication that gentle parenting itself is more suited to mothers.

Others have criticized this parenting genre, among others like it, for involving children in the production of videos, due to concerns about whether a child can consent to being filmed. Enos told Insider she's become more aware of these concerns as she's grown on TikTok, and said she has gradually decided to include her son less frequently in her videos to protect his privacy.

Mulwanda told Insider she often wrestles with the ethics of filming her child, and might reconsider her decisions in the future, but is currently motivated to keep sharing videos of her parenting because of the way she feels she is "able to help so many different people" through the power and reach of her account.

Among the millions of people viewing gentle parenting content on TikTok, many have responded with strong statements about the impact that watching it has had on their outlook on parenting.

Lewis told Insider that many parents are beginning to see this genre as inspiration for a "redo" of their own childhoods, the chance to create "something better for their child" than what they were raised with, making use of the resources and testimonies they can access on social media.

"TikTok is a great venue for viscerally seeing the difference between what your parents did and what other people are doing, or even what you're doing currently," she said.

For Enos and Mulwanda, who are both continuing to document their journey with gentle parenting on TikTok, one of the biggest payoffs has been the hundreds of people responding emotionally, saying that watching this positive parenting in action has helped to "heal their inner child" from the wounds of their own experiences of childhood.

For these two creators, parenting in this way has had an equally healing and significant impact on their own lives. While Mulwanda said she was "scared of replicating" the environment she grew up in, and Enos said she felt "really guilty" for shouting at her son before discovering the gentle parenting method, both women told Insider they feel their current approach to parenting has restored to them a feeling of emotional stability that they lost out on as kids.

"I was just plodding along doing gentle parenting and out of nowhere it really hit me," Enos said, "That big part of gentle parenting is self-healing and finding out what your triggers are and how to support yourself in getting through that. A huge part of it is about healing your inner child."

"That was something I really did not expect to happen," she said.

For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.