When Michaeleen Doucleff became a parent, she read books on how to ensure her child’s happiness. She wanted to be a good mom, to not deprive her daughter of something important.
That process really kicked into gear as she got older, when her daughter started developing interests and friendships. As her world opened up, so too did Doucleff’s options for parenting. Until her daughter was five, Doucleff dutifully carted her child to activities around San Francisco. A birthday party, a play area, a kid’s museum. Weekends were exhausting — packed with kids-only events — but that’s the deal, right?
This is known as child-focused parenting, a style devised in the 90s that has become the norm in the last decade. The idea is that kids’ education and enrichment take top priority.
You may have heard of gentle parenting, which teaches parents to communicate calmly with their screaming toddlers. Child-focused parenting takes it a step further, ensuring the child’s entire world is engaging, whether on an educational excursion or structured play session.
“Every moment is scheduled with a child-centric activity,” Doucleff, who was inspired to write “Hunt, Gather, Parent” as an antidote to child-focused parenting, told Business Insider. “Your life is focused around these things that are just for the child and not for you or collectively as the family at all.”
Doucleff’s views on her parenting style started to shift when she spoke to Suzanne Gaskins, a professor of psychology at Northeastern Illinois University who researches childhood practices around the world. “She told me that these child-centered activities are in a way depriving kids of what they actually need: the adult world,” Doucleff said.
Gaskins isn’t the only psychology professional against child-focused parenting. In a resurfaced podcast clip, famed psychology researcher Brené Brown told Tim Ferriss that her family is a “family-focused family,” where “the family agrees about what will keep a family healthy.”
Now, parents like Doucleff are shunning pressures to make their children the most important family members at all times. They’re learning how to get their kids to adapt to their lives, feeling less burned out — and with less anxious kids.
The history of child-focused parenting
Kid-focused parenting is “very new,” according to Doucleff. “Even European-American middle-class parenting was very different 50 to 100 years ago,” she said.
Children growing up during the Great Depression found entertainment through family board game nights and radio programs: going to a movie theater was a luxury for many. In the 1950s, parents prioritized their marriage and encouraged kids to play outside. Gen Xers, born between 1965 and 1980, grew up as latchkey kids, left to their own devices while their parents worked.
That started to shift in the ’80s and ’90s. “Intensive mothering,” a term coined by Sharon Hays in 1996, describes a major change in mainstream American parenting. According to Caitlyn Collins, associate professor of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis, intensive mothering “is incredibly time-intensive, expensive, emotionally heavy, and prioritizes the child’s well-being above all else, typically subsuming the mother’s needs underneath the child’s needs.”
It’s hard to know exactly what caused the rise in intensive parenting. One theory is that college admissions became more competitive in the mid-90s, creating a culture centered on children’s individual success. Suddenly, parents’ and kids’ lives revolved around education and extracurriculars to maximize their chances of Ivy admission. Great parents prioritized interactive educational experiences for their five-year-olds on weekends and proper socialization via birthday parties.
“We tie a lot of morality to these ideals about parenting — who is a ‘good parent,’ a ‘worthy parent,’ is deeply wrapped up in how we see ourselves and our value,” Collins said. The pressure has only gotten worse for mothers who compare themselves to wealthy “momfluencers,” feeling a strong need to keep up with Disney trips and aesthetic bento boxes, she added.
Children grow up less resilient and more anxious
Being dragged from playdate to playdate can sound like a parent is doing the most for their kid. But, often, these highly structured activities are just overwhelming, Doucleff said. She remembered her daughter being around screaming kids for hours at museum activities.
“At the end of it, she’s screaming because it is so overstimulating and she’s tired,” Doucleff said. “I had a child that often was worse behaved.”
“If you really want your kid to be a responsible, good, and capable human, it’s all about role modeling,” Dr. Jenny Woo, the founder and CEO of Mind Brain Emotion and creator of 52 Essential Life Skills, told BI. Ironically, child-focused parenting teaches kids that it’s normal to forego your identity and boundaries.
Instead of being prepared for adult life, “the child’s world is completely separated from the adult world,” Doucleff said. It does kids a huge disservice, as they miss out on learning important life skills. Now, she brings her daughter along on errands or takes her to the park to play with other kids, where she can be more autonomous.
Doucleff was inspired to make these changes after traveling to the Arctic, where she observed children helping their families hunt whales or prepare dinner. She said having a sense of purpose made children more emotionally mature.
“I remember flying back into America and seeing kids at the same age screaming in the airport because they didn’t want to share their potato chips,” Doucleff said. “This is unheard of in many cultures, for a child of that age to have very little emotional regulation.”
Woo, who teaches at UC Irvine, said she’s witnessed the lasting effects of child-focused parenting. Some students have a “lack of resourcefulness, not knowing where to go, how to do something, who to turn to and feeling very paralyzed,” causing them anxiety.
Tellingly, she said these same students’ parents often pay for laundry services and other assistance to make college a smoother experience for their (now adult) children.
Parents are starting to ditch parenting styles that leave them depleted
Most US parents find parenting harder than expected, according to a 2023 Pew Research poll of over 3,700 participants. Some are questioning whether their expectations around child-rearing are more to blame for their stress than the demands of parenting. Collins said that “encouragingly, more women are recognizing that this burden really shouldn’t be theirs alone, and pushing back against these cultural ideals.”
They’re ditching parenting styles that leave them depleted. “Personally, it was way more work for me to cart my child to all these things,” Doucleff said.
It’s not always smooth sailing; Doucleff said you have to adjust some chores so that kids can join you and put up with the occasional tantrum. “The parent has to be a little uncomfortable sometimes, but in the end, it becomes this really beautiful, easier parenting method,” she said. Woo suggested letting kids slowly take on more responsibility when you’re out together, such as ordering their own food.
Some parents have been making adjustments to events like birthday parties, focusing more on intimate family time rather than a 30-kid backyard bash. They take their kids camping or make crafts with them to make time together more meaningful.
The real world is richer than the bubbles kids are kept in, Doucleff said. Her daughter bonded with her and grew so much once she started joining her mom on international work trips.
It led to her daughter, now nine, starting a dog-walking business on her own this year. “To me, that’s a way more important experience than going to Disney World,” Doucleff said.
