Welcome to the chaotic, hilarious, and sometimes utterly perplexing world of parenting trends. As someone who’s navigated the stormy seas of diaper changes, tantrum negotiations, and the dreaded teenage years, I’m here to share some of the weird, the wacky, and the “why-on-earth?” of parenting strategies that have many onlookers scratching their collective heads.
So, I recently tumbled down a rabbit hole on a Reddit thread where parents like us were spilling the tea on the latest parenting fads they just can’t get behind. Picture this: a mix of age-old traditions clashing with the new-age, tech-savvy approaches, all under the watchful eyes of millions of anonymous internet judges. I’ve gathered 32 of the strangest and most debated parenting trends making the rounds that have everyone talking—and not always in a good way!
1. Making your child’s entire identity revolve around their extracurricular activities. Let them be kids, not robotic machines for your bragging rights.
2. Not teaching children proper manners/behavior
Please and thank you go a long a*s way in this life.
Also not helping kids with conversation skills. Conversation usually goes back and forth. With no phones involved.
3. Not vaccinating children.
4. The trend of oversharing kids’ lives on social media. It’s like turning your child’s childhood into a reality TV show.
5. I hate when people dress up their baby girls in outfits a woman should be wearing. Like there are little girls outfits that are adorable and meant for a little girl. But no little girl should be wearing a body suit and ripped jeans or a crop top and low rise bellbottoms, it gives me the creeps.
6. Do gender reveals count? Lighting things on fire, blowing things up and potentially injuring a family member all in an display of obsession over the genitals of your fetus is cringy at best and a small scale natural disaster at worst.
7. I guess this is kinda specific, but my son is autistic, so it applies to me. I hate the “Autism Mom” thing. The t-shirts, the unsolicited “advocacy”…it seems like an attention seeking thing to me. My kid has autism, ADHD, and anxiety, and it takes approximately 5 seconds of being around him to notice. I will fight for him always, of course, but I won’t use him as a badge either. I won’t hide his diagnosis from him, but I won’t let him use it as an excuse either.
And some of those shirts get borderline threatening too…”If you want to know fear, fight an autism mama bear”…or something like that.
8. I’ve seen a small yet growing trend of homeschooled kids where the parents are completely neglectful of actual education and basically let the kid do whatever they want. They don’t follow standardised curriculum for the sake of “letting kids be kids.” If your kid can barely read at 10 years old, you’re setting them up to fail as an adult.
9. Parents not having even minimal standards for their children’s behavior, and expecting other people to be alright with it. I really don’t care that he is having “big feelings.” He is lying in the aisle of the supermarket, screaming at the top of his lungs, having a full blown tantrum because you said no. Grow a pair.
10. Driving your kids 200m to school.
11. Giving them “unique” names.
12. Loud cartoons and games on tablets in public places.
13. Never saying no to your child.
14. Not exactly a trend but: having like 5+ kids and forcing the older ones to basically raise the little ones. i know that sometimes the parents are not well informed about contraception, but it’s still not the kids’ problem! it’s one thing to have them help once in a while, but anything that stops them from living their own lives to raise YOUR kids is just ridiculous.
for example: not being able to take an extracurricular activity because they have to be home watching their siblings.
15. Pranking your kids or playing jokes on them. Not all kids understand it’s a joke and it really upsets them. I hate seeing videos of parents thinking it’s ok to throw things at their kids or make them do dumb stuff for amusement. Like the cheese challenge thing. Throwing food at babies….awful behavior.
16. I’m gonna go in a little bit of a different direction: parents not watching their own behavior when it comes to screen time, frustration tolerance, discipline, etc.
You’ve got to dig deep and figure out how to role model the behaviors you want your kids to do. If you are on your phone 24/7 and throw a fit every time the slightest thing inconveniences you you aren’t gonna have a good time with your kids doing anything different.
17. Child vlogging, its a bit weird tbh and I feel like things are gonna go to s**t for the parents when the kids become adults.
18. Taking your kids to a restaurant and putting screens in their hands. How are kids going to learn how to behave in polite society if you don’t train them how to behave in social situations?
19. Being overweight and allowing your children to follow the same path of obesity.
(Yes I get sometimes it’s genetics, but genetics is not why appx 1/3 of Americans are obese and why the rest of the world isnt).
20. The sad beige mom trend. If you want to make the rest of your home sad and beige, that’s up to you. But my God! Please let your child’s nursery have some colour for their own development and well-being.
21. The lack of discipline and manners taught to the kids. I get soft parenting, I’m on board with no hitting and all of the abuse but kids still need to learn boundaries about what they could and couldn’t do.
22. Weird orthorexic parents who make their entire personality their kids’ hundreds of allergies . Gluten free, dairy free, nut free , meat free . EVERYTHING FREE! I’m sorry, I do not believe them.
23. Confusing gentle parenting with permissive parenting.
You can be both gentle and authoritative. Authoritative is *not* authoritarian; it is the role of a parent to provide structure and boundaries for their children while also allowing them to feel their emotions and deal with the ups and downs of being a kid. Go ahead and soothe your children when they are upset and give them a safe space to calm down but you do not have to cushion their world for them in order to avert a meltdown.
24. “Gentle parenting” b***h hold your kid at the doctor if they need a test done. “I don’t think she wants to do this test/use this medicine” B***H SHE NEEDS IT. (I work in a doctors office).
25. Never telling your kid no. You’re creating a monster that is going to ruin your life some day. Boundaries and consequences are essential to any kid- well human even- being successful in the world we live in.
26. Helicopter parenting, or whatever you wanna call it.
As a child that was sheltered and despite my wishes, parents would always intervene and I became way to reliant on that.
Wasn’t until my mid-20s that someone helped me realized what was going on and I had to relearn how to live basically.
Sure my parents did what they thought was best, it ended up really screwing me later in life and I’m still in the process of figuring out what it means to be independent and how to fight for myself
27. The Easter “baskets” kids are now getting. It is like a mini Christmas. Hell-I’ve seen kids that actually get a lot less for Christmas. It’s is just disgusting how material we are and in turn making our children. Especially in a world where many people can’t even buy sufficient groceries for their family.
28. The amount of surveillance/tracking apps and more that parents have on their kids. It gets really sad when they hit college and they are looking for ways to detach from their parents knowing what/where they are up to 24/7.
29. Parents not having even minimal standards for their children’s behavior, and expecting other people to be alright with it. I really don’t care that he is having “big feelings.” He is lying in the aisle of the supermarket, screaming at the top of his lungs, having a full blown tantrum because you said no. Grow a pair.
30. Lawnmower parenting. Not only do they hover over their kids, they mow down anyone who does something they don’t like. They’re the “you can’t wear that shirt where my kids might see it” and “you’d better allow my child into this 21+ establishment but not show them anything inappropriate” type.
31. Imho using chores as a punishment is a great formula to raise a slob. Chores should be portrayed as something you do to maintain a nice living space, help your stuff last longer and overall make things easier.
32. Using their child to promote their own political objectives.