As the Mother of Black Sons, Gentle Parenting Doesn’t Work for Me

By: Dr. Leia Belt-Gray

Social media and technology have reshaped every facet of social life, including parenting. In addition to giving parents space to share and connect, it seems like every other targeted ad in my feed is either from an account promoting gentle parenting or an app promising to help me calm down.

Brown University Health describes gentle parenting as an approach rooted in empathy, respect, developmental understanding, and connection rather than punishment or behavioral rewards. In this paradigm, Parents are expected to help children identify and regulate emotions while modeling kindness, self-discipline, and calm boundary-setting. 

Gentle parenting techniques aim to instill four main elements in children: empathy, respect, understanding, and boundaries. Yet, as a Black woman, medical sociologist, and mother of two Black sons in a society structured by anti-black racism, I find those core principles difficult and incongruent with the realities of navigating being racialized as a Black person living in America. 

In a society where policies, institutions, schools, policing, and even the news cycle repeatedly demonstrate a lack of empathy, respect, and understanding toward Black bodies throughout our entire lives, I have to ask whether gentle parenting alone can prepare my son for the world he will inherit.

The problem is not that Black children are undeserving of gentleness. Quite the opposite. My Black babies deserve a childhood filled with tenderness, patience, and the freedom to experience the full range of his emotions. But the larger conversation around gentle parenting often treats the world outside our homes as racially neutral. It assumes that if children learn to regulate their emotions, communicate their needs, and move through conflict with empathy, the adults and institutions they encounter will respond with the same care. For Black children, we know that is not always true.

A Black child’s anger, loudness, resistance, fear, or even ordinary childhood behavior can be interpreted differently by teachers, neighbors, authority figures, and police. Black boys and girls are often denied the presumption of innocence that childhood is supposed to provide. Research underscores that even in preschool, Black children are disciplined at far higher rates than white children. Black children are also more likely to experience punitive responses in schools, including arrest and physical force by school resource officers. In parts of the South, corporal punishment remains legal in public schools, meaning children in disproportionately Black communities can still be paddled as a form of discipline. 

[Gentle parenting] assumes that if children learn to regulate their emotions, communicate their needs, and move through conflict with empathy, the adults and institutions they encounter will respond with the same care. For Black children, we know that is not always true.

Black children are not simply punished more harshly; they are often expected to become quieter, less disruptive, and more compliant. That expectation extends beyond school discipline to how Black children’s emotions and behavior are understood. Black boys are frequently denied the freedom to be angry, loud, frustrated, frightened, or defiant without those emotions being read as aggression and are often perceived as larger.

The recent political discourse around psychiatric medication offers a disturbing example. During an April 2026 congressional hearing, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confronted about earlier remarks in which he claimed that Black children were routinely placed on Adderall, SSRIs, and benzodiazepines and connected those medications to violence. 

The available research does not support the idea that Black children are disproportionately more aggressive or that they are being prescribed these medications; in fact, Black youth have historically been less likely than white youth to receive antidepressants and other psychotropic treatment. What is revealing is not the inaccuracy of Kennedy’s claim, but how easily Black childhood, mental health, medication, aggression, and violence can be placed in the same sentence.

Gentle parenting asks parents to slow down: to regulate our emotions, explain, listen, and give children time to process. But Black children are not always afforded that same time outside the home. One of the most influential examples of this in my own thinking about parenting is the shortened life of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy who was shot by a Cleveland police officer within roughly two seconds of the officer arriving at the park where Tamir was playing with a toy gun. 

What parenting technique prepares a Black child for an encounter in which he may have only seconds to understand a command, control his fear, regulate his body, and respond in a way that an armed adult perceives as nonthreatening? 

My choice is not to reject gentle parenting, but to redefine it for the world my beautiful Black children live in. For me, gentle parenting means creating a home where both my children and I can express our emotions, where we apologize when our behavior hurts one another, and where love is not confused with permissiveness.

It means paying attention to the ways racist, alienating, and overly punitive spaces can shape the psyche of Black children, and making intentional choices about where and how they learn, what media they consume, and how much technology enters their lives. It also means making space to praise my children in ways that build self-confidence, self-efficacy, curiosity, and pride in their bodies, while still teaching them that growth requires effort, accountability, and sometimes discomfort. 

And yes, sometimes I raise my voice. Sometimes urgency requires it. What matters to me is not performing a perfect version of gentleness but building a relationship strong enough that my sons know the difference between correction and rejection, between discipline and shame. Perhaps that is what gentle parenting has to mean for Black families: not preparing our children for a world that will always be gentle with them, but giving them enough tenderness, confidence, discernment, and love at home to navigate a world that often will not be.