The unparalleled leader of the gentle parenting movement (2024)

One thing most parents will agree on is that raising children can be overwhelming. There is no shortage of advice on how best to navigate these challenges, from potty training to social-emotional learning, and a handful of professional names have become synonymous with providing expertise to particular generations. With Baby Boomers, for example, it was Benjamin Spock, better known as Dr. Spock. And today's parents have come to rely on a clinical psychologist named Becky Kennedy, known by millions as Dr. Becky.

From Covid-19 social posts to bestselling parenting guru

Dr. Becky's teachings were a go-to resource for many during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, and her 2022 book, "Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want To Be," became a New York Times bestseller. Today, the Manhattan-based Kennedy remains the advice-giver of choice for millennial parents, as well as the ideological baton-passer between generational parenting styles. Grandparents who are flabbergasted by the seeming permissiveness of their children's parenting should look no further than Kennedy for an explanation of what their offspring are up to.

Kennedy's path to fame was paved by her Instagram account, launched in 2020, where she posted short clips acting out both sides of child-parent role plays. These videos often went viral, thanks to their ability to speak directly to parents' deepest frustrations, particularly during the long days of stay-at-home quarantine orders. She covered topics like how to deal with recalcitrance at bedtime or how to talk to toddlers who push back on every decision. Kennedy's confessional-style videos "made her feel like a parent who was in the trenches with me," said The Cut's Liz Krieger.

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The basic philosophy behind Kennedy’s teachings is gentle parenting, a method that aims to respond to a child's emotional reality rather than jumping straight into strict discipline. When children are acting out, Kennedy encourages parents to say, "you're a good kid having a hard time." Kennedy asks a parent, in effect, to consider how losing their temper with a child may lead them toward emotional dysregulation. "You see your kid as being on the same team, like, it’s me and my kid against a problem, not me against my kid," she said to the New Yorker.

"Her delivery … connects more with parents in this moment"

After Kennedy's pandemic-era Instagram reels struck a nerve, she capitalized on it, launching a website called Good Inside (at this point, it has upwards of 48,000 paid subscribers) and a podcast. She is now the kind of sought-after expert who can charge up to $100,000 for a speaking fee. She also single-handedly invented a new concept — the Deeply Feeling Kid — which has helped many parents make sense of their children's emotional inscrutability and difficulty with opening up about their feelings.

Some of Kennedy's success can likely be attributed to the way she channels parents' frantic energy in her videos and often seems, herself, tired and worn out. There's "something about her delivery that connects more with parents in this moment," said Time's Doree Shafrir in a piece that deemed her the "Millennial Parenting Whisperer."

Many millennials practice gentle parenting, although not everyone is on board. The movement recommends that parents "approach kids with respect and empathy and give space to the child's feelings and emotions," said The Cut's Amil Niazi. The method is meant to combat children's anxiety and lack of resilience that some critics blame on so-called "helicopter parenting," as well as the emotional toll of the carrot-and-stick schemes that many Generation X parents have wielded, like time-outs and sticker-based rewards. To critics like Niazi, who believes gentle parenting is sometimes "too gentle," these methods can turn something like getting out the door for a routine school day into "an hour-plus long exercise of careful and precise negotiation." Still, at the end of that negotiation, there's a good chance the parent in question will dial up an episode of Good Inside for support and reinforcement. And Dr. Becky will be there to help.