People Say These 15 Parenting Trends Must End Immediately
Introduction A heated online conversation about parenting has become almost as common as politics and religion. A Reddit AskReddit thread asked: What’s a modern parenting trend that needs to die immediately? More than 2,400 people weighed in, raising concerns about how technology, social media, AI, screens, and over-sheltering shape today’s kids. The roundup isn’t just nitpicking. It’s a telegraph of anxieties about how children are raised, how they interact with peers, and what happens when adults try to optimize every moment of a child’s life. If you only read the headlines, you’ll miss the nuance; if you read the full thread, you’ll find a range of thoughtful criticisms about doing right by our kids in a shifting world. Note: Quotes from the original thread appear in the sections that follow, verbatim where they appear. Section titles below condense each trend into a clear, factual headline.
In This Article:
- Kids’ social media accounts
- Unsupervised play vs helicopter parenting
- Treating kids like a project to optimize
- Vitamin K for newborns
- Gentle parenting and the need for boundaries
- Emotional enmeshment with your kids
- Homeschooling when you are not qualified
- Not exposing youths to uncomfortable experiences
- Ridiculous baby names and pronunciation
- Letting kids near AI and overreliance on technology
- Beige children and the color question
- Kids' fashion and over-styling
- Pacifying toddlers with screens
- Sports dreams and the money question
- Reading to kids and modeling reading
Kids’ social media accounts
“Kids' Instagram accounts.” “Or Facebooks. Any social media, really. There were a few parents I knew had Facebooks for their kids as online \"dairies.\" They were public and shared almost every detail of the kids' lives up until they either gave up on them or deleted them. Bonkers.” "I've long since lost touch with them but I knew someone who started a Facebook page for her unborn child. She had pictures of her ultrasounds on it and would write posts in the tone of her unborn child along the lines of 'mommy I can't wait to be born and come meet you.'" The concern here is clear: social media accounts for children, and public sharing of a child’s life, bring long-term implications for privacy, identity, and autonomy.
Unsupervised play vs helicopter parenting
“Heard an interesting segment on a radio program recently about how children NEED unsupervised, unstructured play (ideally outside with other kids). Helicopter parenting and turning every activity into organized competition is robbing kids of important developmental skills and independence.” A significant thread in the thread is that kids today experience little free play because adults keep them overly structured and monitored. Unstructured play is essential to their development because it gives them agency over their own lives and allows them to negotiate relationships, take risks, and solve problems.
Treating kids like a project to optimize
“Treating kids like a project to optimize instead of people who are allowed to be bored, messy, and human.” “It’s the 'gardener vs. the carpenter.' We have much less control over who our children become than we think we do. If there’s a dandelion seed in the ground it’s not going to become a tulip no matter how hard you try. All you can do is make sure the soil is nourishing so they can be the best damn dandelion in the yard.” This section delves into the idea that parents often try to engineer outcomes rather than nurture natural development, recognizing that children grow best when they are allowed to be themselves within a nurturing environment.
Vitamin K for newborns
“Nurse here- Refusing vitamin K for your newborn. I’ve never seen an infant harmed as a result of a vitamin K shot… but I have seen one die as a result of a brain bleed that could have been prevented with a routine vitamin K injection.” “I work at a pediatric hospital. The number of newborns with life-altering brain bleeds that get flown in to us because the mom refused the Vit K is mind-blowing. Like the baby shows up 24 hours old, and their life is over because of a major bleed that will now eat away any brain tissue they have.” This item highlights the real, life-and-death stakes around a medical decision some parents face at birth and the consequences of refusing Vitamin K.
Gentle parenting and the need for boundaries
“Gentle parenting turning into no parenting, like ma'am, that child needs boundaries, not a podcast.” “Agreed. I work with young children (2-5), and I see this a lot. Kids need boundaries. If you set a boundary and the child throws a tantrum, SO WHAT? Let them. I think it’s good that parents in general are trying to be more gentle than maybe their parents were to them, but it tends to go too far in the opposite direction.” “Claiming you are doing 'Gentle Parenting' when you aren't. Gentle Parenting is treating your children like human beings with emotions and needs. It isn't a magical buzzword that lets you be a negligent parent with no repercussions.” Gentle parenting is a strategy that emphasizes emotional validation, firm but respectful boundaries, and empathy. Supporters believe that it helps kids with communication skills, emotional intelligence, and trust. Critics believe that it makes it hard for kids to handle authority and can easily slide into overly permissive parenting.
Emotional enmeshment with your kids
“Emotional enmeshment with your kids. Your kids aren't your best friends. They are your kids.” “My mom treated me like an emotional support animal to the point of damaging relationships with her actual friends and sabotaging my attempts at making friends until I cut her off at 26. Our last conversation resulted in me hanging up on her mid-sentence because she was trying to scare me out of getting to know someone who's now my best friend. It was astounding to realize just how much her latching onto me was making me miserable.”
Homeschooling when you are not qualified
“Homeschooling when you are in absolutely no way qualified to.” “The least educated, least organized, and most unreliable mom-friend I have is the one who is homeschooling her kids. I honestly think it’s because she is too lazy to wake early to get them to school on time.” Not every family has access to safe, high-quality formal schooling. But this thread reflects a concern that homeschooling is not a substitute for proper training, structure, and resources.
Not exposing youths to uncomfortable experiences
“Not exposing our youths to stuff that makes them uncomfortable. This leads to socially anxious teens, who get a panic attack from normal everyday interactions. People who are afraid of their own shadow. Youths who cannot trust that you'll get through the unpleasant experiences.”
Ridiculous baby names and pronunciation
“You mean you’re not a fan of 'Myckhenzleigh'?” “Saw one last weekend, Kahriz. Asked the kids coach 'How is that pronounced?' Chris.” “I came across a Xakary the other day.” Names are a way to express identity, but this thread suggests that extreme spellings and invented-name trends can affect a child’s social navigation and self-image.
Letting kids near AI and overreliance on technology
“Letting kids anywhere near that AI. I thought cheating was bad enough in my day but holy sh*t is CheatGPT getting outta hand, our next generation is gonna be braindead if this keeps up.” “Part of my job is skills development training. I getting tired of arguing with the class when they tell me they dont need to learn because 'they can just ask ai.'” The thread points to concerns about how AI and chatbots shape learning, attention, and effort.
Beige children and the color question
“Sad beige children. Kids need colors to aid in their mental and cognitive development. Children need a childhood more than beige moms need ugly aesthetic pictures.”
Kids' fashion and over-styling
“I find parents who always dress their kids super trendy gross. For normal days I just let my kid choose his clothes, IDGAF he's a kid.”
Pacifying toddlers with screens
“Pacifying your toddler by handing them a screen.”
Sports dreams and the money question
“Thinking your kid is going to play professional sports. Look only 7% of HS athletes go on to play college athletics at any level. In sports where there is a draft (Football, baseball, hockey, basketball, softball, soccer) only 2.7% of draft eligible athletes get drafted. That means in those sports IF you play HS ball, you have a 0.19% of going pro. Your 8-year-old is probably not part of that 0.19%. You dont need to spend 10s of thousands of dollars on them playing on the very best travel teams. Let them be kids.” “Bottom line is new parents should just dump money into their kids' 529 the second they're born rather than rely on some scholarship that will never materialize for 93% of them, let alone lead to a pro career.” The text cautions against pushing children into a professional trajectory at too young an age and points to realistic odds.
Reading to kids and modeling reading
“Not reading. Read to your kids. Read for yourself. It matters less than feeding them, but not a lot less.” “This is huge. It's basically free and makes a lifelong difference. If the parents can't read, or can't read in the target language, they can still take their kids to libraries or other places that can cultivate a love for reading. I teach community college freshmen. I have no idea who was breastfed or even vaccinated (things people spend too much time obsessing about, one of which doesn't even actually matter), but I could probably guess with 95% accuracy whose families encouraged reading.” Not reading is a trend worth ending; reading to kids fosters literacy, empathy, and lifelong curiosity, while modeling reading yourself reinforces the habit.
