First came the “helicopter parents.” But we worried the constant hovering made our children insecure. Then came the bulldozer parents seeking to remove any and all obstacles out of our child’s path. Turns out that wasn’t so great, either.
Then tiger parents pushed their children to be highly successful, while jellyfish parents were lenient and flexible. The so-called “crunchy moms” banned plastics and sugars from their homes, silky moms served their kids sugary drinks in plastic cups, and scrunchy moms met them somewhere in the middle.
All while almond moms and Apple Watch dads focused on their wellness, Sharenters posted each and every moment of parenting online, and Momfluencers made a profit from a well-placed sponsored post or two along the way.
Then came the age of gentle parents, but now some of us are realizing we’ve been, perhaps, too gentle.
So where, pray tell, does that leave modern parents now?
Lighthouses.
While parenting trends come and go, and the term “lighthouse parenting” has been in the lexicon for a few years now, it’s recently started gaining traction.
Lighthouse parents, according to Parents magazine, provide a stable source of guidance for their children — like a lighthouse — while also giving them the freedom to grow and learn. They are sturdy, reliable, but not controlling, according to a recent piece in The Atlantic.
A new advisory from the U.S. surgeon general warns parenting can drastically impact mental and physical health, citing extreme stress from financial strain, time demands and societal pressures.
The lighthouse method is a balanced approach, and develops emotionally healthy children and adolescents “who go on to have deep, enduring relationships with their parents for their entire lifetime,” says U.S. pediatrician Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg in his upcoming manual, Lighthouse Parenting: Raising Your Child With Loving Guidance for a Lifelong Bond, scheduled for publication in March 2025.
In an earlier blog post, Ginsburg, a leading proponent of lighthouse parenting who is also the founder of the Center for Parent and Teen Communications, wrote that lighthouse parents are “a stable force on the shoreline [a] child can measure themselves against.”
“I see it as my job to look down at the rocks and make sure they do not crash against them. I look into the waves and trust they will eventually learn to ride them on their own. But I will prepare them to do so,” he wrote.
A middle ground?
Julie Romanowski, a parenting coach and consultant based in Vancouver, says of all the different parenting styles out there, this one actually resonates with her the most both personally and professionally.
“A lighthouse’s whole purpose is to guide,” Romanowski told CBC News, while emphasizing that when children need guidance most is when they’re experiencing big feelings.
“It’s sturdy, it’s anchored, it’s strong and yet it’s peaceful and confident in what its role is and what it’s doing.”
She says she suspects the sudden appeal of this approach may be due to parents seeking a middle ground between authoritative and gentle parenting, which is facing a bit of a backlash over the pressure it puts on parents.
Lighthouse parenting seems to stem from a combination of not wanting to fall prey to what’s been dubbed “safetyism” in parenting literature — essentially, being too overbearing — and the idea that parents are still meant to be available to their children, says Vanessa Lapointe, a registered psychologist and parenting consultant based in Surrey, B.C., and the author of Discipline without Damage.
“Certainly those concepts line up with the developmental literature about what it is that children need,” Lapointe said.
Information overload and parent stress
But Lapointe also emphasized that trends like these contribute to parental overwhelm, especially as they try to navigate what’s backed by research and what should just be ignored.
“The reality is there is way too much information coming at parents these days. It’s like they’re all at the end of a fire hose,” she said.
Google “parenting” and you’ll get, quite literally, a billion different results — 1.07 billion as of Tuesday, to be exact.
Amid a constant influx of information online, so much of it conflicting, experts have said parents today often experience information overload.
A study published last year in the International Journal of Behavioral Development suggested that parents who felt less in control were more likely to search for parenting information online — and that their feelings of being overwhelmed by all that information just made them search more.
In August, in a new public health advisory, the U.S. surgeon general warned that today’s parents are feeling burned out and “perpetually behind” from comparing themselves — and their parenting strategies — to what they see online.
Vanessa Lapointe, author of Parenting Right From The Start, says parents ensuring they are ‘self-full’ is the most selfless thing they can do.
Terms or trends like lighthouse parenting are really not helpful and can contribute to parenting stress, says Dr. Ashley Miller, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia who is also a child and adolescent psychiatrist.
“Parenting shouldn’t be a fad or put into boxes in my opinion,” she said in an email statement.
So, are we being lighthouses?
Many of those who promote lighthouse parenting says it’s not a trendy term like helicopter parenting, but a balanced approach to raising children.
“There are all these cultural terms that people use,” Ginsburg, the pediatrician and author, says in a YouTube video posted to his website.
“None of it makes a difference. We know what makes a difference. It’s balanced parenting. It’s parenting that is loving and warm, and absolutely watches, but understands that preparation is protection.”
Even back in 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics endorsed Ginsburg’s approaches to help children “develop the ability to negotiate their own challenges and to be more resilient, more capable, and happier.”
But Parents magazine says lighthouse parenting isn’t for everyone, and that “parents tend to be inherently wired to want to help their kids in any way possible.”
Some children also need more guidance and structure than others, it says.
Miller says the key message is that parents and families benefit from practical and emotional support.
“If society values healthy child development, we need to put resources and energy into this, not asking parents to learn and do more or subscribe to specific narrow parenting styles,” she said.
Still, the idea of lighthouse parenting does appeal to many parents, like Russel Shaw, a contributor to The Atlantic who wrote that “Sometimes, the best thing a parent can do is nothing at all.”
Just remember that even if lighthouse parenting resonates with you, you don’t need to learn everything about it immediately or try to follow it perfectly, Romanowski said.
After all, she said, “Tomorrow, something else is going to come out.”