Today’s parents need to ignore the latest buzzwords

Helicopter parenting. Tiger parenting. Free-range parenting. We hear these buzzwords all the time and they are supposed to describe the “best” approaches for parents to take raising their children.

But do any of these parenting styles have ample evidence to support effectiveness as a parenting approach? In short, “not really.”

Social scientists who study parenting rarely, if ever, use these buzzword concepts. When these scientists, like myself, want to predict what kind of parenting affects children’s development, we consider different variables.

So what really matters in parenting according to the evidence?

There are well-known risk factors that undermine children’s health and development and there are also protective factors. They include traumatic childhood experiences that parents themselves may have experienced, such as mental illness or addictions, family violence and poverty. These factors may prevent parents from engaging in consistent sensitive and responsive interactions with their children, which promotes children’s optimal brain, cognitive and social-emotional development.

According to the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, such traumatic childhood experiences can be “toxic” to children’s development. This toxicity is observable at the cellular level — in an attempt to cope, their bodies produce the stress hormone cortisol at persistently high levels.

In normal situations, cortisol levels would come down as the stressor passes. However, in chronically stressed children, the high cortisol levels remain over time, negatively impact a range of body and brain systems and contribute to ill health over their lifetime.

But there’s good news in the evidence too. Research shows these stressors are only toxic in the context of low levels of protective factors. So, what provides “protective factors” for healthy development?

Abundant research shows that healthy “serve and return relationships” — parent-child bonds characterized by high sensitivity and appropriate responsiveness — can buffer the impacts of trauma on children’s health and development. When a child “serves up” a cue to indicate a need and their parent reliably responds, this builds trust and a healthy parentchild attachment. Also important are parental social supports. This can include reliable friends, family and professionals, like health care providers who can provide information, advice, reassurance, caring and even help with household tasks. “Reflective function” is also a protective factor. It describes the ability of having insight into your own thoughts and feelings and the ability to envision what another person thinks and feels. It helps a parent understand what might underpin their child’s behaviour and can be learned with practice.

Parenting experts do not waste time with pop culture conceptions of best or worst approaches. You can throw the buzzwords away, in other words.