A Filipino Parent’s Guide: What Is Permissive Parenting?

Here’s what permissive parenting means and what it is

“Gentle parenting” recently gained a bad rap for making kids too soft. Frustration and resentment build. Resilience dips. Parents now scratch their heads and wonder why the kids of today can’t cope with reality’s uncomfortable truths. Unfortunately, the reason is quite simple: because somewhere down the road, some of us began to do permissive parenting instead of the former.

That’s the tricky thing about parenting styles. Focus too much on one aspect and it can literally make everything fall to the wayside.

What Is Permissive Parenting?

Coined by psychologist Diana Baumrind in the 1960s, Permissive Parenting often described parents who were highly “nurturing and communicative” but “avoided confrontation, rarely used discipline, and set minimal expectations.” (Butts, 2024)

From the definition alone, it’s no surprise many Filipinos think that parents of today have gotten too soft. Gentle parenting, or at the least the popular version of it circulating around social media, often involved “validating” their child’s big and uncomfortable feelings. What the reels often don’t show however is the accountability that happens after—a crucial element in any form of parenting.

For example, if our kids start to cry because they spilled something, permissive parenting looks like this:

Permissive Parent: “Oh, it’s okay to be upset. Here, I’ll just clean it up.”
Authoritarian Parent: “Ang bobo mo, ba’t mo tinapon!?” (Let’s be honest, every Filipino parent sounds angrier in Tagalog or their native language.)
Authoritative/ Gentle Parent: “Oh that’s bad. Go get tissue or a towel. Ikaw ang maglinis.”

Why Today’s Filipino Parents Easily Fall Into Permissive Parenting

When the stress of unresolved family issues and drama compounds, today’s Filipino parents often swear to themselves, in an inaudible murmur, “I will not be like them.” Or, as we commonly see, “ayoko magiging ganyan. Ever.“

Unfortunately, that’s where the tightrope act between gentle parenting and permissive parenting begins. The complexity of “not being like the old parents” cannot be defined purely by what was “good” and “bad.”

Some things worked, but like everything else—it comes with an exchange. It’s as the famous anime, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, so popularized the rule: The Law of Equivalent Exchange. To get something, we need to swap it with something else. It may be a rule often applied in alchemy or chemistry, but the core of it applies with everything else: balance is fundamental.

It applies to parenting too. But the years of unexplained reactions and unprompted surge of emotions make it difficult to see that. The “damage” can appear more glaring than the good it provided, which is why we tend to “fawn” or validate more.

We grew up knowing the damage “confrontation” leaves us with. Haunting echoes of slammed doors. Sharp stamps from the tsinelas. Words that twist and carve like, “lumayas ka!” or the whole dictionary of curse words spat into our faces. Knowing which eyebrow twitch means anger and which one means amusement. Some even challenge, “What will it be today? The hand, the belt, or the hanger?” Those who grew up with that even developed a tier system, “Huh, they’re using the hand today. Guess they’re either not that mad.” Or, “Oh, it’s the hand today. That’s not so bad.”

However, we forget another common fact: nobody deals with confrontation well. Some even argue, those who can handle confrontation are either too cold to care or have enough wisdom because they’ve done enough crazy to last a lifetime.

Can We Reverse The Negative Effects From Permissive Parenting?

Some parents have already started. Besides denouncing the “popular” version of gentle parenting, they developed one they call the “FAFO” style. Slang and often short for “f*ck around and find out,” some parents adopted that style and decided to apply an old adage: “Experience is the best teacher.” Or, as we Filipinos love to say, “Bahala siya diyan.”

Another variation of that approach includes, “If the kids got themselves into that mess, they can get themselves out it.”

]It may sound like abandonment and counterintuitive to our parenting instincts, but swooping into save doesn’t do them much justice either. They don’t learn how to fight. Instead, they learn how to call for their parents or simply walk away or all over us when they don’t get what they want.

Balancing Validation and Confrontation

While we got the “gentle” part down from Gentle Parenting, we now move onto the next stage: holding them accountable. Life isn’t going to handle them with kiddie gloves and it’s up to us to show them that.

However, this doesn’t mean screaming at them and throwing stuff on the wall. Not only is that expensive and a pain to clean up, it also doesn’t solve the problem. Does screaming at a towel wipe up the milk that spilled? It sure doesn’t, but picking a kitchen towel and making the kid who spilled it does.

It may tug on our heartstrings a bit when they stare at us with their tear-stained or snot-filled faces, but that’s a small exchange for making them better people. Because permissive parenting, as many studies have shown, is what leads to entitled kids.

References

Fadlillah, M., & Fauziah, S. (2022). Analysis of Diana Baumrind’s parenting style on early childhood development. Al-Ishlah: Jurnal Pendidikan, 14(2), 2127-2134.

Butts, R. (2024). Permissive parenting. EBSCO Research Starters. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/social-sciences-and-humanities/permissive-parenting

More about parenting styles?

Gentle Parenting: 3 Moms Share Why They Prefer This Parenting Style
Bianca Roque Brandner: Embracing Our Unique Parenting Styles
The 4 Parenting Styles Explained and Made Easy