Is Intensive Parenting Helping or Hurting Kids?

There are a lot of things to worry about as modern parents, from the impact of social media on our kids, to violence in schools. But some of us may be worrying so much that our parenting style leans toward overprotective, and even stifling.

I’m talking about intensive parenting, a term which dates back to 1996 when a sociologist named Sharon Hays coined “intensive mothering.”

The term, which has been compared to helicopter parenting, was brought into the spotlight recently through some parents on TikTok. “We’re now in a position where we have to figure out if we continue putting all of ourselves into our children to help them become better humans or if we scale it back,” one parent shares in a TikTok video talking about the parenting style.

Raquel Herrero-Arias, PhD, a researcher of kids and parents at the University of Bergen in Norway, recently also spoke of wanting to research this parenting style. She sees intensive parenting as a style where caregivers are potentially doing too much, to the detriment of the entire family.

While intensive parenting can have benefits, including building parent-child bonds through more time spent together, it can also lead to issues when taken too far.

What Does Intensive Parenting Mean?

You may practice intensive parenting if you constantly strive to keep your kids entertained, rarely leave them in the care of others, and advocate for them to the point of not respecting boundaries with teachers and coaches. 

I’ll admit to being guilty of some intensive parenting habits, such as organizing my life around my children, and investing too much of myself into their emotional state, as well as obsessing over whether I handled tricky situations well enough.

Some aspects of intensive parenting take the notion of the child-centered family further, with parents basing their entire sense of well-being upon kids’ successes in life. Parents may even attempt to live vicariously through their kids, and worry, well, intensely about their futures.

Intensive parenting typically also includes parents being heavily involved in a child’s academics, extracurricular activities, and social interactions. They may often also step in to help their kids solve problems or handle challenges.

While putting your kids first isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to experts, intensive parenting can lead to unhealthy pressures being placed on kids, and parents who aren’t focusing on themselves, to the point of leading a dangerously unbalanced life.

What’s Causing Intensive Parenting?

It’s believed parents are turning to an intensive style of child-rearing because raising our families in the modern world is more difficult and therefore requires ramped up supervision. Here’s why.

Social media pressures

Experts say social media is a huge cause of intensive parenting.

“Most of us know, on a cognitive level, that social media is a highlight reel—a small piece of what actually happens,” says Anne Welsh, PhD, a Belmont, Massachusetts-based clinical psychologist and specialist in maternal mental health. “However, that constant exposure to other ways of doing things—seemingly perfect ways—starts to have an impact on us.”

For example, a 2024 Little Sleepies survey found about 73% of moms compares themselves to other parents on social media. And 77% of moms report feeling “mom guilt” because of social media.

Dr. Welsh reports, “I have seen clients whose mental health and parenting confidence improves significantly when they spend less time on social media.”

Lauren Canonico, LCSW, a New York City-based psychotherapist and adjunct professor at Affirmative Therapy Collective, agrees that social media plays a big role in pressuring parents.

“From showing perfectly-packed lunches to allegedly Montessori-approved activities that require hours of preparation, and presenting these as normal, daily activities, we’ve made parents feel that the baseline must be extraordinary, with no room for deviation or falling short,” she explains.

Rise in parenting expectations

Social media isn’t the only reason parenting today is so demanding. Dr. Welsh believes that overall, the expectations for parents have risen dramatically in recent years. 

“There is an expectation that we are perfectly emotionally regulated, endlessly available, and always present,” she says. “While those might be laudable goals, they also aren’t reality.”

Canonico underscores that for her, there is no question this current moment creates greater difficulty for parents.

“The world we live in is busier, more demanding, and more expensive than any time that has come before,” she says. “We’re expecting the same things from ourselves—possibly more given the pressures for perfection—with far less disposable time and income to get it done than past generations.”

Given these perspectives, it’s easy to see how parents turn to an intensive style to cope with the many seeming-requirements of raising our kids today.

A parent’s own upbringing

Outside of the demands of raising small humans at this unprecedented time, there are other factors that may drive caregivers toward intensive parenting. 

“A common theme I see in parenting styles is a pendulum swing from what came before,” says Canonico. “Gen X-ers and Millennials, the two primary groups raising children right now, both have their own unique generational baggage.”

Gen X-ers were the first latchkey kids, whose parents may have both worked, and therefore they came home to an empty house, unsupervised, after school.

Meanwhile, as Canonico explains, “Millennials have faced crisis after crisis, often feeling unprotected and unprepared, and relying on over-work and hustle culture as guard against this.”

In her view, both generations are working to prevent their kids from going through their lived experiences. 

Personality type

Sometimes, it comes down to a parent’s personality. Dr. Welsh sees caregivers with certain personality types leaning into intensive parenting, including high achievers and perfectionists.

“They are used to approaching everything with hard work, strategic planful thinking, and thoughtful analysis,” she explains. 

What Are the Cons of Intensive Parenting?

As Dr. Welsh emphasizes, it’s wonderful to care intensely about your kids, and be involved in their lives. And the role of a parent is obviously to look after kids’ well-being, developmental needs, and future success, as Canonico points out. The downside is that doing all of this with overbearing intensity can actually lead to stress for the whole family.

“The goal of parenting is to show our kids that they are loved,” Dr. Welsh says. “In intensive parenting, we can inadvertently send the message that we are only good enough if we are perfect.”

Intensive parenting also doesn’t take a parent’s own needs into account. So, not only are we placing undue pressure on our kids if our entire sense of self-worth depends on them, but this approach takes a toll on parents’ mental health. “Yet, we know that one of the most important things for kids’ wellness is having a well parent,” shares Dr. Welsh.

Canonico adds, “If intensive parenting is interfering with our own ability to care for ourselves, what are we modeling for our kids?”

On top of that, every child is an individual with so many factors that determine how they develop in life. And not all kids, even in the same family, respond to the same parenting style, as a mom of many like myself can attest to.

How To Deal With Intensive Parenting

If you see yourself relating to intensive parenting attributes, there are many things you can do to course correct—and that won’t necessarily involve an overhaul of your entire worldview. “Parents can think about toning down the intensity rather than dropping it,” advises Dr. Welsh.

Here are specific ways to find more of a middle ground with your parenting style that will benefit both parents and kids:

• Remember it’s OK for kids to be bored sometimes. Let them figure out how to spend their time free of organized activities or direction from you.
• Empower kids to problem-solve on their own. Resist the urge to take over and allow them space to work through conflict.
• Avoid comparing yourself to other families. Consider what is important to your family and focus on that, while also working on trusting your own parenting instincts.
• Evaluate what the most enjoyable aspects of parenting are versus the most stressful. Try and focus on things that bring your family joy, not angst.

In the end, Canonico offers this advice to parents: “It can be hard to give yourself permission to do less, but if in doing less you are able to offer more to yourself and your kids, that is such a win in my book.”