Maggie Jackson looks at emerging research around contexts of precarity.
16 June 2026
Order your tearful child to cut the fussing or she's going home like it or not, and you'll probably raise eyebrows in the playground and even in the scientific community. Squelching or punishing a youngster's distress tends to be deemed harsh, a foil to expectations that good parents gently hash out nearly every whim and tear.
When Angel Dunbar, a young developmental scientist and a refugee from Liberia's civil wars, first read in graduate school that such 'directive' parenting – a norm in many families experiencing precarity – was largely seen by social scientists as insensitive and even problematic, she felt demoralised. She was raised by loving, commanding women who set strict boundaries on children's misbehaviour or tears. As a beloved aunt, she doesn't hesitate to do so. Simplistically portraying such parenting as a 'bad thing' felt dehumanising. 'I am looking at my Black mother and my Black aunts, that's not who they are,' says Dunbar, a University of Maryland assistant professor. 'The story was incomplete.'
Now Dunbar and other rising social scientists, many with lived experience of adversity, are looking to flesh out that story. While preliminary, new studies suggest that the directive parenting historically linked to problems in children can be harmless, even helpful, for kids in precarity. Issue stern commands, take the lead at playtime, minimise or even punish a child's distress, and you may be preparing a child for a risky world.
The discoveries don't overturn the foundations of good child-rearing: love, support, and guidance. But revisiting assumptions about 'no-nonsense' parenting offers a chance to question dominant models of good caregiving that often put parents of colour, low resources or from non-Western cultures on the wrong side of the ledger. At stake is not just fairness, but a potential toolkit for anxious parents worried about how to rear kids for a world in flux.
Beyond 'safe' and 'predictable'
For decades, parents in the industrialised West have been counseled to let their kid take the lead in play and conversation, while responding promptly to every gurgle and outcry. 'Responsive' parents, a forerunner to today's 'gentle' parents, still set boundaries and use discipline. But the goal is to prioritise a child's freedom, a standard of such constant attention that new parents often wonder, 'how do I even go to the bathroom?' In contrast, directive parents issue more orders than questions ('Do it now!'); use punishments (shunned in gentle parenting); and at times restrict tears and anger. Most parents use both approaches to some degree but overall, directive caregivers lean more toward 'Parent knows best!' than 'What does Junior feel like now?'. In the scientific circles that shape popular parenting lore, directiveness is still largely considered 'non-supportive.'
No-nonsense parenting's bad rap emerged from decades of studies linking such practices to misbehaviour and other problems in children. The catch is that these issues largely have been found in middle-class, European-American families that have been the main focus of parenting research led by scientists of similar backgrounds. In essence, many norms of good parenting are based on what works in safe, predictable environments.
Now research on diverse families in adversity is casting directiveness in a new light. A study led by Erika Bocknek of American Jewish University, for example, found that low-income Black toddlers of commanding, supportive mothers managed their distress better than kids whose parents were less so. In studies of mostly low-income familiesled by University of Missouri-St. Louis psychology professor Emily Gerstein, dual-language Latinx two-year-olds of parents who more persistently controlled playtime did not develop worse behaviour a year later.
The findings don't defend truly harsh parents who coldly or excessively shame or control their children. Yet a growing number of scientists are realising that, as Bocknek says, 'we've gone too far' in equating directiveness with harshness. 'Sensitivity' may look very different in a precarious world.
Consider what happens when a child runs into the street: almost all parents issue a quick command. For families experiencing systematic adversity, parenting is an endeavour of relentless risk and urgency. Says one low-income mother, 'We live in a world that nobody wants to shelter you from anything.' Directives can deliver vital teachings, like the importance of staying cool in the face of authority or tinderbox situations. 'No-nonsense parenting is for the purposes of protection,' says Velma McBride Murry of Vanderbilt University, a leading scholar of African American family life.
Today, even mildly misbehaving U.S. minority students tend to be seen by teachers as more hostile than White peers, a bias that may fuel preschooler expulsion rates three times those of White children. While Black families generally value emotional expression, Black mothers see their five-year-old's displays of negative emotions such as anger or distress as less acceptable than European-American mothers do. And they are more likely to suppress such feelings by minimising ('Don't be a baby') or punishing them in order to teach kids 'the appropriate limits of their emotional expression,' note Dunbar and colleagues.
In one of her studies of Black families who prepare their children to cope with bias, five-year-olds with moderately suppressive, highly supportive mothers managed their emotions well a year later during the frustrating task of assembling a puzzle without seeing the pieces. Kids of equally supportive but less suppressive momsdidn't cope as well. While Dunbar's work suggests that suppression may put sensitive children at risk for 'internalising' disorders such as anxiety, for many children directiveness coupled with support and age-appropriate discussions can fuel resilience.
Tailoring programs
For Dunbar, who fled Liberia at age four with her family to escape civil war, the research is deeply felt. In a dangerous world, 'you can't encourage a child to cry whenever they want,' she told me. As her family moved between refugee camps to flee advancing rebels, her mother sometimes clamped a hand over her mouth, telling her, 'You need to be quiet', Dunbar recalls. 'That seems highly negative, but in the context of war, it may save a child's life.'
Recognising resilience doesn't erase adversity's high toll. But by questioning norms based on select slices of humanity, we can recognise that some so-called deficits instead are 'adaptations that help families to survive, help them to thrive,' says neuroscientist Dylan Gee of Yale University, who studies how interventions support brain development. We can remedy the harms caused not just by adversity, but by overly narrow standards of what 'good' parents do.
Labeling directive parenting as negative when it is not, for example, 'makes people quicker to judge behavior as problematic in grocery stores or preschools,' says Gerstein. 'It impacts the way we do interventions, the way we teach,' adding to the stigma that marginalised people disproportionately face.
In addition, interventions that are tone deaf to different ways of parenting can undermine participant engagement and morale, studies show. Programs that try to 'fix' directiveness may even disable families' needed survival strategies. Today, the intervention world is still 'playing catch-up' in tailoring programs to participant needs, yet efforts are shifting this way, says Gee. Researcher Stephanie Irby Coard of the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, for example, works with Black parents to turn 'raw' directives, including preparation for bias messages, into effective 'expressions of care and vigilance'.
Resilience amid challenge
Amid rising precarity, recognising the potential of directive care also offers a timely check on extremes of gentle parenting rippling across social media. Gentle parents' goal of avoiding excessive discipline is natural. Yet expectations thatparents constantly dispense velvety choices not orders, and validate a child's feelings, can, critics say, cultivate a focus on the self that undermines children's adaptability.
All children have the right to grow up free from poverty and oppression. No child should have to be taught to adapt for survival's sake to the demands of bias and want. But all young people need to learn resilience amid challenge. In essence, judiciously directive parents may be teaching increasingly relevant lessons: that urgency isn't always on your clock, that the world doesn't cater to your every whimper. Staying agile in precarious times may be its own kind of terra firma.
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning New York-based science writer and the author most recently of Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure.
SOURCE:
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/sense-no-nonsense-parenting(accessed 19.6.26)
