FAFO parents and the return of Big Boss Mum
At the beginning of this year, a mother in Florida went viral for filming herself throwing her misbehaving child’s iPad out of a window. The comments praised her for taking a consequence-led approach to disciplining her kids. Thanks to this TikTok video, a new parenting acronym was born: FAFO – f*ck around and find out.
FAFO parenting – or what the older among us might simply know as being strict – has emerged in the wake of its softer sister, ‘gentle parenting’. Instead of shouting, smacking, naughty steps or throwing beloved items out of windows, gentle parents prefer to respond to bad behaviour with positivity. Children who wrong in gentle-parenting households will be asked how they feel their actions have affected others, as opposed to previous ways of discipline, which were based on a hierarchy between parent and child – the former dishing out the rules and the latter adhering to them.
It’s hard to follow a ‘style’ of parenting. A good mum or dad knows that every child is unique and requires a different strategy when it comes to socialising them. But some argue that the gentle-parenting fashion goes beyond individual choices about raised voices versus ‘gentle hands’. In all aspects of childrearing, from baby-led weaning to scares about the harm and abuse allegedly caused by letting your baby ‘cry it out’ during sleep training, the idea of mum or dad being boss has come under scrutiny. While previous generations had to contend with everyone from neighbours to fellow bus passengers sticking their oar in about their child’s behaviour, now chastising your mischievous child in public is more likely to elicit fearful intakes of breath.
Some argue that, as a consequence of what many interpret as soft-touch parenting, discipline and socialisation has suffered. Naughty schoolkids run riot on high streets, classrooms are becoming unmanageable and depressing surveys show that modern parents aren’t any happier for having children. Is this why FAFO has taken shape as a subversive parenting style? Are most parents sick of NHS guidelines, government finger-wagging and social-media videos telling them how to raise their children, and simply going back to what they knew worked when they were kids?
Something is going on in the world of parenting: a mini civil war between those who think rules and boundaries are good for kids, and those who think they’re harmful. It’s likely that most people fall somewhere in the middle, but some worry about the way that a ‘gentle’ approach has become the norm everywhere from households to schools, youth clubs to workplaces.
Are there interesting cultural differences, with some comparing the strict rules set by immigrant families to a caricature of the middle-class yummy mummy approach. Do parents need to toughen up, or is the prevalence of yet another parenting fad just a new expression of an age-old issue of parents reaching for guides and mantras to help them raise their kids? What do the grannies think of a return to old-school parenting norms? Or is it right that we give kids an equal say in how they are socialised – even from a very young age?
