Courtesy of Joelle Mulligan.
- Joelle Mulligan’s upbringing was strict compared to today’s standards. At times, it included a diet.
- Her parents moved cross-country to help with childcare when she started her own family.
- Mulligan encouraged her mom to adopt a gentler style of parenting that the grandma has now embraced.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with the mom of two, Joelle Mulligan, a 41-year-old hardware engineer from Santa Cruz, California. It has been edited for length and clarity.
My husband, Ryan, and I practice gentle parenting . We are very conscious of raising our two kids, aged 5 and 2, in a way that encourages confidence and empathy.
My parents were amazing — I was loved, cared for, and kept safe — and I got their undivided attention as an only child. However, a different style of parenting was popular in the 1980s.
Dad couldn’t handle it when I had big feelings as a kid and was crying. There was a certain amount of yelling. He’d say, “Stop crying. This isn’t a thing to cry about.” Mom got it from him and sometimes did the same.