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"Beta moms" embrace relaxed parenting, rejecting over-scheduled, intensive child management.

The beta mom trend echoes past authoritative parenting, balancing support and independence.

Parents benefit mentally by releasing the pressure of invisible labor and unattainable perfection.

Last month, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “The Era of the Tiger Mom Is Over. Enter the Beta Mom.” It refers to a recent TikTok trend featuring moms who reject intensive, highly managed parenting in favor of a more relaxed approach.

A Pushback Against Helicopter Parenting

The “beta moms” are pushing back against a trend that started in the early 1990s favoring hyper-involved parenting, especially for mothers, stemming from a growing knowledge-based economy that made a lot of parents fear that their children would fall behind their peers if they didn’t have a competitive edge. What we ended up with was a lot of helicopter parents, who are overly involved in their children’s lives, especially in academic or achievement-related activities (Odenweller et al., 2014).

A helicopter parent removes obstacles that their children face in order to encourage them to succeed. These parents are generally well-educated, well-resourced, and very well-intentioned—mostly just trying to protect their kids from trouble and provide them with opportunities.

But despite the good intentions of most over-involved parents,........

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