Fox & Friends host Lawrence Jones called on parents to “spank your kid’s a**” instead of being letting children go “crazy” during a news segment on gentle parenting.
On Wednesday, hosts Jones, Brian Kilmeade and Ainsley Earhardt played several TikTok clips showing parents who follow “gentle parenting,” a trendy parenting style that focuses on respect, empathy, boundaries and understanding.
One of the videos showed a mother calmly asking, “Please don’t hit me,” and “gentle,” as her small child repeatedly smacked her in the face, while another showed an upset child being pulled into a hug by their mother.
“Am I allowed to comment on that?” Jones asks. “Some of you need to spank your kid’s a**. It’s a problem.”
“Mama Jones didn’t play it. My father didn’t play it. And I just see all these kids going crazy in the grocery store, on the plane. And if the parents just would put them over their leg and just [spank], it would be over,” Jones said, smacking his hands together to mimic spanking a child.
Earhardt was quick to respond: “The problem is, it will be over for you as a parent if you do that in New York City. They would take our children.”
“You would have to do it in your house,” she added.
Fox then cut to an interview with Dr. Leonard Sachs, a family physician, psychologist and author of The Collapse of Parenting.
“I think most gurus of gentle parenting would agree that it means that good parenting means letting kids decide. Well, that’s a really bad idea, because parenting works when parents are in charge. And if you let kids decide, a lot of bad things happen,” Sachs said.
Sachs used dinner time as an example, saying if parents were to let kids decide, most would choose “pizza, french fries and ice cream.”
“And you’re going to end up with a lot of fat kids,” Sachs said. “In order for kids to be healthy and happy, parents need to be in charge.”
Fox & Friends hosts then pointed out that there is a new parenting trend, “FAFO” or “eff around and find out,” there to replace gentle parenting.
“I love it,” Jones said. “I’m gonna get a T-shirt that says that.”
