How 70/30 parenting could make your life less stressful — and your kids happier

How 70/30 parenting could make your life less stressful — and your kids happier Rachel Moss Published December 2, 2025 2:37pm Updated December 2, 2025 2:37pm Share this article via whatsappShare this article via xCopy the link to this article.Link is copiedShare this article via facebook Comment now Comments You can’t be the ‘best possible parent’ 100% of the time (Picture: Getty Images)

After a long working week, Deborah Joseph walked through the door of her London home at 7pm – and then immediately U-turned at a question millions of working mothers are sick of hearing.

‘My husband asked, “what’s for dinner?” My kids were screaming and fighting,’ she tells Metro. ‘I literally walked out the house and went for a two-hour drive, and ended up not doing dinner, not doing anything. I just thought: “‘I can’t. Something’s got to change.”’

And it did. Her husband committed to taking on more of the household’s mental load, joining the school Whatsapp groups for a start. In turn, Deborah promised herself she’d take on less. 30% less, to be precise.

That night in 2019, she committed to living a ‘70% life’, a term she’s since patented. It’s all about living 100% of your life, 70% of the time. You ditch the other 30% and quit chasing a warped picture of perfection.

‘I don’t think you can do 100% in life, and if you do, you end up burnt out, miserable and actually not doing anything well,’ says Deborah, who was Editor-In-Chief of GLAMOUR at the time of her epiphany. 

‘I tried to do 100% because that’s how I’d  been brought up, to think you have to be good at everything and achieve everything and succeed at everything. And actually, I ended up feeling I wasn’t succeeding at anything.’

Deborah Joseph committed to living a ‘70% life’ in 2019 (Picture: Supplied)

For Deborah, shaving off 30% meant getting extra childcare help for her kids, who were two, four and six at the time. Other parents have since co-opted the idea of 70/30 parenting, focussing on the big stuff and giving themselves a break on the remainder.

That might mean following through with ‘gentle parenting’ 70% of the time, but cutting yourself some slack if you occasionally falter. Or, it might mean popping your toddler in front of the Teletubbies after a day of tantrums that’s left everyone exhausted. 

‘They are not going to be in counselling slagging you off in 30 years’ time because you put them in front of the TV for an hour,’ Deborah reassures me, after I recall a day last week that left me in tears. 

‘I think women sometimes think, “oh, it’s not good for my child”, but actually, if you’re not in a good way mentally, then you can’t be the best mother for them. So sometimes, you have to put yourself first in order to be the best parent.’

Deborah’s take on 70% parenting centres on prioritising the ‘overall picture of what kind of parent and family you want to create for your child, and then accepting that there are some things you aren’t able to do’.

Parenting author and mum-of-four Sarah Ockwell-Smith takes this concept one step further, claiming that 70/30 parenting allows your children to see vital ‘flaws’.

‘If you’re always perfect, that’s a really unrealistic role model for your kids,’ she recently told the BBC. ‘They’ll never learn how to make mistakes or know how to apologise.’

Psychotherapist Julia Goodall backs this up, saying it’s ‘really important for children’s sense of self’ to see ‘imperfect’ parents.

Dropping the ball shows kids we’re all human (Picture: Getty Images)

‘When they see someone they admire and love making manageable mistakes and coping with these with a mixture of self compassion, and/or humour, it will help them to build the belief that they too can make mistakes and will be alright,’ she tells Metro.

‘Importantly, this does not mean showing no emotion — it might be that parents demonstrate manageable anger/disappointment/sadness but are able to move through this rather than shutting down or lashing out. Even when we don’t manage this, narrating the experience for our kids also helps them to feel okay about dysregulation being a normal part of being human.’

Research suggests that ‘getting it right’ 70% of the time is even aiming quite high. 

‘Early attachment research shows that for children to be securely attached, parents only needed to be ‘getting it right’ 30% of the time. This means that 30% of the time caregivers needed to be correctly reading a baby’s cues of hunger/thirst/tiredness/discomfort and responding appropriately,’ Jullia says. 

Is it okay to cry in front of your kids?

‘It is so good for our children to see us cry now and then!’ says Julia. ‘It shows them that we are human too, and that feelings are to be FELT not controlled. It also models learning about your own limits for them, that this is lifelong work and not something everyone is taught. 

‘In your instance you could narrate this to them saying something like ‘I felt so overwhelmed this morning! I planned too many things for today and didn’t notice that my body was telling me to slow down, or to ask for help. I’m not always very good at knowing when my body needs a rest, but I’m learning to be better at listening to my body.’ You could even go quite granular here and ask them if they know when their body is feeling overwhelmed—saying something like ‘I sometimes feel my heart beating very fast, or feeling a bit hot’. 

‘Letting kids in on the messiness of life early on will make it much easier for them to read their body’s cues and show themselves compassion when big feelings arrive. You could give them an easy to remember line  like ‘all feelings come and go, it’s safe to feel them and then let them go’.

Deborah is now a freelance writer, working on a book, and now that her children are older, the ‘30%’ she lets go of is largely around picking her battles.

She’s stopped commenting on what her teenage daughters wear when they leave the house, deciding that to focus on ‘positive conversations’, rather than their skirt length. She’s also made a conscious decision to stop the daily rows about untidy bedrooms. After all, she can just close the door. 

‘I try to focus on making sure they eat healthily, or spending time with them one on one,’ she says. ‘I think those things in the long run are more important than whether their room is tidy.’

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Most importantly, she doesn’t allow society to shame her for her chosen ‘70%’, because she’s finally confident in her own decisions. 

‘I don’t know what an ideal parent looks like, because one person’s idea of an ideal parent isn’t another person’s idea of an ideal parent,’ she explains.

‘You might look at my 70% and think “I don’t agree with that”, or I might look at yours and think “I don’t agree with that”, and that’s absolutely fine.

‘It’s just a personal decision for every single woman about how they want to live, and how they want to bring up their kids.’ 

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