Posted 25 minutes agoSubscribe to BuzzFeed Daily NewsletterCaret DownRihanna Has Inadvertently Sparked A Huge Divide Among Parents After Saying That Her Kids Won't Be "Tablet Babies," And It's Honestly Exhausting"Not people mad at Rihanna for being a mindful parent."by Leyla MohammedBuzzFeed StaffFacebookPinterestLink During a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, Rihanna - who shares two kids with A$AP Rocky, and is currently pregnant with her third - opened up about her parenting style. Sylvain Lefevre / Getty Images The beauty mogul explained that her late father, Ronald Fenty, who died in May, largely influenced the way she's raising her sons: 3-year-old RZA and 2-year-old Riot. "I've always dreamed of what type of grandfather he would be to them," she said. "[He] prepared me for having two boys, really. The adventurous side of me, the outside side of me, the daredevil - it's how I want to raise them. I want them to be outside and in nature. No tablet babies." Amy Sussman / Getty Images Rihanna added that her father was responsible for "the funnest part" of her childhood, which involved "running around outside, barefoot, free." Unfortunately, Rihanna's comments ended up sparking backlash from some parents. One person wrote on Reddit, "Rihanna is a billionaire. I don't like being lectured on everyday parenting by someone whose children probably have an entire toy room in a mansion staffed with people to watch them run barefoot and free probably on a private beach or by the pool, depending on how they feel that day," before adding, "If Kim Kardashian had said this, 90% of you would be calling it 'parent-shaming.'" Dutch / Getty Images Someone else agreed, "Rihanna is a billionaire. She can afford top notch childcare and domestic care. She is not the one supervising them all the time she gets to offload some of the labor normal parents can't afford to and she does not have to stress about meeting survival needs like many working class mothers. I am childfree and even I understand the impulse to need to distract children when under these societal pressures." Amy Sussman / Getty Images "Parents have been making these judgy comments to each other forever--in the '90s it was about too much tv. And it's especially gross coming from a billionaire with a gaggle of nannies. Keeping kids engaged in activities and/or responding to 'I'm bored' 24/7 sounds exhausting when you don't have hired help to do it for you, and there's nothing wrong with a reasonable amount of screen time," one person wrote, while another user said, "gotta find a way to distract kids when you gotta do something, if you can find something that isn't a tablet to do that then good work.""Easy to say as a billionaire. Try being a single mom then we'll talk," one more person said.
It's worth noting that while Rihanna is indeed a billionaire, and likely has access to a heap of help and resources that the average parent doesn't, she has talked about parenting without a nanny. On the flip side, several users argued that Rihanna's parenting approach is incredibly healthy given how unhealthy excessive screen time is for kids' brain development. "Not people mad at Rihanna for being a mindful parent," someone wrote, while others went on to praise her parenting style. View this photo on Instagram Instagram: @badgalriri "i didn't have access to any electronics regularly (we had a family computer that we would play games on sometimes, i grew up in the late 00s and 2010s lol) but otherwise we were outside," one person said. "I love this for her kids. It's how she grew up. It's how I grew up. It's how a lot of us older people grew up. Idk, I feel like kids aren't getting the forts, the tree houses, just tree climbing," another person wrote. Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images Someone else pointed out, "Kids need to learn how to be patient, how to problem solve, how to interact with other kids. This is lost on most neurotypical kids who use tablets. Boredom is where brains come to life...I believe screens can be implemented in appropriate ways. My generalized statement applies to kids who have unrestricted, unlimited iPad access." Let me know what you think in the comments.