Why are mothers and fathers ignoring their judgment in favour of following the latest trends, asks Sylvia Thompson

Top tips for effective discipline. Improve your relationship with your child. Identify your parenting style. These headings from an Irish parenting website encapsulate our obsession with "good parenting" and the way we seek out expert advice to lead us through the obstacle course of emotional and intellectual challenges that is child-rearing.

But is this how it should be? Are we so unskilled that we constantly need to follow the advice of others - some of whom don't even have children of their own? Are our parenting instincts so unreliable that we have to disregard them and learn from scratch how to be a parent? Or are we simply falling prey to a consumerism that compels us to follow the current style in parenting and reach for the manual or call in the experts at every crisis point?

Dr Vincent Molony, a child psychiatrist and father of four boys who has been running parenting courses for years in south Dublin, believes many parents have lost confidence in their ability to rear their children and are slow to trust their instincts.

Rather than seeing himself as part of the problem, he says he belongs to a "new reservoir of knowledge" for parents who no longer have extended family to learn child-rearing skills from.

"In the past, larger families meant that people not only had grandparents to turn to but they themselves often helped rear younger members of their own families or nieces or nephews. Now the only experience many parents have is of being reared themselves, and they are isolated and unsure of what to do. I run a programme for parents of infants to four-year-olds where we discuss what to do with a crying child, how to deal with temper tantrums, how to manage a child who says 'no' all the time. I believe there is a need for such help."

When it comes to health-related problems in their children, however, Molony believes parental instinct is alive and well. "I have discovered that parents' natural instinct is very often right, even if the experts have said that they are fussing too much. If a parent is worried about something I find it is important to take them seriously - reassure them or find out if something really is wrong - because the worry itself will interfere with the natural and normal parenting process."

Ann Fetton, a mother of three young children in west Waterford and founder member of a new parent-and-toddler group there, believes it is the "barrage of unasked-for advice" that leads young mothers not to trust their instincts. "Being told things like you are holding your baby too much, or you are giving the child bad habits by not keeping her in her playpen, shakes your self-confidence and leads you to believe your own loving instincts are wrong."

Expecting higher standards of ourselves and those around us also pushes us to value expert advice over our instincts, according to Fetton, who has taken a career break from the civil service to rear her children. "We carry the ethos of continual appraisal from the workplace into parenting, and as we all want what's best for our children we doubt our ability to give it without the advice of professionals."

Fetton also believes that parents of children who spend much of their week in crèches or with childminders can feel undermined in their parenting role. "I have spoken to working mothers who sometimes feel their childminders know their children better than they do themselves."

So should we throw out the parenting books and learn by our mistakes as we go? Will our instincts guide us? Not necessarily, according to Olive Travers, a clinical psychologist and mother of four. "So much depends on your own experience of being parented, and if you haven't successfully negotiated your way through that your parenting instinct may not be reliable.

"The most effective parenting work I have done with parents is when we first revisited their own childhoods. Until you first process and work on what is influencing your relationship with your children it doesn't matter how good parenting books are, because you may understand [what they are suggesting\] at an intellectual level but it's very difficult to internalise it.

"A lot of parenting books are good - they are based on nurturing, psychologically sound judgment - but it is the parents' interpretation of that which is crucial. If your own experience of being parented was difficult, it leaves you vulnerable to outside influence, because you don't have something solid to fall back on."

A greater understanding of psychology and the importance of building a child's self-esteem is another factor that can lead to confusion for parents, especially in the area of discipline. You may believe that slapping is no longer acceptable but instinctively know that the child needs to be punished, leaving you at a loss as to how to impose discipline.

"Most young parents won't want to slap their children, but the problem is slapping as a form of discipline hasn't been replaced by another form of discipline," says Molony. "Children need rules. Parents who don't have rules will find their children pushing them too far."

Another aspect that comes into play in one's ability to follow one's parenting instincts is the commercialisation of childhood. It takes a certain doggedness and strength of character to go against fashion, whether choosing to have your child's birthday party at home instead of at an organised-party venue or keeping your child's after-school activities to a minimum when every other child seems to have full schedules of music classes and sports tuition. Even those parents who instinctively know their children are just as happy with quieter afternoons and home-made birthday cakes can't but question whether they are depriving their children of something.

"This commercialisation mitigates against one trusting one's instincts," says Travers. "Parents want for their children something better than they had themselves without seriously thinking about what they had themselves. Most parents are well intentioned, but very often it is a case of less is more. What a child enjoys most is being in the company of an adult who genuinely enjoys being with him or her."

Most of us know this instinctively. The question is whether we are prepared to admit it to ourselves as we rush around keeping our families busy.