A prominent Australian psychologist has warned Australia is currently raising a generation of spoilt brats, because their parents are "crap" and "never say no".

Dr Michael Carr-Gregg believes today's parents have a lot to answer for, and there may be serious long-term consequences for Australia.

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Dr Carr-Gregg attributes the rise of poorly-behaved children to five major parenting problems.

"The first [problem] is that there are too many parents being doormats for their kids. They have got what I call a vitamin N deficiency, which is a failure to say no.

"It's incredibly important that parents set limits and boundaries and I don't know that that's happening at the moment."

Dr Carr-Gregg identified the "helicopter parent" as another "model of crap parenting" he was targeting in his work.

"The high-strung, control-freak parents that want to smother their kids with so much love and attention and monitoring and supervision that they never, ever develop any self-reliance and can't solve their own problems later on."

Evidence of bad parenting 'in schools around Australia'

The Australian psychologist said he has seen ample evidence of the consequences to these types of parenting, not just in his own clinic but in schools around Australia.

"For the last 15 years I have been on the speakers' circuit in schools around Australia, and it's the teachers in early learning centres, the primary schools, the secondary schools that regale me with stories."

An evolution in parenting styles over the last 20 years is to blame for the influx of bad parenting, Dr Carr-Gregg said.

"We've had people moving to these artificial villages called cities, primarily to get jobs and in doing so, a lot of the kinship networks have been destroyed.

"A lot of the wisdom around parenting, which was derived from grandparents, for example, has no longer been so readily available."

The consequences of bad parenting has both short- and long-term effects, warned Dr Carr-Gregg.

"The short-term consequences you can see in restaurants and in waiting rooms and in airports throughout Australia, where you have these kids who are just completely feral, running out of control.

"Parents don't do anything about it because they're frightened of being seen as bad parents or frightened to say no."

Dr Carr-Gregg said this style of parenting has major effects on the mental health of children and adolescents as they grow up.

"Long-term, I think what we're doing is infantilising a lot of children into incompetence."