To ask if anyone finds parenting just fine and natural and easy any more (I feel like some people used to?)

I have 3 teenagers and found it easy, generally. We’ve had tough times but it’s mainly good.
I don’t have any family support close by although I am close to my family and we have lots of time together.
dh works long hours and I work part time and that’s a balance that works for us.
I found what worked for me was going back to how things used to be. So more time outside, less time in screens indoors.
We were lucky in quite a lot of aspects - I had like minded friends so we would often do days out and as our dc were friends, they couldn’t use “all my friends are gaming” excuse.
dc had very close neighbourhood friends and would often go on bike rides or play in each others gardens. When they got older, they’d go out together.
I love the outdoors and would take them out as much as I could.
Lots of books and games.
I personally think it was better for kids in the past but it takes effort to emulate that kind of childhood. Kids need to develop certain skills for their mental and physical health and good development and sitting indoors on screens constantly definitely doesn’t help. Having only organised activities as an alternative to that is limiting too. Kids need more nature and more freedom and more connection with their family.
When the kids feel well, they’re easier to parent
(exceptions for neurodiversity, trauma etc of course)

I don't think it helps to compare tbh. I wouldn't say I loved every minute of parenting, not sure anyone does, but I didn't/don't find it the chore that some parents seem to. Just being an adult can be hard at times though, responsibilities, decisions, demands and so on, and I think everyone feels that - parent or not.

I have one child with ASD and ADHD. It is so hard. I'm exhausted. I don't find it natural trying to navigate his needs and I am learning every day.

I can't help but think, having experienced this that I may find it easy if he woke up one day and was suddenly an easy, chilled out child.

It depends on the child you get, how much money you have, your work life balance etc.

Some people will find it easy, some won't. I definitely do not despite the fact that I love and care for him dearly.

I agree. Plus the social media posts from perfect mums and mumfluencers making you feel shit - I know its a load of bolllocks now but when I was tired and didn’t cook roast dinners from home grown veg every night I felt rubbish at the time!

@BogRollBOGOFyou made excellent points in your post I agree completely.

I enjoy a lot of aspects of parenting, however I have 2 DD who are very different personalities,
oldest DD is definitely more challenging, ADHD/ASD? Waiting for diagnosis, think daily meltdowns, lots of school meetings, always on the go, reaction seeking, high anxiety, shouting, damaging items, etc.

Where as younger DD is more easy going, happy to amuse herself when needed, not without challenges but different to parent.

Don't get me wrong I love them both, however, and they both have their fantastic qualities, and we have lots of good times together as well, but every day has hard challenges.

So I a lot of it can come down to your child's, personality, SEN needs, disabilities etc.

Being a mother has never been easy, it's hard physical work some of the time, lonely some of the time and boring some of the time. And restrictive, you can't do what you did before. And some women will find it way harder than others. It's always been that way since the dawn of time and your MiL has her rose tinted specs on.

I think you are overthinking things.
ignore your mum.
have kids if you feel you want to.
don’t if you don’t.
simples.

I agree with this. Yes it’s hard, but I’ve done it mostly on my own and it’s been fine

I have had two experiences of raising children. I had two children in my early twenties in the late nineties. There was no social media, limited internet. I parented from my experience of being parented and advice from people around me. There was no feeling of high standard as set on sm. There was no judgement of being a sahm it was fairly normal but there was some judgement of mums working particularly full time. I had a lot of energy being young and found parenting very natural and easy. Services were all localised so I found a strong support network within my community.

17 years later I had another child, society had changed drastically. Suddenly everything could be looked up on the internet, there was examples of perfect parenting on social media. Everyone working, less community support , services spread out so no local support. I found parenting so much harder. Being older I was tired , less energy. I found parenting much more stressful, more pressure to work. Services were often harder to access/delayed. Less opportunity for friendships due to everyone working .

i think this is a difficult time to raise children in many ways

It must have been hard for the first generation of parents expected to fully supervise. I have several friends who talk about how their own mum's seemed to really struggle with having their kids around them all the time. That must have felt a really shitty goal post move for some of the parents who grew up free range and assumed their own kids would be similar.

Kids were not "safer" in the past. Children have always been abused and neglected. In fact they're probably safer now because safeguarding rules and child protection laws are so much more rigorous. I had a dreadful time growing up in the 80s/90s with an alcoholic, emotionally abusive and often neglectful mum. We lived in poverty. My teachers had no idea whatsoever, or if they suspected, they never attempted to intervene. This is a classic example of looking back with rose tinted glasses. And do you have any data to suggest that "illegal immigration" is posing a threat to children? The majority of threats to children are from people they know, and this has always been the case.

In response to OP's query. I'm only a few weeks into my parenting journey. I've never been an especially maternal person. I like kids but I'm not a natural with other people's children. However since having my baby it just feels natural to me, like this is what I was always meant to do. I love my DC more than anything I've ever known, and I feel very in tune to their needs. I do occasionally Google things (a modern parenting tool!) but I haven't followed any expert advice or guidance. I think I'm much more comfortable with being a mum than my own mum ever was. But she was a teen mum and I'm almost 40, so I wonder if that makes a difference. I'm significantly more mature than she was (by the time my mum was the age I am now, I was an adult and had left home), I'm financially stable and in a solid marriage. I think individual circumstances are more significant than generation/time period in terms of people's experiences of parenthood. And older people whose kids have grown up will likely misremember their experiences, in a positive way, due to the rose tinted spectacles they wear when looking back over the past.

I think there's a lot more scrutiny involved in what being a parent involves now than there was in the 80s.

In the 80s it was just seen as a job which mothers (almost exclusively) got on with and taken as read that it was instinctive and all women knew how to do it. There was less involvement by the government, demands from schools were fewer and there wasn't a whole industry around the idea of "parenting" with competing theories and dogmas around things like sleep and discipline.

I don't think the job has fundamentally become any harder than it was then but I think everyone feels they need a seat at the table of what goes into "parenting" than in the past.

I found it enjoyable until Covid/ teenagers, had my older children in my 20s and had a loft less responsibility and life worries which made it all a lot more relaxed.

Life is much more complicated and other ways than parenting by the time I had my younger children and this led to me finally hitting the overwhelm stage. Mainly lack of support from extended family, mortgage and bills have risen exponentially and juggling work/ older parent illness/ teenage angst with everything has tipped me over the edge. The parenting children bit without general life is fine, I just don’t think the two mix well!

If I was loaded, with a nanny to help and a part time job that I found rewarding- it would be easy 🤣

Some children are naturally easier and more compliant than others.

Some parent/ child personalities click easier than others.

At a generational level, parents today are less likely to have learned parenting through being in large families with siblings, cousins and unstructured time in the community so it feels less instinctive.

There is more pressure that children must always be supervised so parents are either "on" or children are in structured activities. There's a lot less time to let children be, and let them come back to you. The community has lost its role in sharing the load.

Parenting has become more idealised. There have been manuals for a long time, but social media has changed it from reading a book for advice to creating online communities which can fall down purity spirals. About 15 years ago I got into "baby wearing" and joined groups to support the practicalities of doing that, but the groups became echo chambers of "attachment parenting" and fixated on minor details and unrealistic standards. I tended to spectate with amused detachment just wanting to look at pretty wraps and use them safely, but they can ceeate a damaging culture if people get too drawn into the cultiness of them.

Society has less space for children to learn by trial and error. The curriculum is very formal and rigid. Formal testing is taken seriously from a very young age, and qualifications at 16 have more impact on career opportunities than they once did.

Mothers in particular have more external pressure, particularly if they're trying to match equal career progression to men. Paternal expectations have shifted less on making equal home/ work expecrations.

There's no great halcyon era but I think that lack of experience and higher expectations are quite recent challenges that many parents can struggle with today. If parenting doesn't come naturally to you, there is a lot less slack, but that culture also tends to come from intending better outcomes for children.

Relentless is the word! I am happy to be a parent but I don't find it easy. Both my kids are ND and we don't have any local family help, they also don't go on playdates or anything (no invites as other parents rightly assume that are hard work, and the oldest doesn't really have friends anyway). If I had family/friends help and one NT child things would look very different though!

I also think things were easier in the 80s/90s, you weren't expected to be as hands on with your kids. But it's probably a good thing that's changed.

Your MiL should not be judging your choices. She enjoyed parenting and is projecting that on to other women, which is wrong. My point was, just because one woman you know feels this way, and had circumstances that gave her an easier time, there is no reason to draw sweeping generalisations about whole generations of women. By making blanket statements about life being easier, when you don't even have a comparator, you are erasing the experiences of the countless older women who were not as fortunate as your MiL. The 80s and 90s were not some golden utopia where everything was better for women. Every advantage you can think of will be balanced by a disadvantage. More family support went hand in hand with greater obligations to support the older generation (the village is not a one way street) Not 'having to work' had a less attractive flip side of less opportunity for individual women in work, and less influence in public life for women as a group.

Parenting in the 80s and 90s was so much different to today. No technology, cyber bullying, online adult sites, social media, love island, experts on experts, etc. Kids were safer, no online grooming, also there was not as much illegal immigration happening.

I love being a mum - the positives outweigh the negatives a million times over for me and with most of the hard work behind me, whilst I wouldn’t necessarily say it was easy, it’s never felt hard.

but (and I accept these are huge buts) I have a DH who is an amazing dad. He works hard and pulls his weight and so parenting has always felt like a joint responsibility.

we’ve been massively fortunate that we’ve both been able to build businesses and work around the DC so up until the youngest was 12 there was always one of us at home and we had an enormous amount of paid help so I’ve never done what is commonly called the “drudge work”.

I'm a single mum, I don't find it hard - well, not the mumming bit of it - the relentless timetable of places I have to be and things I need to be doing is a lot, but the mum bit is fine.

It does help that my kids are very reasonable/easy to parent.

I have been surprised by how easy and enjoyable I find it, I think there has been a bit of an over correction in people talking about how hard it all is which definitely put me off before I had mine.

However, lots of caveats: I only have one, not quite two year old; we have enough money and space, and are in good health; both work in flexible wfh jobs; my husband absolutely pulls his weight; we live near very supportive family who help out with babysitting.

So I would never tell other people I find it mostly easy, especially if I knew they were missing even one of the above.

As @JustMarriedBecca said, it’s the first thing I’ve done that I feel like I’m supposed to do 😊

If I were you I'd wait until you do have kids before you take a position. Because women's experience of parenting is subject to a lot more variables than the decade in which they had young children. The amount of support you have and the amount of money you have are key. Working class and lower income women always combined parenting with paid work and in a context where all the domestic work was their responsibility and that work was harder without modern conveniences. Just as there are women today who don't have to work. The most significant cause of inequality in quality of life is wealth/class. Its far more of a divide than generation.

Yes - I would describe myself in that way.

I didn't expect it to be that way though. I don't like children in general, especially other people's children. I've worked in education for a long time, and I am "good" with kids, but I never ever enjoyed it. I hate having to pretend to like being with other people's children and get 0 enjoyment out of it at all. I don't want to hold babies, or hear about your child at all. etc.

Yet for some reason, when it was my child, it was entirely different. I genuinely enjoy being with him, and find it to be very fulfilling. I would rather spend a day with him, than by myself (or with some other family members...)

I don't think it is something you can control, so I don't think there should be any shame or negativity on mums who don't find it natural/enjoyable/rewarding etc. I think its a lot of luck, and you can't fully predict it before giving birth.

People fully expected me to not be very maternal/caring because of how I was before having children, and equally I've known very over-the-top loving people who then had kids and struggled to bond/find it natural.

A lot of luck.

I think we are much too analytical now. All types of parenting are analysed and given names. Helicopter? Tiger? Whatever.
Then as soon as you Google something to do with parenting you'll be bombarded with "IS YOUR PARENTING STYLE GOING TO PRODUCE A PSYCHOPATH" type articles (just a made up example haha)

Some might enjoy it and be quite "good" at it but we are SO aware of what one another are up to we are constantly comparing and reading things. I remember thinking I was doing the right thing then Google would say otherwise.
Must have been nice in a way just to get on with it in your own way, completely oblivious to how most of the rest of the world were doing things. No wonder people were happy to think they were good at it.