....to think women find having babies harder now?

This and the fact that family sizes are so much smaller now -

in my grandparents era it was normal to have around 6 kids.

now the norm is 2 - 1 is very normal as well now - but absolute max 3

Smaller families will make for a MUCH reduced network of potential Aunties uncles and cousins for your kids

im an only child - both my parents are uni educated and both have very different types of high flying career in their own right - think Tony & Cherie Blair level although my parents are not nationally known public figures. BOTH my parents are only children and neither settled in the area they were born and bred in.

So I’ve got no family at all in my home city and no aunties / uncles or first cousins anywhere !!

So I myself am a living, breathing, walking example of a ‘No Village’ scenario

Yes I hear this but I thought the same. I agree that the current rental being more expensive than a mortgage trap is ...a trap.

My children have all purchased homes with eye watering mortgages. Their standard of living is still better than mine was at the same age. I think expectations have changed. I didn't expect to still afford anything...one car and no cosmetic procedures. No hair salons (cut my own and all the family) What I would say is lucky is we didnt have broadband, no new mobiles and no IT to buy. Equally finding a bargain wasn't easy as you had to walk to shops.

I can and will agree with you on the state of NHS care and the incessant rules that no one seems to question or adapt.
But I disagree about 'only' two weeks paternity leave and 'only' having a year off work make things harder. As i have said upthread, three months used to be standard maternity leave with no paternity for the father at all, it had to be annual leave.
The work/SAHM thing must be regional or something. My son is 33 now and certainly none of my mum friends or colleagues were SAHMs back then. It was not considered the 'done thing' for professional women.

@HotAndSweatyButNotBetty to be fair 12% on a mortgage of probably £30k or £35k does sound easy in comparison to 6% on £300k!

My mum had four babies in the 80s in NHS hospitals and has always spoken quite fondly of her births. She visited me last year when I was with DC on the postnatal ward and was absolutely horrified at the state of the ward and me. She was the first person that day to refill my water jug and help me walk to the toilet, so pretty basic care, but sadly non existent on that ward.

In those first few weeks i felt like the "rules" around having a baby were incessant, so many dos and donts that simply didn't exist 30 years ago. The pressure to jump out of bed and get moving, go outside, don't stop or reduce breastfeeding even if you're on death's door, or you're the worst mother in the world, it's almost intolerable. Your partner having no choice but to go back to work after two weeks.

And mums now are fully expected to be back at work within the year. I know ONE family with a parent at home. When I was a primary age kid most of the mums (not all, but certainly most) were SAHMs.

Wages haven't risen properly since 2008 but costs for everything have risen. So we all have to work harder, we are more tired, more stressed, further away from our families.

So yeah I think women are finding it harder because it is a lot lot harder.

having to earn a living
not having family next door or in the same house to help
lack of support networks

A third of births are now induced, and these are far more likely to result in instrumental births and emergency c-sections.

The reason for those inductions is the hospitals being more risk averse - that these then lead to very complex births… no one quite seems to be measuring which is the better of two evils.

A whole range of reasons:

-women being more honest about the challenges and not sugar coating it
-a lot more is expected of women e.g. my mum was only expected to look after the children, house and do a few hours work. In contrast l work full time, expected to not "let myself go", exercise, progress at work (have been doing an additional qualification, have a great marriage etc
-less support -my mum got a world of support of her mother / my grandma. She however prefers to spend all her time on herself which there is a lot of, as she's been retired for years and has no caring responsibilities

When I was having my babies, in the 1990s, most of the women I know gave birth vaginally. Very few had c-sections.

My kids’ friends and friends’ kids are having babies now and it feels very rare that I hear of a straightforward vaginal delivery. I hear of lots of lengthy inductions, spanning several days, ending up in instrumental deliveries or emergency sections. I also know of many elective sections.

If one of my daughters was pregnant I’d be totally supportive of whatever she wanted. We just want a safe, healthy, happy experience and outcome.

So o true! I had DTs almost four decades ago and certainly was not in hospital for two weeks! No family help as my mum was still working full time and PiL lived a long way away. Just getting out of the door was a major endeavour.
New mums today have access to advice and shopping online and a plethora of groups/classes they can join.

Not in my lifetime and I’m 70. It was a week 50 years ago and most women went home to be on their own all day because there was no paternity leave.

Would anyone else genuinely find my comment offensive? And what would the appropriate response be? To pretend the family getting up at 3.30am was perfectly normal and desirable?

Well I think that post has just proved my point. That's why I would not dare make conversation with any mother of a young child now.
So what DO you talk about then? Genuine question.

The "village" is dispersing because mothers don't thank strangers for commenting on their baby/toddler/parenting choices without asking for input?
Unless you were following your comments up with offers of support, you weren't part of those women's "villages". So I don't think you stopping yourself before commenting has anything to do with the "village".

The idea of a village has disappeared because people live further away from family and many more women work than full time now compared previous generations. There can't be a village because people simply don't have enough time anymore.

I find the comments around visitors (or lack of them) interesting.
Speaking for myself, I genuinely don't think I would visit a newborn baby unless I had to because I would be so nervous about doing or saying something wrong.
I know mn is not real life, but I has a realise MN situation in a hotel spa which made me think I was so far out of step with acceptable behaviour around children these days, I have not interacted with another mother since. That was about 4 years ago.
I was getting changed and a mum came in with her baby of about 10 months and I was making conversation, the way you do. Pleasant chitchat followed and then she said she had been up since 3.30am and did that every morning because that's when her baby woke up so the whole family got up then. I grimaced and said something like oh that's hardcore or something like that. Her face changed and she literally scooped the baby up and marched away, as if the mere suggestion of anything other than perfection was going to harm her in some way. It was bizarre.
More recently, I was walking and could hear a toddler wailing and when he came closer, saw it was in a pushchair being pushed by grandma. I said something like oh dear, someone's tired, gran agreed and said she had taken him out to try and get him to sleep. I realised afterwards that I only said what I did because tge woman was about my age. Had she been the mum, I would not have said anything.
That may well be the reason 'the vilage' is dispersing.

@RidingMyBike isn't that largely choice though - I was on mat leave in covid and I still went out every day and saw people, we had a mums and buggy walking group - socially distanced of course.

Second time round I was out every day again, coffee mornings, library groups etc. 90% were free or only cost a quid or so, and my kids are still little - on my NWD I still take them to a free playgroup, they play I chat to other mums.

I agree about being used to babies though, babies have always been in our family so I didn't feel shocked at another one.

It’s much more isolating now. You get two weeks (if you’re lucky) of your partner being around to help, then you’re on your own for hours every weekday. It was about 50 hours a week in my case. In previous generations there would have been sisters, cousins, mum/MIL, aunts, grandparents around for company, hold the baby. We had precisely one family member visit twice in the first six months. And they didn’t do anything useful.

Plus it was much more of a lifestyle lurch. If you grew up around babies and children in the extended family, married young and had your own babies it’s an extension of what you’re used to. The mums I know who had babies in their late teens/early 20s seem to have adjusted a lot more easily. If you have babies in your late 30s you’ve probably had two decades of living independently, doing what you want when you want, getting as much sleep as you need so it’s a massive shock.

I’d say I usually find other mothers of small children are fairly live and let live, as they’re all fighting for survival and can appreciate how that is.

It’s people who are even just slightly out of those small child years who give the most grief, presumably as they’ve forgotten what it’s like.

I think where mothers of young children egg each other on in the madness, is eg in telling their friend they’re on a 100 day weaning programme involving four three course meals a day, to introduce 500 new foods or whatever.

This is so true, I felt so sorry for the frazzled mum who posted a few weeks ago about whether it was ok to feed her child a pouch of baby food- she was bombarded with posts about how she should be better prepared, how it was ok if it was only a one off, but never to be repeated. Perhaps we should give greater consideration to the long term impact of frazzled parents and the resulting stress on kids... If mumsnet wasn't here maybe she'd have asked her mum or a friend, who would have said 'Yes- give them a pouch and don't worry about it.' She wouldn't have changed her values and fed them McDonalds for the rest of their life- she'd have done her usual thing, and felt ok about using the odd ready made meal. Instead she came on here and received a barrage of posts that would make her feel like a substandard parent, and likely spent the rest of the day and week feeling like a shit parent, not doing a good enough job...

I think that often stems from those relationships being quite poor to begin with (yes, even with their own mother). I couldn't think of anything worse than having a difficult person enter my home in what was, probably, the most vulnerable time of my life.
Some family members really do just show up for a photo with the newborn without even so much as a 'how are you?' to the person who literally just gave birth to it.

I'm in total support of women having all the choices and freedoms we fought so long to acquire, but I also think we shot ourselves in foot, somewhere along the way

I agree with this. Being a home maker and mum was (and still is ..... ) a full time job, but now women often have to work full time outside the home, too

I meant younger, as in those bringing up young children today.
As opposed to the despised mil generation.

Why do you specify younger mothers?

I see all mothers of all ages being criticised by all people of all ages.

Tbh, I think most of the criticism of younger mothers on here is from other younger mothers.