To be confused by the two working parent set up

You come across as smug and privileged

I’m also in bad health and up until they grew a bit was juggling full time in my cafe, a special needs kiddo and a little one.
I won’t lie I pushed myself way further then I should have working through pain with gritted teeth and tears in my eyes,
finishing work then rushing to school then to nursery home dinner playing reading baths repeat repeat.
My husband got home at 6 and then had an hour long poo before managing a story if I was lucky!
Now they’re older 13/16 and Iv broken myself
chronic stress I can’t get under control😔
fibro, arthritis everywhere, EDS both knees need replacing they’re bone on bone!!
don’t do it don’t kill yourerlf keeping everything together I look back at pictures of us having g picnics in the park and I look so put together with my little pots and plates etc 😆
in reality I was in so much pain I was holding back tears. Firstly look after yourself xx

@Angels1111 Parenting has changed and requires a lot more effort, energy and thought now than before. It's because many parenting practises that were considered ok then would be considered abusive or neglectful now. For example kids (sometimes random) babysitting other kids whilst parents are out. Relaxing (and drinking heavily) and having a grown up social life in the house whilst kids there. Physical violence as a way to get kids obey and be quiet. Leaving kids at home alone for long periods and letting them roam around on the streets unaccompanied.

Our mothers had it easier in that sense. We are doing better for our dc mental and physical wellbeing and safety, but we are bearing all of the improvements on our shoulders and it is exhausting.

When I was growing up, my mum didn’t work and that was the norm for my school friends. I’m 38 now.

Noe none of my friends are sahms. Even if they wanted to be.

Yes this is a good point, the DH does have to pull their weight and/or you buy in help and you do have to draw boundaries around what you are and aren't able to do , I.e. not taking on "wifework" for DH when they can do it themselves. A lot of the women on here posting about struggling with the balance, it's often because Dad isn't doing anything like enough.

Women DID really used to work outside the home much less - there’s been substantial growth from the the 1970s, both in terms of numbers working at all and more working longer/full time hours mostly driven by women with children working.

Plenty of data here if you are interested:

https://ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/BN234.pdf

i’m not commenting on whether it’s good or bad but it’s an undeniable fact.

(I tend to think a better outcome might have been a rebalancing so that men worked less at the same time as women worked more, but capitalism doesn’t like that)

Being a working parent is hard but that's the reality for most of us.

Agreed. It's a tough one as when you are at work then people want you to be at home (yeah looking at you flakey ex childminder) and when you are at work then people want you to do at home (no point in all those Thursday meetings as l don't work that day and l can't "swap" with another mythical person 🙄)

So far l have gleaned your husbands / partners need to pull his weight as much of he can. Maybe more if you earn more / have a more demanding role. Don't forget you most likely did maternity leave! Plus do your best but don't burn yourself out. I'm looking at my mum who wants as 'all singing, all dancing Christmas' out of me. She's done ZERO childcare, whilst she had young children she worked quite part time and got her mum to act as nanny so much

I wasn't really commenting on whether progress has been made. I was taking issue at a pp poster who had described a 'golden age' for woman in the last century.

The thing is though, there has always been research and knowledge about child development - it just changes all the time.
Those of us old enough to be grandparents (I am 58 but have no grandchildren myself) have seen so many fads, fashions and 'best practices' come and go over the years, so forgive us for not buying into the theory that today's particular set are the definitive way to raise children and therefore our children know better than we do. They may know the current tropes - but that isn't the same thing,
To pull out one of your examples about grandparents being chronically sleep deprived - my experience is somewhat different. As we only got three months of maternity leave, my peers and I were obsessed with getting baby to sleep through the night when they were around three months old - and by and large, we managed it. I certainly did with all three of mine, but then I believe a lot of the practices around sleep currently in vogue seem to promote poor sleep for everyone.
For what it's worth, I think the current baby-led fashion will be discredited in the future as being extremely detrimental to maternal mental health. Back when the grandparents were new parents, the adults' health and wellbeing was considered along with the baby's, but that seems to have gone out of the window, with new mums not daring to even go to the loo in case their baby cries.
TLDR: You would hate to have me as a MIL but equally it's somewhat annoying to have decades of experience wafted away in the name of 'research'

What is living within one’s means & capacity?

.Most women drive and have their own car if at work

most women who work don’t have their own cars. Only about 34% of households have 2 cars….

Women have always worked .However it was more accepted to be a SAHM then at least with small DC.Nurseries were expensive and hard to come by.I think now generally MC wives work ,and the general standard of living is higher now.Most women drive and have their own car if at work .My Mum used to catch the bus and neither she nor MIL.who also worked PT. drove at all (sadly both passed now .Mum used to do 3 days and spent weekends washing in the greatly prized twin tub!

Having children is a choice however… and I do feel at some stage we must live within our means and capacity.

I knew I would find it difficult to do a paid job/career and have children and bring them up how I wanted to. For this reason, I gave up work when I became pregnant with my first. I am sure I could have had a reasonable salary and career by now if we had done things differently, but I don't understand people who are surprised that it is challenging to try to do both without becoming strained. Obviously, I recognise I am fortunate and that for most people in the world, it is their economic situation which dictates their choices.However, we have as a couple made a clear choice between career/financial comfort and the time and focus we can spend on our children with and family life with only one parent doing paid work. It seems quite straightforward.

It was also much more time consuming to keep a house & feed a family in the 1970s . most house wives disnt have access to a car or a supermarket often. Grocery shopping was done several times a week. A twin tub washing machine still involved dragging wwt washing from one drum to the other. Most houses relied on open fires for heat, so there was the cleaning, setting & keeping the fire going.

I grew up in the 70s most women i knew worked in factories at night while their kids were in bed or has cash in hand jobs.

I've researched my family going back several generations, all the women worked even if it was helping on farms.

I'm sure well off women probably had an easier time but they were very much in the minority.

I think this is partially true as part of the younger generation myself, and I think there's good and bad on both sides in my experience.

Because there is now a lot of official research and knowledge about child development, the necessity on relying on the older generation for knowledge has been severed. But many in the older generation ply the "did mine no harm" line - my MIL plies this about her adult sons regularly. Both are obese. Is it her fault? Maybe, maybe not, but you can't say that it did hers no harm with certainty.

A good example is naps - my toddler-owning friends are all driven batty by grandparents insisting that two yo don't nap. Many of them actively winding up 2yo to prove that they don't need to nap.

My village is my peers. Grandparents are part of the picture, but I usually find that they want everything their way without any notion of the idea that their advice is 30y old from an era of their life where they were chronically sleep deprived.

I think we have to take some personal responsibility for our life choices, do we not? If we have chosen to have children, how much can we really whinge and moan about how our life is then negatively impacted bringing them up? I like a good moan from time to time hit this deep seated existential navel gazing…. It’s choices we’ve made!

I’m not talking about unexpected changes or developments- illness, disability, divorce, death, SEN etc.

I don't think it is any different or harder for you than it was for me or my mum. We had kids, we and our DHs worked full time, no village to babysit or help out. My mum didn't have an automatic washing machine or a dishwasher - well, sibling and I were the dishwashers! As mums, we carried the same emotional and mental load as you do - appointments, running the home, everyone's social lives and wellbeing.
I think the difference is that we acknowledge how hard it is now in a way previous generations didn't.

What's feminism has given us more of a choice rather than just being expected to prioritise being at home. You can make your own decisions about how you live your life most of the time, barring things that are difficult/ impossible to change like health problems or being a single parent and therefore having to work. I don't understand this "I've been sold a lie by feminism ". If you'd rather prioritise raising your family then work out how you can live cheaper, quit work or reduce your hours and do it. There's probably more options than you think, eg. What you spend on cars / holidays etc.
You need to work out what your priorities are and own them rather than blame the rest of society or feminism. Women in my family have also mostly worked apart from a few years off when the children were tiny. It's not a new phenomenon. My mum told me she was told she couldn't do her professional exams once she got engaged as she was going to get married, pregnant and leave so it wasn't worth it. I for one am extremely grateful that I was born later and not forced into the traditional female box as I would have been utterly miserable. I work full time, my DH works 4 days per week and more than pulls his weight with the children and housework. Yes it's hard work but wouldn't have it any other way.

Despite the constant rhetoric that today's mothers are the most disadvantaged ever

There’s a constant rhetoric that EVERYONE today is more disadvantaged than everyone else who ever existed (or even exists now). I see it in almost all aspects of life these days. There’s so many people with a weird victim complex in so many things these days. Everyone wants to be seen as the most hard done by ever. Instead of just getting on with things or trying to improve things, everyone just complains that it’s not their fault and that everyone else has it and had it much easier.

Although this is not the point of this thread, I don't know where this idea that previous generations of working women found it easier to pic up their careers when they returned to the workplace is coming from?
Despite the constant rhetoric that today's mothers are the most disadvantaged ever, working parents really have never had it as good as they have now.
Long maternity leave, better maternity pay, more rights on maternity leave, flexible working, term time working, more rights for part-timers, equal pay, paternity leave ...
Some of these are clearly non-negotiable (equal pay etc) but don't underestimate how things have improved in the last 20-30 years.

I'm not sure it was easier to pick work up after a career break. If it was then gen x and boomer women would experience less of a GPG and have better representation at senior levels. If anything there is greater protection for women of your generation. I remember at a job interview in the 90s being asked about my childcare arrangements and when I answered was asked 'Ah yes, but what if your child is ill?' I didn't get the job.

Not everyone your age grew up in naice MC village growing environments.