To think some modern parents make unnecessary work for themselves

[Vintageclock]

My aunt, who reared ten children and at one time had five children under four years of age (including 2 yr old twins) has just spent a day minding her first grandchild and said it was harder work than anything she had experienced before. The baby came with a list of instructions as long as your arm, a huge bag full of lotion for this and ointment for that, a rigid timetable of naps and snacks and drinks, rules about sterilising anything the child looked at, and complicated sleeping bags and play suits to be zipped in and out of.
I have seen this with a few friends as well - they can't meet you for lunch until 2.30 because the baby has to be fed at 1.28 on the dot, no one can visit between 3.00 and 4.30 because that's nap time and the baby will wake up at the slightest noise, are constantly pulling things out of their baby's hands because of 'germs' etc etc etc.

AIBU to think some mums just go over the top, obsess about every detail of rearing a child. and are turning it into an overly complicated science when previous generations managed perfectly well without half of the nonsense some modern parents go on with?

Yes, no collapsable buggies in my mums day - she did have a pushchair at one point, but in general if they needed to go somewhere, they walked with the pram or didn't go. When she just had my eldest brother, they moved out into the "new" council suburbs and I think as the children came along, visits to her own Mum became quite infrequent unless she chose to walk the 6 miles there and back with the pram. Her own mum didn't keep good health and also had a child only a year or two older than my eldest brother.

She saw her Dad more often as he, quite unusually for the time (late 50's - early 60's), had a company car (he was a road inspector) and would drop in if he was in the area. He didn't get personal use of the car though and would never ever have considered using it for that.

Re the changes of clothes, my eldest used to get travel sick so up until he was about 9 or 10 we always carried something spare for him. We like to get out and do outdoor stuff so even though they are now 12 and 13, there are spare clothes & shoes kept in the car but I don't carry anything spare if we are going into town or out for a "normal" type of day.

MrsOakenshield Wed 14-Aug-13 09:54:28
"on the giant bag front, it's worth remembering that the world is much more baby-friendly than it was, and so parents can be out and about with their babies for much longer periods at a time, which will mean taking more nappies, clothes etc. When DD was a baby, certainly under 6 months, I could easily spend a whole day out of the house with her: bit of shopping, meet up with mum or friends, wander round a park, go to a gallery. Everywhere has baby change facilities, many big shops have parents' rooms where you can feed in peace and quiet (Peter Jones, I salute you! (the shop, not the man)), and so on. Back in the day, those facilities weren't there, so parents were out for shorter periods of time, and therefore didn't have as much stuff to carry about. This is a good thing, surely!"

Erhhhmmm, it is actually perfectly possible to spend a whole day out with a baby without going near any baby change facilities. Dh and I used to travel all over the place and go for all day outings, as did our parents and grandparents before us. Greatgrandparents would not perhaps have gone for jollies, but would have had to take baby out with them when working in the fields unless they had somebody else to babysit. A baby can be changed anywhere: on the grass in a park, on a lap, in its pram.

One thing that has changed is that once a certain facility is installed (such as baby changing or bottle warming) people get used to it and find it difficult to do without it. That doesn't mean people who had never heard of it couldn't cope.

When dd was little, there were no buggy spaces on local buses, so every time I travelled I had to put her down on the pavement (always carried special sheet for this) and dismantle the pram, then give dd to the driver or other passenger and bring pram onboard myself, shove one part under the seat, hold the other (and dd) on my lap. I got very quick and efficient at it. It didn't stop me from travelling and indeed it couldn't, because every so often I needed to get into town or get her to a clinic appointment.

If your DC had been born a few years earlier you'd have had to carry stinking reusables everywhere you went...

Lots of people coped and cope by staying at home.

I don't think it's a modern parenting thing. My mum had young DC in the late 60s/early 70s and used to be irritated by her SIL who always brought her own cups, plates and cutlery for her DC when they came for dinner. Mum had 3 DC so had plenty of things to eat with but SIL would never use them, even if they were the same. Always insisted on washing her own things up too.

Mum loved DS's grobag, thought it was a brilliant idea, much less faff than blankets etc.

No collapsible buggies in my mum's day either. But she could put the sleeping baby in a carry cot on the back seat of the car. Unlike nowadays.

I think what has not changed over the years is that many people can't imagine, or choose to ignore the fact, that other people's babies might have had different needs to theirs. And their own experience of parenting might have been different with a different baby.

Too many differents in that sentence. HoleyGhost was much more succinct.

I saw the antithesis to this today, as I sipped coffee. A young mum, baby in sling, bag on shoulder

Ah, this was me. Although not so much of the young sadly

"you don't need a special changing bag. And you don't need a big, heavy, complicated pram, and you certainly don't need a changing station (off which any self-respecting baby tries to hurl itself)."

You got your pronouns messed up.

You don't need those things; let other parents decide what they need and/or want for their family.

I read a comment on another thread (rife with SAHM/WOHM controversy) that also sums up this thread:

"I see we're back to telling other women what to do. I think I preferred the 50's, at least then it was just the men trying to tell us what to do".

I'm paraphrasing and can't remember the poster's username, but boy was she right!

I'm pretty sure that the woman judged each other just as much in the 1950s.

We don't carry changes of clothes for the boys, unless we're going out for the whole day, somewhere. We really should, though - ended up in M&S, searching for a pair of passable trousers in the sale, the other week, because 7yo DS2, who has ASD, had rearranged himself inside his pull up and soaked his trousers! He also tends to end up wearing much of what he eats, especially if we forget to take a spare t-shirt.

Some very silly, overly defensive posts on here. I haven't seen anyone, including the OP, saying routines are wrong. The topic of the thread as far as I read it was about those parents whose routines are so rigid and so inflexible that they take over the parents' lives and blind them to the needs of anyone else.
Those parents do make unnecessary work for themselves. We went on holidays with a couple like this and we ended up just doing our own thing because we got fed up being expected to schedule ours' and our dcs' day around their baby's regimented needs. They were quite huffy about us not being prepared to rush home from an outing at 1pm because little precious wouldn't sleep anywhere except in his cot and had to be put down at 1.30 and not wanting to eat our evening meal at 6pm on the dot so we could all be home in time for LP's bedtime. These parents had become so obsessed by their routine that they couldn't even see that it was not fair to try and impose it on other people.

And yes, they couldn't go anywhere without a bag as big as a truck and had a pram that required a bloody engineering degree to work out the straps and how to put the hood up and how to fold it down etc.

I think the problem these days is that we have more intervention from professionals telling parents how and when they should be doing things. There are numerous rules, regulations and procedures to follow and parents are made to feel bad if they don't follow. Years ago people relied more on the advice of relatives and friends. So maybe this is why some people work themselves up in to a frenzy.

Why does it matter what another person's choices are?
This is just daft.
If there were less people looking and sneering and judging and offering unwanted and unnecessary advice about childrearing, then most parents would be a lot more laid back about the whole business.
I travelled with a backpack, a baby in a sling and a small hand bag.
MY sister travelled with an entire boot and carful of stuff and we couldn't go upstairs if the baby was sleeping, or eat strong-tasting foods, wear necklaces, scratchy clothes or buttons and then hold the baby.
I thought she'd lost the plot, but it made her happier if people stuck to her rules. So we did, without comment. What harm?
She's a lot more practical and reasonable now.

Totally agree with your aunt, OP.

I do not understand these rigid routines. My friend's baby naps between 12.30 and 2 and she cannot leave the house during these times. Her baby is also on a rigid snacking timetable.

My babies literally eat when hungry and sleep when tired. They are both extremely content and sleep all night.

Like a poster said upthread, the problem with these routines, and the reason that mums don't seem relaxed on them (or at least, i'm speaking for my friend) is that babies change ALL THE TIME as they grow, so what is a good routine at 6 weeks will not be at 10 weeks, or 16 weeks, etc. It must be so stressful when the routines don't work.

I think that having a strict routine for DC1 helped me feel I had a some semblance of control over the overwhelming chaos! I used to provide my mum with a written schedule of times for naps, feeds (and nappy changes ) She told me years later that she used to accept it with a smile and then never look at it again! Which was absolutely the right way to handle it for all concerned!

Why does it matter how many children your aunt raised, OP? What patronising drivel. I have 3, but I am not better or more knowledgeable than first time mothers. Infant mortality, and especially SIDS, is much lower now. So obviously we should keep doing things the old fashioned way...

Oh behave Jedward. I agree with Splitz, some ridiculously defensive posts on here. Of course its interesting to hear that someone who had ten children found the regulated routine around her grandchild difficult to adhere to. I have often heard older people say wryly "how on earth did our children survive?". It's a valid topic for debate.

We were like the OP describes with our PFB, she barely slept and we were terrified that any deviation from her usual routine would make things worse.

With subsequent ds we have been totally laid back, I can't say he slept better, but we were much more chilled about things and much less scared of him, it's been a far nicer experience because of that.

First time parenting can be very scary. :o

Actually we were also very isolated first time round, had no friends with kids, both parents miles away etc. second time round we had a big group of friends with kids and both parents closer...having that 'community' of people made things MUCH easier.

arabesque - sadly the answer to "how did our children survive" is "alot didn't" - my parents thought I was being rather precious that I wouldn't put DS to sleep on his front - didn't do us any harm. all babies slept on their front in the 70s, it was fine. Except when the campaign started in to get babies sleeping on their backs rather than their fronts, the rates of SIDS fell in England by nearly 50% within a year of the campaign being launched.

I do think that anyone found poppers and zips difficult would be a sign that they aren't as able as they were when they were younger, surely baby clothes are far easier to put them in than the days of fiddly little buttons and ribbons?

PFB is what it all is. I was like that with DS at first. I gave up not too long into it all though :o

I completely agree with a bedtime routine. DS2 (16 months) and my other 2 dc at his age, had a bedtime of around 6.00 - 6.30. He also has a nap around 11am and sleeps longer if he is in his cot. This happens most days/nights.

However, I do not stick rigidly to these times. If I am out for the day, he may have a sleep in his pram but not for as long. If he wants, he may have another short nap later on.

Also, if we are out at friends houses, he may not go to bed til 8pm or 9pm. Obviously this doesn't happen often but it doesn't seem to bother him or my other 2 dc.

He has homemade meals most days but I don't stress if I give him a jar occasionally or mcdonalds chips.

I have always been laid-back even with my PFB and I do wonder if some parents actually enjoy their dc as they always seem so stressed out.

My BIL is really strict with everything. Drives DH's Dsis mad as she would like to be a little more free and easy.

cory - yes, of course you don't need baby changing facilities, but they do make life easier, and I can imagine for some, more reserved people, having somewhere private to change and feed their baby might make the difference between them getting out and about and never leaving the house. And the point I was actually making, which would be true if you are out for the whole day whatever the facilities, is that the longer you are out, the more changes (nappies, clothes) you need to take out, hence the giant bag.

I must say, I do find it rather mean-spirited when people say 'oh, we never had that in my day, don't know why people need it now'. It makes you sound rather bitter, to be honest, that shops, galleries etc have helped make life that bit easier for parents (of course, whilst hoping to make money from them, but these facilities are free for anyone to use), but you begrudge that.

My mum is always so impressed with things for parents now, and comments, in an 'isn't that great' way, how much better things are now.

And of course, parents with prams can benefit from the excellent changes that have been made, particularly to transport, due to years of lobbying from disability rights groups - there is now space on most buses, tubes and trains (certainly in London) for people to park their pram. Lifts in many more stations too. I don't know anyone who wouldn't get out of the way for a wheelchair user, mainly by getting off and waiting for the next train/bus, though in actual fact in nearly 4 years of using London transport with a child, I have only once seen a wheelchair user, and that was during the paralympics.

It would be nice if older parents, who weren't so lucky in this respect, could show a bit more generosity of spirit when commenting on these. After all, my mum didn't have an automatic washing machine - but she would think it stupid beyond belief to begrudge anyone theirs, merely because she didn't.

Hurrah mrsoakenshield

I didnt take out much with mine just baby in sling, couple of nappies, wipes, money and phone and went wherever really. I have a stroller, but personally hate big buggies.