To think that the way we are expected to parent in this country is unnatural?

[AndyWarholsBanana]

I don't mean the actual way of parenting, I mean the kind of family set up we have now. In a lot of countries, children are raised in a groups of some sort - either groups of women who all help look after each others' children or in extended families with grandparents, aunts, cousins around - it takes a village to raise a child etc. And having lots of extended family on hand was the norm in this country until pretty recently.
Nowadays, a lot of people move away from their parents to find work or whatever so don't have family nearby.
When I had DS1, I didn't know many people locally and I just remember the crushing isolation of it being just me and a baby for 10 hours a day and having no adult company. I honestly couldn't wait to get back to work.
When I had my third child 8 years later, I knew a lot more people including quite a few who were SAHMs or worked part time. We spent a lot of time in and out of each other's houses and it was always possible to get someone to have your child for a few hours so that you could go shopping or just have a bath. Also, my parents had retired so used to take Ds2 one morning a week. As well as it being great having adult company, it was nice for the kids to have other DCs around a lot of the time for company.
especially as DS2 was a very extrovert baby and seemed to get bored very quickly when he was stuck with just me.
It couldn't have been more different to when I had DS1 and I actually enjoyed it and would have been happy to stay at home longer. I've noticed that in the endless SAHM/WOHM debates, how many women describe going mad with boredom when they were on maternity leave. I just think it's "unnatural" to expect an adult to be with another human being 24/7 without a break and I think women end up feeling guilty because they don't enjoy it. It just feels suffocating and claustrophobic for a lot of people. I know it;s not somehing that's likely to change but just wondered what people thought.

LDR you started by being completely randomly vague and now you have upped the ante to vague and patronising I am out.

For clarity of course the vast proportion of families in the UK in times gone by lived in rural communities within a stone's throw of their family and their in laws since most people married within walking distance of their own family. Your accusations of racism are nonsense.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't intend to be vague. Or patronizing, for that matter. Just confused why you didn't get my entirely straightforward question in my first post.

Thatis bollocks about rural communities in the past, btw. Absolute nonsense.

I love the 'it takes a village' concept.
Things like: neighbour/cousin twice removed/my mother's neighbour's uncle can see my kid either in a pickle or doing something stupid, running over and giving a hand/telling off etc. i grew up like that.

LRDI think its rather more to do with how much people move around and have fewer family members tbh.

Nothing at all to do with harking back to a bygone era I am astounded you have taken racist connotations from this thread. I've looked back over the first few posts and have come to the conclusion that you have taken 2 and 2 and got bullshit.

My parents live abroad and I have two siblings. One is a great help (dbro) to me with raising my children, the other (dsis) is in the forces and we manage weekend and flying visits only.

Compare that to when my mum had me and she had parents locally(semi retired) and 7 siblings. Two (sisters) of which lived either side of her. When she and my dad moved abroad my nana and granddad came for a month long visit twice a year. That would be impossible for any of my family now due to work commitments.

I don't really follow how mentioning the past isn't harking back to a bygone era?

Or why it's ok to talk about 'indigenous' peoples like that.

I think you make a good point about people having smaller families, and there's nothing remotely dodgy about that. But I do think romanticizing long-ago-and-far-away places is dodgy, and should be guarded against. That's all.

I did say it was generalizations that tended towards racism, although this seems to be a distinction people are ignoring.

Someone mentioned a book is all. It's hardly set the tone or context of the thread. I didn't even notice it until I went to see what you were on about - and still missed the point you made.

I referred to my childhood. I may be getting on for 40, but its hardly going back to a bygone era.

Its a fact of life in this country that families are smaller, people move further for both work and retirement; and we work for much longer into our older years in comparison to recent history.

I think it is you who has generalized and it does nothing to further the cause for when racism does need to be challenged on mn.

I was referring to the OP, not the book.

I didn't generalize. I said I was referring to the beginning of the thread, and I asked a couple of questions. I'm sorry if you think only some racism needs challenging, but I don't agree. I think little drip-drip 'oh bless the natives' comments are just as nasty.

And btw, while you are happily viewing 'the past' through rose-tinted spectacles, spare a thought for the actual women who lived through it and probably didn't have such a romantic image of large families with everyone pitching in, eh?

Panema when I was a child my mum had a large support network round her too. She had 2 sisters and a sil around the corner. One of my aunts was always round helping my mum out. I never had childcare from anyone outside the family. I had numerous cousins to play with.

In contrast raising DD has been a lonely and expensive. My cousins moved back to Ireland when I was around ten. My aunts are now dead. My sister lives 300 miles away. My parents are very elderly. My brother is busy a lot of the time.

DD spends as much time as she can with family but its really not enough.

I have numerous younger cousins over in Ireland now, I cant help but think life would be better over there.

LRD, you really are putting 2+2 together and making 6. Where have I said or implied anything about "the Natives". ?My point was simply that, because of the way society has changed, many parents are much more isolated than they used to be. Whenever there's a thread when someone's exhausted with a non-sleeping baby or a clinging/whining toddler, the first thing they usually get asked is whether there's a family member/friend who could take baby/toddler for a few hours so the mother can have a break. I just think a lot of women are prepared for the physical and emotional resentlessness of caring for young children without any kind of support network.

aren't prepared.

Everybody is different. I found the competitive parenting when I had contact with other people (whose only compatibility to me was that they had bred) suffocating and neuroses inducing.

I'm much happier bringing up our kids without other peoples interference. DP feels the same.

If I want to socialise (rarely) I have a healthy mix of friends with their own preoccupations.

I have a friend who trots out the "village to raise a child" topic. It invariably comes on the back of a moan about childcare costs

Thing is, you only have to wander onto the multiple threads on here complaining about PILs and Parents doing childcare and doing things the parents don't like to see why for a lot of people, this doesn't work. Complaints about interfering grandparents, weaning issues, undermining bfing, discipline arguments. In fact, I know a lot of people who do rely on their parents to provide childcare whlie they work, of them all, they do regularly have complaints about how the grandparents look after their DGCs - from how they let them behave, what/how much they feed them, safety aspects, issues around sleep, and how much TV they allow etc.

The rosy ideal of "it takes a village" is a whole group of people doing things they way you want it done. Not, a lot of people doing things the way they want, telling you the way you are raising your DC is wrong and you not being able to say "it's none of your business" because it is their business, if they are more "senior" in the family, they may well feel they have more right to make decisions over your DCs than you. That's what "takes a village" often means in practice.

Plus, lets face it, the only way you have large numbers of woman around to help out (and it is woman you are talking about), is if they aren't working. There are always down sides to everything, being a bit more isolated for 6-12 months might be the downside to other woman you know (and you) having careers. The baby stage is such a short period out of your adult life, I'd not want to go back to a stage where I had limits on what I could do with 40+ years of my life in order to have a slightly improved 6-12 months of it (and I don't think looking at my extended family, them being around would be better than the friendship network I built for myself).

The way we are expected to do everything in this country has become unnatural. Childrearing, education, interaction with the elderly, eating, shopping, washing....

Makes me very depressed sometimes.

I have been dithering for years about having children, even though we have been TTC for ages. One of the reasons for the dithering is the panic about the isolation and the crazy expectations of today's society.

YNBU! My Ex is a different nationality and he still cant get over how 'hands off' some families are. His words. Not mine .

Totally Agree,

I love in the middle of nowhere with only dps family within driving distance,I certainly wish I loved in more of a community/ village raising the children type environment, just wonder how often that actually happens now.

I totally agree and I agree with whoever said its the older generation as well as parents too.
It has a massive impact on the nhs, carer's, breast feeding support would have been auntie/mother /grandmother. Depression, meals on wheels, lunch clubs even baby clubs.

I certainly wish I was bringing my ds up nearer family

Hester, expectations are other people's desires. One should never follow other people's desires.

Fair enough andy, sorry for expressing an opinion.

It's not that I don't get what you're saying about isolation. I just found it a bit dodgy to talk vaguely about 'nowadays', because the past really wasn't so lovely and peaceful as all that, was it? You can't seriously imagine that a woman in 1910 who had 20 kids thought happily 'oh, but yay! My mum is just round the corner, all is well!'. The comment about 'natives' was a bit unfair, maybe, but it's how I read that post about 'indigenous' (non specified) people - and I did explain that upthread and I certainly didn't attribute it to you.

Anyway ... really didn't mean to cause so much offense, I just had a minor point that some elements of this romanticizing made me uncomfortable.

I grew up in rural Scotland. My memories are very much that I was raised by a village, my Mum says it wasn't quite like how I remember. I now live in England so have no family close by. But with working 4 days a week there is only so much socialising you can do. It would be really nice to have willing babysitters though, I live somewhere where most people do have family close by, I have only one friend who doesn't have any grandparents nearby and she is about to move her parents here (due to their ill health sadly).

One of the best things about having grandparents close by (as well as having a babysitter for nights out) would be the fact that we wouldn't have to have them to stay for days on end. PILs drive me mad when they are here for a long time, i'm sure we'd get on better if they were

" You can't seriously imagine that a woman in 1910 who had 20 kids thought happily 'oh, but yay! "

I am in 40's, my Mum was born in 1928, my Nan in 1910. Ignoring that 1 in 10 women died in childbirth in the area in Liverpool (Walton) that she lived in and nearly every WC family lost at least one child, from a now curable illness , the average family size was 5 children.

My Grandad (who I knew) was from Italian origin. My bio GD was Native American, My Mums first DH was from Jamaica, My Dad from SA.

My Nan was in total shock at me being up and about three days after giving birth, women "lied in" for 10 days when she had hers and yes they had a support network of other women who would pitch in. As did all of the for mentioned relatives, the isolation that we now have, didn't happen.

How good and positive the support was emotionally, was a matter of luck. I agree that women were stuck in DV/poverty etc, but eradicating those didn't have to lead to where we are today.

I blame the 80's ethos of demonising LP's, rather than being about raising the quality of any type of family and concentrating on raising the quality of all types of relationships. There was much more a sense of shared values and goals before the Thatcher years, in my area (not speaking for London etc).

I would link how women are expected to parent, to sexism and the Patriarchy, Motherhood has always been an undervalued role.

Even in my childhood, I was probably one of the few children (of immigrant origin) that didn't have a large extended family around me.

If speaking "on average", or "in general" I agree with the OP.

Just to add, there was less pressure in a lot of ways on WC "housewives" though. You certainly wouldn't if had the disposable income to get stressed about buying gifts for Secret Santa/ teachers etc or tanning/nails/hair.

Life us completely different. I know people who have moved to Sweden and work in Children Services, I think in some ways their valuing of the family and family friendly policies work better.

But I don't live there, so don't really know.