To wonder how the world sees modern parents?

[Rosenwyn1985]

Just read a thread on gransnet that someone sent me a link to and it's got me thinking about how the world looks at parents in the western world these days...

I'd like to think my parenting is relatively balanced but I doubt I parent the way older generations have (no spanking for starters). There are things available to me that haven't been before and times change. I wonder what my grandad thought of my dad etc...

(for reference www.gransnet.com/forums/aibu/1228506-Mums-on-their-phones?utm_source=MNPN&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=mums+on+their+phones+thread )

Just curious really...

SLIPPER'S!!!! It's a revelation! Do you think this could be the answer to ten yrs of bedtime hell?
Although I must admit I do try to have the littlest 2 fed and bathed in pyjamas before dh gets home....

I think there is stark different in parenting today. Even when I compare to my own childhood, less than 20 years ago.

My own mother rarely resorted from smacking, but we all knew it was a possibility if we made her blow her top. I don't have many memories of her actually doing it though.

I spend far more time with my kids, actually playing with them with their toys, I don't recall my mum doing that. I also take my kids out far far more than I went out as a child, meals out, trips to the farm, zoo, seaside, cinema museums etc. Whilst I did those things they were rare treats not a regular occurence. I am more flush than my mum was though so that plays a part.

My DD is 7 and at that age I would shoot off out the door at 9 ish in the summer hols and only return for lunch dinner or an ice pole. I knew my boundaries of where I was allowed to go, but it was certainly not in my mums sight. I genuinely do not feel safe enough for my DD to do that.

No way would I have been allowed out alone yet my DS 9 is always out and about he has been at cub camp all week which would have been another no. In fact extra curricular activities were never encouraged.
But my mum spent a lot of time playing with us. I've been trying to cut down the days out this summer and spend time at home playing in the garden or baking cakes with them as they don't seem to be able to tolerate a bit of boredom...

I'm in my late 30s. SO much has changed since I was a kid, but I think one of the most major things has to be the internet. It's changed so much, both as a source of information and as a source of potential harm. I'm not sure I'd know where to start with parenting in relation to it, because I just don't have any models at all from my own childhood to draw on.

I think physical punishment has changed a lot too. My Mum used to hit a lot, sometimes repeatedly and far too hard, and she would claim we had 'forced' her to do it. I am glad that notion that adults simply can't control their responses to childish misdemeanours is being challenged. I think it must be hard for some parents who were recipients of such behaviour to adopt new models, though.

Gotta love all the generalising on that thread. Does it count as ageism?
I'd like to know who all these mothers are who are never off their phones, don't happen to know any myself.
I know my mum thinks my parenting is lax compared to hers, but she would often tell us we were doing things she could never have got away with growing up.
I am going to let my children use technology. I will put limits on it, but the modern world works the way it does and I'd be holding them back totally unnecessarily if I ban it.

My mum did the same as yours logo and I am working as hard as I can not to do the same. I grew up scared of my mum for many years, she was scared of her parents. It's not a cycle I want to continue though I think it was the norm in previous generations.

Oh the rose tinted glasses are firmly in place over on there isn't it?

It's easy to say, "in my day, we did this and this and no one did this"

In reality they are probably blocking out a lot from when their own children were youngsters

My mum didn't have a smart phone to take her away. But she had her books and her news. The need for time not being 100% focussed on your kids was there. She reckons I do t watch my two closely enough and conveniently forgets she did exactly the same and let me watch my younger brother from a pretty young age.

Yeah my mum didn't have a smart phone either but she had books, magazines and her tv shows. Oh and not forgetting chatting on the land line for hours and hours! People definitely look back with rose tinted glasses, my mum does it, my nan does it and dp's parents do it.

Just had a read through that thread. I hate the way people use the term 'young mums' it's so patronising.

I don't think my mum ever took me to a park. We only ever went there with siblings, including the youngest who was still in a pram. I can imagine the reaction I'd get if I sent my 5yr-old out to the park with a baby in a pram or a toddler in a pushchair.

(And as an aside, I never met another child with a rear-facing pushchair. There was no golden age of children facing their parents on walks. )

We were also taught that children shouldn't be seen or heard. You were expected to stay out of the house as much as possible. If you stayed in the house, you also had to stay in your bedroom.

If we were on the bus we were expected to be silent. There was no pointing at things out of the window or talking about daily life. This was in the 1970s and 1980s, so no phones or tablets in sight.

I don't recognise the 'Gransnet Age' of perfect parenting at all.

It makes a very uncomfortable reading at times actually

First it's what's the point in having children if you don't talk to them and you are stuck on your phone all time.

Then it moves on to what's the point in having children if you are going to put them in daycare all day and work.

Talk about judgmental parenting

This is an interesting thread. I don't have DCs so no DGCs either but would say from RL observation and reading on here, that a lot of parents are far more indulgent these days.

I was born in 1945 so food rations were in place for the first few years of my childhood. We had three meals a day and ate well but these days it seems that no mother would go to collect their children from school without taking numerous snacks to avoid them starving between the school and arriving home.

It seems parents (I suppose I mean mothers) seem to think they should spend 24 hours a day thinking of activities to keep their children amused. I wonder when they get the time to make up play using their own imagination? After a certain age my sister and I and our friends amused ourselves.

I'm also puzzled why parent have no expectations of their children sitting at a restaurant table without being plugged into some sort of media to keep them amused/quiet. My family didn't eat out very much but when we did for a special occasion, say a birthday we would go to a fairly posh restaurant where my sister and I happily sat at the table chatting to each other and our parents, really enjoying the treat of being there, especially if it was one of our birthdays and a cake blazing with candles was brought to our table . Us running riot around the restaurant would not be tolerated for one minute.

Oh and we were never hit - threatened as we ran upstairs to our bedroom if we misbehaved maybe but never carried out.

I'm obviously an oldie and can probably safely be ignored but I do wonder who had/have the best childhood - my friends and I or the children of today.

That Gransnet thread is insaaaaaane. There are people seriously discussing whether mothers who look at their phones on bus journeys should be prosecuted for neglect. Also our children are all going to develop speech and language difficulties because we never ever talk to them, and why did we bother having children in the first place?

(I had mine so I'd have something to lean the phone on, personally. My hand gets sore after a while.)

Wow, just read some of the comments on the gransnet page. Do they not think that that short bus journey may be the only chance that mum has had to catch up on her phone? She might have been at home for who knows how long reading to child /playing with child/cooking for child etc etc. Might be the only break she's had

They've forgotton the sheer relentless of a all childrenI'm playing the long game....SAHM with kids in SCHOOL should be fun!

Oops I just accidently signed up to gransnet!

My mother will be on there!
She told me it was child abuse that I did online shopping and 'never' took my kids to a supermarket as how else where they going to learn about food and where it comes from
She conveniently forgets that she was a sahm living off my dads wage with one child at a time (10 year gap between me and my brother) and her own car
I am a working single parent with only 2 years between my kids and I don't drive, if getting shopping delivered makes my life easier then damn right I'm going to do it...

I'm quite an old fashioned parent and quite often at the extremes some go to in the name of parenting.
All the catchments, school choices, what's fair or not, baby groups, toddler groups, childcare, modern men and parenting.
It just sounds like such hard work.
It's bad enough if you have a child with SN without adding all the irrelevant twaddle to your life.

'Modern men'?

Ha Ha yes, modern men as the title asks about "modern" parents.

Ahh! I see