Parenting - easier now or 'back in the day'?

[Coughandsplutter]

Posting for traffic tbh. Ive got a toddler of 2.5 and a baby of 4 weeks. Yesterday I was chatting to parents about how bringing up kids has changed. Mum was telling me about her silver cross pram with seat fitted on top for me to sit on while sibling was in pram. She was on about terry towelling nappies and having to boil them clean. It wasn't a "we had it tougher" conversation, just a comparison between times. My parents didn't have much money or grandparent support so perhaps their situation is different from most. Mum had no car so everywhere she went was on the bus or walking. We talked about how pubs, supermarkets, shopping centres etc are all now very child friendly with changing facilities etc.

Not really expressing myself well as I'm very tired but what do others think. Was bringing up kids in 70-80s harder? Or 50s? Or was it just different pressures? Was life simpler then in some ways - no Facebook photo 'competitions' of who's having best Easter and check ins to the latest trampoline Park. Or is it easier now?

Parenting is the hardest job in the world when you are trying to do it right. I think this statement stands no matter what time or culture you parent in. I think it was physically much harder work years ago though. I was raised in the 70s in a huge family. We played out a lot and amused ourselves when we were in. Despite this my mum never had a single minute to herself. She spent her whole day washing, cleaning and cooking. My first baby was born in 1990 and my last in 2008 and i feel my parenting evolved over that time. Our circumstances changed during those years but my commitment to my kids didn't. My first slept in her own room from 4 months, my youngest was well over a year before she went into her own room. My eldest was weaned from 3 months, with my youngest we did blw from about 6 or 7 months. My point is that while our style of parenting changed over that time we always kept abreast of health advice and always did the best we could. Thankfully i am too old to bother with fb style competitive parenting and experienced enough now to take new trends and advice with a pinch of salt. I have made lots of mistakes and no doubt in a few years my kids will become parents and tell me everything i have done wrong but hey, that's life.

DH always says that if all the games and social media were available when he was a child that are available now he would never have left his bedroom.

I never got thrown out but preferred to spend the summer outside, very often going out on our bikes.

honeylulu, I think you are spot on about Motherhood being turned into a career in it's own right. I also believe our child centric parenting is going to have a negative effect on our young people. They are not being prepared for the reality of adulthood.

It wasn't me extrapolating starzz, it was you going on about children vanishing and then having to google to find us 2 stories.

Anyway, instead of randomly dissing every single generation of parents pre-what? 90s? Tell us about your own experiences as a child and as a parent, which is more what the rest of us are comparing. I'm not comparing the 50s and the 70s (when my Mum was a child, and then a parent) because I know Jack about them in those terms. Like you and all the generations you seem to think were so utterly vile.

Great posts kitsandkids and honeylulu.

harder now I think - I am sure the internet is going to be the death of all civilization. Watched a programme about the dark net then researched it online (the irony!) and it really upset me what is on there. Then all the freely available violent, mysoginistic porn - I am having converstations with my DC about porn that my mother would never have even imagined in her worst nightmares. Teens are exposed to really hideous stuff before their brains are emotionally equipped to deal with it. I shudder sometimes.

In some ways harder in the past. I am early 50s.
No maternity pay, and very rare childcare. Most mums who worked had family or neighbours looking after their kids. Harder physically in terms of washing clothes, shopping, cooking. Lots of people still had outside toilets.

But it was fine for kids to play out, or to leave your baby outside a small shop in her pram. And anyone who entertained their kids all the time would have been thought of as odd.

That's a slight misrepresentation, Vintage! I didn't 'have to go googling', they were well known cases, and it was after numerous demands to back up what I was saying.

Statistically, child abduction and murder by a stranger is rare, has always been rare.

However, I think opportunistically, sexually abusing children was once far easier. That's the long and short of it really.

I don't think the generations before me are vile at all. That's a really odd comment.

But, things change. At one time, attending a public hanging was a great day out, as was visiting a mental institution. As you rightly point out, children were once routinely sent up chimneys. In some parts of the world children are still forced to undergo horrific things. It's not about vileness, but attitudes once considered fine that have changed.

That's all okay. But I don't like the harking back to the good old days.

Also lots of fathers in the past were not that involved. You never saw a man pushing a pram. Dads might take their son to football or some other manly activity, but rarely did actual work like change a nappy.

Late 80s I looked after a disabled teenager with autism. Many autistic teenagers were in horrible old psychiatric hospitals. There was zero understanding or help for parents then, and very very few disabled toilets. He was doubly incontinent and changing him when out and about, could be a nightmare. It was a lot worse then if you were the parent of a disabled child.

starzzzz Kids did not used to be believed by most if they said they were sexually abused. That made them very vulnerable.

I let my girls sleep in their Prams in the garden....complete with a cat net over the hood. I was more worried about bees and wasps than cats tbh.
They came to no harm, were never left to scream or become distressed

In many ways things are easier but this always comes at a cost. More isolation, greater incidence of mental health problems in young people, obesity. Children have so much pressure now from school and parents.
They have pressure to look perfect and live a perfect life from peers.
It's a pressure cooker.

I think some things are easier now and some things are harder. More household gadgets now but I think children are less independent now and have less responsibility. I have 5 dc's with 8 years between oldest and youngest. DS1 doesn't have to help looking after younger siblings the way I was expected to at his age.

My dad wasn't at the hospital when 3 out of 4 of us were born. For one of us he wasn't even in the country.

In 1970 10% of households had an outside toilet, and 9% had no bath. I know my parents used to go to the swimming baths to have a bath.

@brasty - I can confirm that this was true in the 80s too where I lived. Everyone in a terrace had an outdoor toilet & no bath until the council started giving out grants.

So - gross generalisation, but I think theres some truth in it-
Ye olden days - childcare was shared in the community, but women were stuck with the physical labour of housework
Now - housework not as physically draining, shared with partners, more modcons but childcare a serious intense worrisome business borne more by the mother.

My own mum was a sahm and did not drive so all shopping was done on a daily basis at local shops. In contrast, I have always worked. I never thought my mum appreciated how difficult that was with young kids.
My parents had a lot of support from their parents and as kids my brother and myself used to go and stay with grandparents for whole weekends and my parents would have time to themselves/ go away for weekends occasionally etc. In contrast, we had kids older and have lost 3 out of 4 parents and I can't remember ever having one free night without the kids in 17 years !
My childhood was great, all the neighbourhood kids would play out and be in and out of each others homes, the mums would always be having coffee together and would help each other out with childcare if needed. Nowadays most mums seem to be working and kids sped a lot of the holidays in kids clubs. not saying this is better or worse just very different.

Only just checked in to see what people's thoughts are and didn't expect so many replies. Seems that there's lots of opinions and discussion out there. I personally don't think one era was easier than another as they all had their pressures and expectations. It also depends on circumstances. My parents weren't well off and didn't have grandparents handy. Un fact, my mum suffered from severe pnd as she was very isolated with two kids under two and a half. My dad was a police officer so his hours were erratic. Mum was just told she had 'baby blue's and 'thats what happened when you had a baby.'

What I feel is harder nowadays is this unquantifiable undertone of filling the kids days and hours with enrichinment. My DD2 is only 4 weeks and already a neighbour has asked what baby groups/classes she'll be doing. I'm lucky if we make it downstairs some mornings, let alone out the door and doing gymnastics or some such activity! I work part-time, but obviously on mat leave at the moment, and when I have days off with my toddler I often feel I have to so at least one outing per week - farm, soft play, park etc...I feel guilty if he comes to supermarket and then we do some washing and cleaning! He's been ill the last day or so and cooped up at home and now he's getting better I feel I have to get him out somewhere. Facebook is a nightmare for this. I'm in fb because a lot of friends and all my family live far so it's an easy way of keeping in touch but I've deleted my account in the past when it's got too much - it's like a competition to see who can do the most fun stuff at Easter at the moment. "Easter egg Hunt with my kiddies" - 30+ pics of kids in a field looking for chocolate. Or the "Prosecco with my faves!" - mates in bar looking smug! Does my head in! But like I say, it helps me keep in touch so I've started 'hiding' posts from people who do this. One friend had gone rambling somewhere with her hubby and baby. 64 pictures of the ramble and the baby in a sling with mum. Really? Some very nice shots of Lake District but.....

Anyway, baby needs feeding so will check in later!

Im in my 50s . My dm breastfed me and my df changed nappies regularly. He also cooked and washed up and checked homework. In my dhs family his df did all the cooking. We were a large family in rural lreland..I think the biggest difference for me is my dm had very little social contact. She rarely left the house and was going flat out all day. No coffee mornings or meet up with friends. She says mothers rarely talked about their dc to each other as that would be seen as boasting. Today there seems to be more competition between dms .She spent her day baking and cooking with dessert after dinner each day. My dc were lucky to get a dinner and rarely desserts. I think it was more difcicult for her mainly because there was more children but she says its far more difgicult for us as we go out to work so essentially have two jobs.

Speaking as a parent of DCs in their late evens/early twenties, I think there are far more pressures these days. When mine were young there were not the same pressures of play dates or of keeping them entertained at all costs, or packing their lives full of out of school activities, or having problems getting into the right catchment areas for the best schools, or SATs. SATs were introduced with my youngest, but before that they just didn't exist. And because of social media, parents are continually bombarded on what a perfect parent should do. Being a parent should be a mostly enjoyable experience, but there are too many outside influences these days which get in the way of it.

Well I've got late teen and mid 20 and we had school pressures , my youngest couldn't get into our local good school so went private and we live in an 11+ area so no change there. I don't understand why people get so bothered about social media , there are plenty of people not going to groups and activities but people are swayed by the few that constantly post about what they are doing . Where mine went to school the norm was to do after school activities a few times a week and although I didn't do a lot of baby / toddler groups I was always out and about with mine . I think a lot of the differences are not about generation / time but disposable income - I had a good disposable income and worked infrequently so I took mine to a lot of places ,if I was at work and had no money I wouldn't have been able to - simple .

I think some of this depends on when you are comparing against, and how well off you were in the past. A very different experience being a SAHM in the 70s with 1 NT DC, and a DP with a good middle class job, to being a working class woman in the 70s with a job, 4 DC one of whom was disabled. For those mums who worked as well in the past, life was harder.