Good posts ketze and headofthehive
It’s a pointless exercise to try to ‘tot’ up which generation has had it ‘easiest’ ... there are too many variables and also we can’t always see the pressures and
Parameters that existed for previous generations
As I said, I’m in the age bracket where dh and I could become grandparents soon, but that doesn’t mean we had it easy. We were on the housing ladder but paying ludicrously high proportions of our incomes on mortgage rates. When I had dc1 I had to return to work when she was 12 weeks, because maternity legislation was nowhere near as generous as now.
It might be easy to look at my own parents generation as ‘having it easy’ ... after all, they bought a house in the south east back in the days when they cost literally a couple of thousand pounds, and then my mum was a SAHM completely for about 15 years and eventually did a very part time job once my younger sister started secondary school. So, in some ways, none of the pressure of juggling work and children. Do I envy them? No. My mum never had a career (and there were no day nurseries back then anyway) Although returning to work for me was tough with a 12 week baby, it’s also enabled me to have a fulfilling work life my own mother could only have dreamed of.
Also, although my mother didn’t have to work, my parents rarely went abroad, ate out, visited the theatre or had many of the cultural experiences that dh and I (and our children) have benefited from.
And that’s just measuring the tangible things.... there’s also the fact that raising children in my parents’ generation often meant taking on very demarcated roles. Dh has been a much more hands on Dad and emotionally engaged with our kids, probably mainly because we’ve always viewed ourselves as equal earners/ careers/homemakers
I wouldn’t want to swap my life for my mothers, even if on the face of it, She seemed to have the easier deal, because What we are on the surface doesn’t tell the whole story