To think we don’t realise what modern life is doing to families?

[MrsGrindah]

I’ll own up here.. not a mother myself but a stepmother.
But I spend a lot of time travelling on trains for work and see so many parents on the phone to their kids ( in the mornings and before bedtime). Yes it’s great that technology allows this, but I just feel sorry for people missing out on being with their families. Last week there was a man talking to his little boy, apologising that he had gone before the boy had woken up and wouldn’t be back by the time he went to bed. I felt so sorry for everyone
Not blaming the parents and of course we all have to work. My point is as a society we are becoming used to this and almost expect people to be prepared to sacrifice a significant chunk of family life. Just makes me feel sad to see it and I wonder whether we’ll regret it in years to come.

I have zero guilt.nadda.im not taking on the fucking mantle.imposed on women
Mum guilt perpetrated endlessly in media,on chat forums.

I never saw my dad growing up. And that’s a parent who worked from our home. It isn’t a symptom of modern life

Mum guilt perpetrated endlessly in media,on chat forums.

Exactly. What is this mum guilt? I must have missed the memo.

My dcs are lucky and privileged to have me as their mother. I am also really lucky to have found a balance that suits me and my family in terms of time together as well as financial security.

One of the side effects of modern life is that there is going to be a apartheid between young people who have the benefit of the bank of mum and dad to get a leg up on the property ladder and those who don't. Unfortunately, there is growing inequality in income and the middle income class is being destroyed.

Providing for your children should be seen is not just in terms of time (which is traditionally important) but also increasingly as they get older, financial support to pull ahead. I am not happy about that but that is the reality.

Mn recently had a blog, prompted on mn homepage. Dealing with mum guilt or someshit
It’s pretty much a perpetual that gets trotted out,accompanied by dubious research

Mum Guilt. I’ve seen it debated numerous times
And sure thing, others exploit it,all think of the little ones/harmful nursery anecdote

I feel guilty about fuck all. I love what I do, my children see that, and at least one of them is going to be waaay better than me at it.

Buggered if I would give that up so we could spend more time hanging about not doing much.

As I said,I too have zero mum guilt,nada.i work hard,I’m a good role model
And you know what no one ever foists dad guilt on men for earning,being solvent

I’m beginning to think we are part of an unique family. My mum was a sahm in the 50s and we spent a good bit time with my nana.
Dad worked shifts and I saw him loads and mum was always there.
I had three children close together and I stayed at home to look after them in the 70s.
They had the benefit of my mum being there throughput their childhoods.
Now my grandchildren are being raised by mainly sahm mums.my dil has a 2 hour a day Job that fits in with school times.
I’m not saying it’s any better or worse just different.
None of us have had the difficulty of juggling jobs and children and homes.
I feel for those of you who would much rather stay at home when your children are babies.
It must be hard not having a choice.

I'm not clear in what we are going to be regretting about now as opposed to all those other time periods where people worked long hours and we're out of the house much more - without technology to allow on-the-hoof communication.

I imagine most people will use the last couple of generations as a barometer rather than further back when the average working weeks were much longer again. It's obviously true that things were much worse a century ago but that's not the comparison people are going to be making because nobody remembers it.

I think a lot of it depends on where you live tbh. For instance, in the last generation a full time job invariably meant 9-5. For some people it no doubt still does, but for millions in London and, I imagine other cities, leaving at 5pm ish is seen as a no go. Plus people can't afford to live in town, so they often have a considerable commute on top of the working day, in heavy traffic or crowded trains. Leaving before 7 and getting home 7-8 seems to be the new standard and this makes family time in the week fairly impossible. Two parents working those kind of hours with several children over many years takes its toll on everyone's quality of life. It's surviving rather than living in my opinion and the reason why so many such families choose to have a SAHP because the stress and the juggling is just not worth it.

There were long winter evenings when, actually, people did just sit around being with each other.

Perhaps it's having grown up in Canada and reading a lot about early settlers, but people were busy even in the winter, there was livestock to care for, hunting, tanning, candle making, soap making, etc etc etc to be done. From what my grandmother & great-grandmother said it was basically one long slog from dawn till dusk. Then of course, there fathers were fisherman so were often at sea for days at a time.

While certainly they spent time together, I don't think it's as much as people think.

Crazyexingenue, certainly there’d be a difference between rural and urban lives, but once animals were fed surely even rural people could do tasks while in the same room as each other? (I grew up in Canada, in a big city, and managed to avoid reading about settlers as it all sounded very uncomfortable, hard to relate to, and not my family’s history as we’ve been city people for generations, in Canada and the UK).

And yes, I think it’s hard on families.
And I also think that people expect kids to crack on once they reach age 12 or so, but many teenagers desperately need their parents around and there is zero support for this in society (& people tend to roll their eyes at this and say I’m spoiling my kids by wanting to spend time with them & be available for them when they’re passing through the difficult teen years).

surely even rural people could do tasks while in the same room as each other?
Sure, but the point is you were working. Not reading to one another, or spending "quality time", you were doing things that needed to be done.

In the cities families would have had to work long hours as well. Again, the idea of a primary parent dedicated to just seeing to children's needs is a result of the modern industrial age.

We live in a smaller house and go on fewer holidays than our friends as over the years we've taken turns working full time then working part time so that someone is there to take the kids to and from school and to just be there. It works for us as a family, and I couldn't imagine us both being out long days apart from when I get Facebook envy of flash holidays. Any sahm stints I've had have been memorable only for me being thoroughly bored and depressed and hoping the kids didn't notice!

Last week there was a man talking to his little boy, apologising that he had gone before the boy had woken up and wouldn’t be back by the time he went to bed.

No way would I be apologising for that to my children. I’m putting a roof over their head and squirrelling money away where I can, so I can give them all the help possible as they grow up to hopefully make their life a little easier. And I am the middle income class that is being constantly squeezed.

My dad worked overseas for a time when I was a child. We saw him 2-3 times a year. My husband is currently working thousands of miles away but we see him every couple of weeks and get to visit him regularly too. I think that is a bonus of modern life.

DH and I talked about this last night. I agree with you in many ways, modern life has a lot of pressure which can mean less time with DC - I spend a large chunk of time feeling guilty because I feel like I.l neither parent or do my job well because I am focussed on the other.
We live in an expensive city on purpose- it hurts our bank accounts but it does mean only a 20 min commute to work for DH but he sees the DC at both ends of the day.

When I was at primary school (1970's) I remember going to my aunties after school because my parents were at work.Once I went to secondary school I had a key and let myself in the house. I had a great relationship with my parents especially once I was old enough to appreciate what they had sacrificed to keep me fed and watered.

One thing that has changed is the amount children seem to do after school and at weekends. This might be because everyone has a second car so that DCs can be got to whatever interest they follow. So there is a lot of rushing to fit that in too.

Why do people always hearken back to the coal mines? Why not the 70s?

It's as though people want to normalise a really punitive economic system, rather than looking back to the recent past and questioning the choices we have made/have had forced on us by quite recent economic changes.

I think house price rises, changes in the industrial base and - yes - the entry of women into the work-force have had a huge impact.

It's great that women can work. It's not so great that we now have to travel large distances to work - and with more people travelling, the commuting time has slowed. The end result is often two parents commuting to work, work being longer, and both working hard to pay rent/mortgage.

The end result of that is lots of women 'choosing' to work part-time, or often giving up work for a significant chunk of their working lives, with a subsequent impact on earning potential because there does seem to be a stark choice between work and life/family balance.

And it's not as though those long work hours mean that you now have two wages buying you a great, stress-free life. Rent and mortgages are high. You have to spend a significant chunk on commuting costs. Lots of things that were provided by the welfare state have gone and there is an assumption that you will be working to provide things that were free, or 'topping-up'.

I really think it's worth looking back to the 70s and thinking hard about where we could be now - people working closer to home, shorter working hours, a fairer distribution of work and working hours, so that there is a genuine work/life-family balance, a well-provisioned welfare state - rather than comparing ourselves to the brutal days of the early industrial revolution and normalising a pretty punishing situation.

I share WoH and parenting with DH, one of us is there every morning and evening after school two days and at 5.30 three days. I do have “mum guilt” (DH doesn’t often have “dad” guilt), eg over what the DC eat, and my career has stalled badly, IMO because I won’t work long hours so can’t compete with colleagues who will.

Housing and job location is a factor: London has lots of jobs but housing is £££. Commuting is bad for lots of things, including quality of family life IME.

My parents both worked FT but locally and did not have as much pressure from employers to work long hours.

V interesting thread. Lots of views and opinions. Some columnist will write a great article using this stuff

I haven't read the whole thread but I disagree massively.

My parents are both from working class backgrounds. Thy come from families where you just didn't do activities or spend time with your children. As a consequence, once we were too told for the park , I never spent any time with my dad ever. He didn't work long hours he was home a lot but it just wasn't something we did. Weekends involved housework, a trip to the supermarket and church. We never did anything as a family. My parents worked locally. My brothers are massively resentful as they feel like they never did anything with my mum. I was the one who went food shopping with her.

These days - weekdays might be a right off but at least people make an effort at the weekends to do family stuff, spend time together. I think attitudes towards family life has changed for the better. And I have certainly learnt from the mistakes of my parents. I have no relationship with my dad and m relationship with my mum is strained.

OP. yanbu.
But i don't know what the answer is. I wonder whether we are storing up problems for the kids in future.

Yeah because my Dad never had to work shifts and be out of the house when we got up or went to bed ! But yeah I do know what you mean - it's these Mums who are walking with their kids in buggies and looking at their phones that do my head in - TALK to your child !