To think raising a child was much easier for previous generations?

[wondering7777]

For my parents and certainly my grandparents’ generation, bringing up children must have been so much easier.

Mortgages were a hell of a lot cheaper for starters, but now the average home costs something like ten times the average salary. As a result, in most cases both parents have to go out to work whether they want to or not, and pay extortionate childcare costs to keep a roof over their heads. In the “old days” mothers were far more likely to be able to take time off work and the family could pay the mortgage on one salary.

In addition, my grandparents’ generation were much more likely to have family living nearby and a more close-knit community to help raise the child.

Judging from what I read on Mumsnet, there’s also a lot of competitive parenting these days, and a lot of parents feel they have to put their child at the centre of their universe, which causes stress. Children from my grandparents’ era were left to their own devices and would play out for hours.

There was no technology then so no angst about children accessing the internet and the reams of inappropriate content that is readily available at the click of a button.

Uni was free so parents didn’t have to save up to send those kids who did go, and jobs were far more readily available when children left school.

Also, the cartoons were better

AIBU?

I don’t think it was easier but I do think women had more support which makes a big difference. Raising children when your friends and family are all living within a few streets of each other must have made a lot of things better. I think the fact we are so isolated from each other in the modern world has played a big part in the rise of PND.

Only anecdotal but my gran had pnd and ptsd. She was committed for about six months, the six kids were all living with a different aunt or uncle nearby and they all didn't see each other for the duration. Nobody realised that maybe mum would need a visit from her little children and baby, nobody realised that the kid being angry needed a hug because he hadn't seen his mum in so many months. Yes, there was help, they took the kids in and fed them but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone got a warm and fuzzy feeling and time to feel better.

The only marriage I can think of a 13 year old girl was jerrry Lee Lewis marrying his 13 year old cousin in 1957. Jerry was 23 and this was his third marriage already.. But of course this was in the us and did blight his career for years.

@Fresta

Some slight exaggerations there! It's not that women weren't allowed to work once they were married, just that many chose to leave in those days because the culture was different and women often became the homemaker and cared for their children.

When my mum announced to her boss that she was getting married in 1974 she was congratulated and sacked in the same conversation. It really did happen in those days. She did some tenp work here and there till she was 5 months pregnant and started showing, then no one wanted to even employ her even for temp work.

NC as outing. There is a lot of generalising on this thread. People of the same age had totally different circumstances, depending on where they lived and their parents' background.

I was born in 1963. I was considered rich by my friends at primary school because we had a car and a phone and a colour TV, and we went abroad for our holidays.

The car was a 5 yo Cortina, which lived in our garage all week and came out on Saturdays for the weekly shop at Tesco (yes, we had supermarkets back then), and for my DF's sporting fixtures. My DF went to work on a small motorbike. We had a neighbour who drove to London every day but most people in our street walked, caught the bus or cycled.

The TV was rented, as were most people's, and DF liked to change it when the latest one came out. I can remember watching The Black and White Minstrel Show (everyday racism anyone?) on both the old black and white TV and the new colour one side by side, as a very small child.

The phone rental was paid for by the sporting association so people could get hold of DF.

The foreign holidays were to Europe by car and ferry, paid for by either doing a mutual house-swap or by DPs renting out our house to one family while we rented from another. I hated it, because there was always a mad panic before we went away to tidy the house and get it properly clean for the visitors, and I really didn't like the idea of someone being in my bedroom and touching my things.

Our other holidays were camping, in a basic tent, or a couple of times to Butlins.

I did loads of activities as a child and was out most evenings. The difference was that I had to get myself there and back. I also walked to school on my own from 5yo.

We lived 200 miles away from my grandparents so there was no family around. DPs used to leave us with the NDN babysitting from her own house . She would pop in a couple of times to make sure we were OK but didn't actually sit with us.

Food was really expensive and not much variety. NDNs ate things like yogurt and muesli and were considered very odd. We didn't constantly graze but had breakfast, dinner and tea, with nothing in between.

During the school holidays we went off on our own and were pretty much left to our own devices. Our favourite place to play was an area of woodland by a creek which had a railway line and other hazards. There were always loads of kids up there but we were completely unsupervised. I'm amazed we survived really. No way would I have let my kids play on their own somewhere like that.

Obviously in my day children did have accidents. They fell and broke bones, they drowned, they electrocuted themselves, they were subject to flashing and sexual assault. They got run over or were injured in cars with no seatbelts. They got sick.

Yes the cost of property was lower, but as a country what we now class as essentials which would have been a luxury, our spending is completely different. I few up in the 90's, stuff like sky TV, a brand new car, mobiles, holidays we always treated as a luxury, those things to people now are an essential. I would think in the 80's and 90's you would have more people living in poverty, it just wasn't as widely reported as people didn't have access to the internet, papers would only really report headlines etc and the poverty line is only really a new thing.

I think the 80's and 90's were much simpler and I would love my son to have the laid back lifestyle (although we were dirt poor), but he's living in a generation where information is at his fingertips. If he wants to learn a language he can do so online, if he wants to research university's, job prospects, learn about a new culture he can do so just as easily. When I was younger we didn't have that kind of access to information. If the local library didn't stock a book you couldn't learn it.

People complain about kids spending to much time with screens, but surely as parents we allow that. A 2 year old has no concept of TV , tablets etc unless we allow that access. They aren't born wanting to watch cartoons, that's very much parent led behaviour.

One of my mums friends had a one night stand and got pregnant before marriage. They whisked away the much wanted baby, she never got to hold her or see her. She finally found her some 30 years later through some organisation but they never could make a relationship work after all that time apart. It was so sad.

My DM’s brother died at 15 of tuberculosis - chances are he would still be alive today

My aunts husband left her in the late 50s. He took their two children with him and she never saw them again.

YABU - I would not want to swap with my Mum - big cold house, no car, shopping every other day on the village bus with three children under five, no help from my Dad who expected his supper on the table when he got in, hand washing terry nappies, no friends round as my Dad didn't like strangers in the house. We were well off but had no tv and second hand clothes as my parents didn't like to waste money on non-essentials.
I do remember playing outside all day but not fondly. It was basically wandering around with whoever else happened to be doing the same until it got dark enough to go home.

Don't even get me started on my Gran!

Bringing up my two wasn't easy but it was a lot easier than it was for either Mum or Grandma!

@salmonrose- that happened to my mum, except the nuns at the nursing home I was born in helped her fight to keep me. I think she was incredibly brave, as my father knew nothing about the pregnancy and her own mother had given birth only 7 months previously.

It wasn’t easy for her though, and she certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it without the support of those nuns.

Completely agree OP. We have much 'more' these days but I don't think we are any happier for it.

Some slight exaggerations there! It's not that women weren't allowed to work once they were married, just that many chose to leave in those days because the culture was different and women often became the homemaker and cared for their children.

Well it depends when you are talking about, in the 70s yes that's right but further back women often were forced to leave jobs when they married.

As a pp said there is a lot of anecdote and wild over generalisation on this thread. All times were hard to an extent but the challenges were often different.

Prior to WW2 life sounded pretty horrendous to me in terms of women's rights, I'm very glad I didn't live then tbh.

My first DC was born in 1986. I'm always surprised now when doctors ask you if it's OK before touching you. Back then they didn't even tell you what they were doing. I remember an antenatal visit at the hospital being left in a cubicle, a young doctor coming in, palpating my bump while firing lots of questions at me then just walking out.

DC2 in 1987 went for his 6 week check at the Child health clinic. A woman asked the nurses if she could sit in on the check so they asked the doctor if it was OK... didn't even tell me who she was. Doctor did every check twice so he could explain to this woman what he was doing, course that meant that the baby started to get upset. Then he said he couldn't finish the check because the baby was crying as he was "obviously hungry", and walked off .

Prior to that he'd been asking me loads of really personal questions. He was Chinese and had a really strong accent that I struggled to understand, so he was getting snappy with me. Asked how old I was, how old DH was, how long we'd been married, what contraception we were using, whether the baby was planned; all this in front of this woman, who he didn't bother introducing.

I wrote a steaming letter of complaint about the whole process, which my HV took forward for me, and by the time DC3 had his 6-week check 2 years later there was no Chinese doctor, no personal questions, and no onlookers.

There was plenty of competitive parenting even before the internet. We had mums at our toddler group proudly showing off their "potty trained" 18 month olds, while my DD was consistently still wetting herself at 2.5yo.

OTOH if your child developed a rash or got a temperature there was no google or NHS Choices to check whether it was serious, so it was either calling someone to say "what do you think this is?" or straight to the GP.

Maternity pay at my work was good by the standards of the day, 18 weeks on full pay. You got maternity leave of 11 weeks before the birth and six after. Back in 1985 they were only just starting to ask people if they were coming back to work. I only knew one woman in my office who went back and she was divorced. There weren't many nurseries and they weren't very good.

I didn't go back to work, but DH was made redundant in early 1987 and was only entitled to the basic unemployment benefit. Luckily we had insurance to cover the mortgage or we'd have lost the house.

I went back to work part time in 1990, but we had to work shifts around the children so we hardly saw each other. The only benefit for families aside from child benefit was family income supplement, and DH earned about £1 over the limit to claim. No tax credits, no childcare vouchers. A lot of women gave up work because they had no choice in childcare, just as now.

DC1 started school in 1990 and in our area they were just starting to give parents choice in where to send them. You had to put their name down at individual schools and the school decided who they would admit. We got two offers, but a lot of people didn't get one, so they had to change the process. I still think I made the wrong choice.

My grandma had her first 3 children in less than 3 years, all in cloth nappies with no washing machine. I’m very happy in the present day with my implant and my washing machine, thanks!

MIL was a teacher. DH was born late summer 1962. She had to leave her job at Easter Holidays before the pg became unseemly in the classroom. She had no rights to go back to work.

Interestingly women in my family worked throughout the 20th Century but in family owned concerns but often doing men's jobs. My grandma did the payroll for two businesses (probably 60-80 staff from the 30s to the 70s) as well as training horses and maintaining work relationships/order. She and great grandad took over the entire show in the war when he was late 50s/60s.

Great grandpa worked until he was turned 80 and died, grandma until early 70s when dementia started to ravage her (probably partly due to heartbreak: two bro's dead, sisterbin America having run away to find her soldier, loss of a baby after a caesarian when birth nearly killed her). Grandad worked until he was 84. DH's grandad part/time until hecwas 89.

And we are all n shock about retiring at 68 which gave yet more equality. I started a 2nd career at 43 - I am 60 next year. I have one big promotion in me and it's feasible. The last one wouldn't have been if I had had to retire at 60.

It’s very different certainly, but it is swings and roundabouts as to whether it’s harder. Thinking back to our grandparents who didn’t have access to a range of contraceptives, and were often trapped raising more children than they could afford and far fewer labour saving devices. Our mothers who often had to do crap part time jobs for unequal pay to make ends meet. Yes it’s hard, but I think i’d rather be doing it now.

Who was 18 when they got married, not ‘14 years old or younger’ because that is and was illegal here.

Mandy Smith was 18 when she married Bill Wyman but she was only 13 when their relationship began - he was 47. To make it even worse, his son from his first marriage was married to her mother.

Lori Maddox was just 14 when she had relationships with both David Bowie (25) and Jimmy Page (28).

Iggy Pop slept with Sable Starr when she was 13 and he was 23.

All of it was considered acceptable at the time.

Every generation has its own troubles. Yes, I agree. There were fewer dlmestic machines (washing machines, dishwashers etc.). Women had fewer rights. Maternity leave started in 1979 but they expected you to stop working 11 weeks pre delivery and go back 6 weeks after and there were employment conditions. Working mothers and later sinle parents were pilloried in the press and blamed for "juvenile delinquency" and poor educational achievement. The profumo scandal was interesting. The young "call girls" were blamed more than the older male cabinet ministers. Playing out all day was sometimes fun but a lot of bullying went on tht parents never heard of. Kids were hit in schools with rulers for getting time tables wro g etc. Howver it was easier to buy a house, baby boomrrs could get good jobs with a lower level of education and in some ways there was less pressure on people. Swings and roundabouts.

The kids and young parents of today would die if they saw what went on in my school.
We had corporal punishment and the teachers were not afraid to use it.
Discipline was far better back then, I felt safe knowing that bullies would be severely dealt with. I think schools are far too slack with discipline now and I speak as someone who spent years working in schools.
I've seen young kids telling teachers to fuck off you ugly, fat, cunt , and refusing point blank to do any work what so ever.
Then SLT tiptoing around both the child and parents, setting up behaviour plans which include more reward time than actual work. The child refusing again point blank to do any work. Again calling the teacher a cunt and daring them to make them do any work because they can't make them.
The teacher not supported. The SLT terrified of rocking the boat in case they are held accountable by OFSTED and the SLT would tolerate anything to avoid a visit from OFSTED.
Parents not disciplining their child.
Staff going off sick with the stress after being told to "cope with it."
Yes I think the whole set was better back then taking everything into account.
We learnt a lot without lesson plans. We were able to have discussions with the teacher about important, relevant issues. Nowadays most teachers can't do that, they have a lesson plan and a learning objective to achieve.

Sorry OP I think you’re deluded but I do think the cartoons used to be better 🤣

I think you may be missing the fact that houses were cheaper but wages were much lower then anyway. We gave up so much in order to send our daughter to Uni and decided to pay for her maintenance grant ourselves so that she could come out with no debts. We hardly ever took holidays, didn't go out much at all. As previously stated the interest rates were sometimes as much as 18%. I don't think any young people these days would be prepared to start out with second hand furniture and eating as little as possible in order to save up for a house. All young people who move into our road strip the whole house out and have it totally redecorated (regardless of it's condition), extended and usually buy a new car into the bargain. Presumably this is all being borrowed on their mortgages, honestly they must be going to be paying this off into their retirement. Believe me if I sat down with half of them and went through how much self indulgence they are entertaining I could probably save them a fortune. Very greedy generation, not prepared to go without in order to reach their goals.

I haven't RTFT but my kids were born in the 1980s and more than anything else, I'm glad social media wasn't a part of their growing up.

I've seen young kids telling teachers to fuck off you ugly, fat, cunt , and refusing point blank to do any work what so ever.

That’s terrible! And I bet that sort of abuse happened far less frequently (if ever) when my grandparents and parents were at school.

I think you may be missing the fact that houses were cheaper but wages were much lower then anyway.

I don’t accept this argument. Getting on the property ladder (or even renting!) is more expensive in the last 10 years than it’s ever been IMO, regardless of the 18% interest rates that everybody talks about.

No, I agree in the sense that in the early 80's my parents were younger than I am now but could afford a 4 bed detached house on one salary. My Mum hadn't worked for 20 years. She had a dishwasher, car, automatic washing machine. Pretty much the same mod cons I have.

I now have to work 20 hours a week and we scrape by. Can't afford to rent more than a 2 bed home (let alone but) when we need a three bed really as our mixed sex kids are almost Secondary age.

I would work more but can't because both our kids have disabilities and tonnes of hospital appointments.

I do almost all.the child rearing,cooking and cleaning despite my efforts to get other half to do more. Other half works 2 jobs in the week. I work 2 jobs,trying to get some done in the evening and some in the day around the kids.

Other half's car is fucked and we can't afford to fix it.

My parent could afford to buy brand new cars.