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?

Also, re children not playing outside so much:

1. People blame increased awareness of paedophiles, but the real reason is traffic. It used to be safer to play in the street because children wouldn't get knocked over and killed or maimed by cars. The incidence of child sexual abuse has as far as I know remained pretty constant over the years and by far the highest risk is and always has been from the child's own family and friends.

1. Tolerance of risk has gone down (but ability to identify and asses risks has not improved). As soon as you become aware there is a risk to your child it's human nature to think you should do your best to eliminate it. It's a lot harder to balance up whether by doing that you're exposing them to another risk in the future. It's also hard to accept that you can't eliminate all risks and live with that.

In the past lots of children were killed or disabled in accidents that happened while they were living those carefree free-range lives that we all like to imagine were so idyllic. There was lots of bullying that went completely unchecked. There was sexual abuse of younger children by older children. Lots of long-term mental health problems have their roots in childhood.

But balancing that out, the children who avoided all of that, or managed to emerge from it relatively unscathed, were physically fitter from all the fresh air and exercise, and were probably more resilient and socially skilled than the child who stays in all the time and only relates to other children online.

Swings and roundabouts.

Imagine doing all your washing by hand. Having a larder instead of a fridge, no telephone for emergencies, having to patch up socks and pants because they cannot be replaced... No we have it much, much easier and people worked long hours back then too.

I think it depends, I know a fair few 60/70 yr olds (family, parents, friends of family) that all managed to get relatively good jobs despite a lack of education. Many of them had jobs for life & good pensions plus they all live in £1m plus homes which are now unaffordable for younger generations in the same field.

I think it's harder these days for young people to secure well paid jobs without a degree, change careers, have job security etc. However my mum gave up her job after she had me as it was the done thing & she didn't need to work, she regrets it as she decided later on in life she would have loved to have been an engineer (she would have been good at it too).

Yes kinda, I guess OP...
.... but then they didn't have:

Foreign holidays
4X4's
A cleaner
Avocados
Mobiles
House extensions
GBBO
Pizza ovens
Strictly
Phillips lumiere
Yoga
That Zara dress
Botox
Boden
Mumsnet
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

People blame increased awareness of paedophiles, but the real reason is traffic. It used to be safer to play in the street because children wouldn't get knocked over and killed or maimed by cars.

Maybe in some places. But there's been a new housing estate built in the field near us, about 60 homes, so pretty average. Right in the middle is a "green" with a children's playground (swings, slides etc). With only 60 homes, the roads aren't busy and like most new estates, it's all cul-de-sacs so not a thoroughfare, so just traffic from the houses really. Thing is that even this Summer, there were virtually no kids playing on the green or in the playground - we walk through daily and we mentioned it to each other a few times. The risk from "traffic" is virtually zero. Yet, when we walk around the back of it on the canal footpath (the field backs on to the canal), you can see the kids playing in their back gardens, swings & slides, football nets, etc. So, even when they've a communal place to go, where they don't have to cross busy main roads, they're still either not being allowed out, or not wanting to leave their gardens. I don't think it's just traffic, there must be some other reasons. When I was a kid, I used to have to cross a busy road to get to our school field and playground - I'd be doing that on my own probably from the age of 7 or 8, and yes it was a busy road - the main/only road from one town to another, so it was an almost steady stream of traffic.

son (in his 20s) wishes he was born in my generation - not because it was 'better' but because it was easier

For a few who could afford things maybe, but for a lot it was brutal and hard.

Yes we played out in the streets but on days when we had market, what ever the weather, I stood on a market stall weighing out nails or oranges or selling whatever the family had bought that week that they thought could turn a profit.
All I remember was being freezing cold, it was always raining and my feet were like blocks of ice.

I think it is like a lot of people who look back and say they would have loved to have been born in a certain era.
What they mean is they would have loved to be born in a certain era as someone with money.

I wonder how your ds would fare as a mixed race immigrant living in slum accommodation with an outdoor toilet and sharing his bathwater with 9 other people who have washed in it before.

Life was simple then.
There was those with money and those without

I know I'll be flamed but we're failing our children by letting them use electronic devices from a very young age, not speaking to them and not potty training them in time for school. Something is going very wrong.
We need more resources to support parents help their children.

YABU

BUT the cartoons were better.

My Nan always says how hard it was with 2 kids a year apart (before The Pill apparently, she says we are so lucky to have such choice of reliable contraception now as she would never have chosen that age gap) who were both in nappies at the same time. She had to spend whole mornings washing every week.

I also think it about housewives from generations gone by. Nowadays we have amazing quick vacuum cleaners, online supermarket groceries delivered straight to the door, quicker and convenient food, washing machines and so on.

Nah, I wouldn't want to live then, I had no desire to give up work and would have struggled with the decision of child versus work if I'd been forced, no way I'd wished to be a stay at home mum reliant on my husband, with family all interfering.

For the lower class yeah. But no change there. Childcare and housing costs are crippling. Wages are too low for people who break themselves working long, long days. I know Nurses going above and beyond, and relying on foodbanks, and then it's outrage when they go on strike. My dad was a firefighter and they CUT his wages one year and my parents got into debt and argued all the time.

God forbid your OH leave you and you were a SAHM! because you just feel like you have no where to turn. Everyone will treat you like you are scum when you were/are just trying to do right by your children. Landlords won't touch you. Employers won't touch you. OHs using all the excuses in the book not to pay CM (mines on and off work constantly for health reasons apparently)

The school hours, all the school holidays, them being off sick... if you don't have grandparents/friends to help you are just screwed. Employers won't put up with it, you lose wages, you get into debt, - kids, families screwed.

I'm not surprised mental health, particularly depression and anxiety is on the rise.

We seem to live in a more individualistic age. People point the finger at individuals instead of looking for root causes of problems.

The baby boomers who benefited from secure jobs, final salary pensions and affordable house prices did not single-handedly pull up the ladder behind them. People of all ages voted for political parties who caved in to pressure from multinationals and abolished all sorts of hard-won protections, leading us to the mess we're in now - zero hours contracts, minimal protection from unfair dismissal, pitiful pension provision, astronomically expensive housing.

One way to put some of this right would be a sensible rate of inheritance tax, perhaps ringfenced to help younger people get decent housing with some security that they could put down roots in an area while their children are young. It would need older people to accept that they have been incredibly lucky, largely because of the Welfare State from 1945 on, funded by taxpayers, and it's time to put something back.

Large employers should also be pressured to start paying their taxes.

It should be shameful to dodge tax. It's like deliberately leaving the pub before it's your round. Freeloading.

Every generation has its challenges. Why does parenting always have to be a competition

I think it depends, I know a fair few 60/70 yr olds (family, parents, friends of family) that all managed to get relatively good jobs despite a lack of education. Many of them had jobs for life & good pensions.

A "good" education had a different meaning back then before the dumbing down began. You were basically set for life in a good office job with just 5 O Levels at grade C or above inc English & Maths - that was the default standard for decent office jobs in local government, Post Office/BT, banks, etc where you'd work up within the organisation as high as you wanted to go. By brother just scraped his 5 O levels and had a good career in BT, now retired on a good pension. Today, 5 GCSEs at Grade C/4 wouldn't get you anything like that.

Back then, if you wanted a "profession", you stayed on to do A levels, and then you'd get a job in a local professional office and train up as an Articled clerk or similar. The A levels were the entry requirements for a trainee in the chosen professional body.

Only the very brightest few would stay for A levels with a view to go to Uni. The only lad I knew who went to Uni is literally still there. He never left. He did his degree at the local Uni (lived at home), then stayed to do his Phd, and then stayed on as a lecturer and is not a professor there, just about to retire.

I think we need to go into reverse and start going backwards a little, to reduce the numbers going to Uni, but make GCSEs and A levels more relevant and more meaningful so that employers start to trust them again.

I definitely think my children have less freedom then I did & they are pretty much growing up where I did in the 80s. I feel there is more judgement these days & less of a community. I don't let my children play in the street but probably would if other children did & I only know the families on my end of the road. Whereas pretty much all the kids on the road I grew up on all played out together.

I would have hated living in a time other than now. Hated all the sexism, racism and homophobia around even in the late 80s and 90s. The 90s were a very sexist time with all the lads mags around. We still have a long way to go on that as well.

That's true, but also employers were prepared to pay for training. Apprenticeships, day release to do courses at technical college/polytechnic, really good on the job training. My impression is a lot of employers now expect employees to turn up with all those skills which they've had to pay through the nose to acquire.

Wages are too low for people who break themselves working long, long days.

You are joking, right? Have you forgotten miners who'd spend 12 hours down a pit? Or mothers having 2/3 jobs to make ends meet at the same time as running the house? Average working hours today are at record low - the norm is now 7 hours, it used to be 8-10. Normal working week is now 5 days, used to be 6. More people than ever can afford to work part time. More people than ever work fewer years in their lives (many don't start full time work until early 20s whereas 14 used to be the norm). I have no doubt "some" people, a minority, still work long, hard hours, but I think people have a very different idea of what that means today compared with what it meant a few decades ago.

Smiledwiththerisingsun - Actually in the 60's we did have foreign holidays, a cleaner, avocadoes and had a house extension in 1973! The rest of your list apart from Boden and a mobile I have never used anyway!

I wouldn't have liked to be my mother. I'm pretty sure she had post natal MH issues, zero support, massive stigma about talking about it, left to struggle. Had to stay at home, one wage just about covered everything, but no extra for anything above food and clothes, and we had one 'good' outfit and a variety of hand me downs for everything else. Yes, the house she has is bigger than mine, but I feel much more secure with two incomes in our house, and greater help and support.

However, there were some great things about the collectivism, social mobility and the stuff the state automatically took responsibility for instead of throwing it all onto the private sector and individuals. I really hate how all of politics has shifted to the right since the 1980s, and saying stuff like we need a good welfare state and more council houses and that people are entitled to be able to afford decent accommodation makes you some kind of bolshevik.

I agree @Kazzyhoward, I worry for my dc that if they are not academic they will not have a chance of a good job regardless of how capable they are.

It seems silly for young adults to spend a fortune on education if it doesn't lead anywhere. I think only certain jobs should require degrees eg medicine. Obviously there are benefits to university that are not just related to your studies but perhaps there could be 1 or 2 yr courses that involve some study, placements, etc so that young people do get the opportunity to live away, learn life skills etc. However we need employers to stop requesting degrees as an prerequisite for jobs.

I think the belief that all mothers were SAHMs is utter rubbish. That option depended on wealth. Societal pressures to stay at home with the DCs did not apply when the alternative was to starve.
My family are working class and live in the North West. All the women in my family have always worked their whole working lives. Mainly in the cotton mills (including my DM). But one great great grandmother worked down the coal mines from the age of 8 - I think she might argue as to whether the current generation has it tougher than hers.

Every generation faces different challenges. But I don’t think any generation has had as many opportunities and options as this one.

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.

It does not matter what decade you look it, they all had their own challenges in different ways.

I have bipolar, and unless I tell you, you wouldn’t know. I’ve degrees, had really good jobs, have one dc in university and another doing well in school, and am I single parent.

If I had been born 60/70/80+ years ago, my whole life would have been totally different.