To ask if parenting really was easier in the past?

[germanbight]

My beloved grandma, who lived on a small farm and really ran it alone, always used to tut at toddlers/small children who were being naughty out and about and always told me that when she had her children it was all much simpler— especially in the baby phase.

Apparently routine kept all 4 children perfect from baby-hood. Baby fed every three hours until it slept through, all children off for an afternoon nap after dinner and bedtime a prompt 7:30 until they were 10. She always used to say that now parents adapt to fit the baby in their lives, but when she was having children they had to adapt to her life.

I just don’t see how it could’ve run on clockwork like that. Was it really that much easier? Just a case of endless CIO?

I'm sure it wasn't. We just don't have the Internet to complain about it on!

My grandmother once tutted at me because i said i was finding it difficult to decorate with the children being awake most of the day and not having motivation once they were in bed. She then went on to tell me in her day you had to just get on with it, she had to when her husband was away at sea for months on end. Turns out her version of getting on with it was locking her kids out in the garden for a few hours at a time, getting them in to be fed then back out they went. So yeah, times were simpler then because there was different standards of parenting.

It was probably a bit simpler when you didn't need two full time wages to afford even the most shitty flat, your family lived nearby so your sister would watch the kids while you ran your errands and no one batted an eyelid if you left them outside unsupervised all day.

I think she might be wearing a huge pair of rose-tinted specs!

@ifoundthebread That's true actually. I remember me and my friends not being allowed in parent's houses during the day. We were sent out to play, and told not to come in until lunch or tea time. The mum could then get jobs done in the house. This was the late 80s/early 90s

i think it was because standards were very different like a PP said.

You could open your doors in the morning after breakfast and not see your kids until the street lights came on - unless they popped in for lunch. This was childrens as young as 2 outdoors with older siblings and other kids.

Babies would be left outside shops to nap whilst mums did shopping.

Kids as young as 5 would walk miles to school and back unaccompanied so no school run.

Also older kids would take on a parental role for younger siblings and girls be expected to do chores.

So yes I would say easier but not necessarily better.

It was a time of wide spread child abuse and neglect. Beatings were common, corporal punishment in schools was perfectly legal.

I don’t believe it’s ever been easy - but if children were quieter in the past it’s because they were beaten in to submission. Not a past I think we want to return to.

I’d say it was definitely easier. The internet has made everything harder.

I think it was easier when I had my eldest two in the eighties because the dc were expected to fit in with your life rather than you fit your life around them.
Mine were fed by the clock, put up the garden for naps morning and afternoon, expected they would sleep through from twelve weeks or weighing twelve pounds whichever was first (mine slept through from six weeks).
I went back to work when ds was nine weeks old, childminder kept the same routine I'd pick him up bath bottle and bed by seven. I spent very little time playing with them, I gave them toys and expected them to entertain themselves tbh.
I do read posts where people say they haven't had time to shower and spend days nursing a baby and think to myself it would drive me potty tbh. Back then the midwife would visit and it was expected that you would be bathed and dressed for her visit and baby would have been fed, washed, dressed and asleep in the pram even if it was 9am.

I don't think it epuld have been easier, I think every generation has had its own difficulties and issues.

There was less scrutiny, nowadays if you fuck up in public you can potentially find you're the subject of a MN thread or a TikTok or a meme thanks to mobile phones. However, as a PP said, this meant a lot of abuse flew under the radar and lots of children were harmed by their upbringing. Even as recently as my own 80s childhood, I was born in the early 80s.

Children being seriously injured and dying was a lot more common. In my peer group there were four children I remember that died - when we were around 6 one was hit by a car, at around 8 one fell off a roof, and at around 11 one drowned in a lake and another accidentally overdosed on paracetamol while off school sick and home alone. Free range children got into a lot of trouble.

I imagine there was less judgement - remember, being so child-centered is quite a new thing. Until the last few decades, housekeeping was considered as important as baby rearing, it would be considered fine to leave a toddler in a playpen while you did the housework and you weren't expected to be constantly stimulating them and interacting and so on.

OTOH, you WERE doing all the housework, and before the 70s or so, with fewer labour-saving devices

I think each generation had its own issues. Back then mums were generally at home and I do think that social connections were better. All my family lived closed by so you would get advice and support. Now none of my family are near by. Social media is great but it comes with a down side, I think it can spark fear when caution is necessary. I think that it’s something previous generations were fortunate to not have had.

she was just lucky. babies and toddlers haven't changed and you get easy and more challenging ones.

I mean there was very little understanding about child’s psychological development ans child abuse was pretty normalised.

My gran let my dad run around the streets as a toddler. The accidents, omg. She even said she knew a number of people who lost babies due to accidents. Horrific.
Oh and she tied him into bed to get him to sleep at nap times.

So yeah, pretty awful. You’ve got to look at all the messed up people out there.

There was also much less grass is greener and am I doing the right thing/AIBU like now where you go on the internet and constantly worry and feel judged.

Yeah probably was easier. Parenting wasn't a pissing contest.

I think parenting and just being was much harder, then.
You daren't say anything to anyone for fear of being talked about and/or ostracised.
You didn't air your dirty linen in public so you suffered in silence.

I'm nudging 60 and I'm going by what my mum said.

Yeah housework was the job! And tbf if you didn’t wash the clothes (which was basically manually!) then you had no clothes and would freeze. Same if you didn’t have dinner sorted and prepared. Everything took so long. As long as you kept baby fed they liked after themselves. Nowadays looking after the baby is the job and the housework can be left.

DM certainly gives the impression it was easier 🙄

She always used to say that now parents adapt to fit the baby in their lives, but when she was having children they had to adapt to her life.

I think there is some truth to this.

Everything regarding children has become so divided. I doubt children used to be perfect. But parenting has changed, societal expectations has changed, there are more knowledge and information has changed.

Child-centred parenting is a very recent phenomenom. Maybe from the 1980s onwards? Before that children just had to slot in and there was none of the angst, baby yoga, softplay, 5 fruit & veg per day, sleep monitors, gro-clocks, organic cotton baby grows, parent-facing prams, baby-wearing, baby led weaning, teaching them to read before school and all the other million things modern parents are supposed to worry about.

Yes it was. Mum at home, kids up, washed, dressed, fed, school, home, homework (not much tbh), play, tea (at table), washed, bed. Rinse and repeat. 4 kids, no tantrums, no trouble with law, all have good jobs. Sorry, I'm a one parent at home until high school kind of woman.

When I was under 10 (1980s) Mums (mine or friends/family) never really interacted with children like we’re expected to now. We were told to go away and play and that’s what we did! If we said we were bored we were told “only boring people get bored, find something to do!” That really stuck with me! 😂

My Mum used to tell me repeatedly when DS was small that I was spoiling him by answering him immediately when he interrupted or asked me something. She’d just say “adults are talking now, unless you’re bleeding it can wait!”

Just a different time and set of expectations.

And the reason I said ‘Mums’ is that Dads were seldom seen when I was a kid! I grew up v working class and most Dad figures I knew (including mine) were shift workers.

There would have been much more of the worry that your child might catch Polio, Measles, Whooping Cough etc.
Must have been terrifying when there was a Polio outbreak. My mum remembers as in child in the 1950s all the children in her village being bused into the nearest town to be given the polio vaccine as there was an outbreak.
Her Aunt had a baby in the 60s - he has Down Syndrome. The Dr told them "put him in a home and try again". They didn't - but many families would have.
Yeah.... great in the 'olden days'.

What others wrote, for the better and the worse.

I’d add - community is often lacking these days. I did a brilliant baby group run by a lady in her 70s and she spoke about effectively sharing childcare with another three friends - two women taking care of four / five kids, while the other two women worked or had a break. I wonder if today it’d even be legal, on that scale.

I try to do a version of this and it does make things easier. But my setup is seen as unusual.