Having your own children making you question what you were told about other families

[comoatoupeira]

Does anyone else find that having children is making them not take the word of their own parents anymore as being the norm?

I grew up with a mum and dad who were obsessed with not being too hands-on, I was always praised for being independent etc. They were divorced, don't know if that's relevant?

My mum was always talking down about other parents (mums, let's be honest) who she thought were over-protective. So all the jokes in our house were about mums who wouldn't let their children do this or that because it was apparently dangerous, or mums who didn't work and would arrive 10 minutes early at the school gate to, apparently, show off their blow dry or outfit, or something.

Now I'm looking back on it as a parent myself and I'm looking it the other way: like, these were mums who were sorted and organized so they were on time, and they were stay at home mums for x number of reasons but one of them being they wanted to be with their kids after school. I'm looking at some things that happened to me, like some medical things, that my parents didn't really follow up on or help me with, and looking at it the other way: this was maybe a bit neglectful, and the helicopter-ish mums we laughed at would have been there for their children and helped them.

Maybe this is a cultural change thing because it was the 80s and cool to not be a mumsy mum, and now there's a cultural backlash going on where we are romanticizing motherhood and caring roles again.

Anyone relate?

100% and my mum has also got a lot more open and affectionate recently. I think it's partly mirroring how I am with my kids & the change in culture too. I suppose it shows how much we're a product of our times - it will be interesting to see how much things change when/if we become grandparents..!

I think a lot of 80s and 90s parenting was about getting kids to be independent and on the conveyor belt to adulthood.

I guess this was the time women were really starting to break into having careers perhaps, so needed to minimise home responsibilities? I know my parents loved us, but they definitely had high expectations of our behaviour etc and I would describe myself as a child as a "mini adult".

I'm expecting my first baby and want to take the approach that childhood is something to be enjoyed, and also a learning experience to equip my child with the skills they need - so not expecting them to behave like an adult and telling them off when they don't.

It's a shame your parents felt the need to put down other parenting styles - possibly your mums own insecurities? My mum also put down other people a lot and it's something I'm keen to avoid doing in front of my children, as I feel quite critical of other people a lot of the time (I keep the thoughts to myself mostly, but it's still a trait I dislike in myself).

Was you mother a single parent OP? My mom worked (single mother) and may of been a bit snippy about mums who were supported to be stay at home mums (something that she would have been willing to do herself if circumstances allowed I think).

I think it was different in the 80s though. Probably every 80s parent was a bit neglectful by today’s standards. Things were only just moving away from the leaving the kids in the car in the pub car park all afternoon style of parenting a la the 1970s

I don't think you can compare parents today to parents of yesteryear. It's not fair, we have all the information at our hands that we could ever want (too much sometimes). We are able to make informed decisions and often the confidence to push-back and challenge people in authority like Doctors and Teachers when something doesn't feel right. We have more money so can get private assessments or pay for more extra curriculars or activity resources.

Before that our parents choices would have been informed by their own childhood's which would have been largely completely hands off - playing in the street and children watching out for one another with their mothers at home keeping home for multiple children, no mod cons, my mum remembers hers using a mangle and dad's out at work. Or opinions and techniques passed by those surrounding them in their community.

The vast majority of parents do the best they can with the resources and knowledge and mental availability they have at the time.

My parents were selfish and neglectful. I always knew this. But since I had my dc, it really hit me in a whole different way. I think what hurts the most is really realising, they never wanted to be parents, they didn’t enjoy it, it didn’t make them happy. I love being a parent. I’m first in the queue to pick her up from school almost every day. She always comes first and she takes this for granted which is how it should be and I’m happy to do it, but it’s always a bit painful and sad remembering my own past being left waiting outside the school for my dad who would be down the pub having forgotten all about me. It’s sort of like, I didn’t miss what I didn’t know before. Now I’m experiencing what it’s like to be cherished as a child but from the other side and on some level it just makes me sad that I didn’t have that. I have literally not one happy memory from my entire childhood. I was very very angry at my parents for a few years after dd was born. I had to try to let that go because it’s pointless and destructive. I’ve had to work on accepting that I’m always going to be sad underneath because when it comes down to it, I just wasn’t wanted.

When I was 4 my mum left my dad (who was violent) we were staying somewhere very strange to me and I wet the bed. My mother took me by the scruff of the neck and rubbed my nose in it…….my now adult DC have had a very different childhood.
My mother isn’t in mine or their life.

Becoming a parent,made me realise I had 1970s shit parenting
Later on needing counselling,I realised my childhood was abusive and I was abused ...but it's taken me 40 years to realise that ,and now it's to late to get any answers as to why

This was my experience, too.

I think part of it was lack of visibility. Before the internet you didn't really know what other people did inside their own homes or how they raised their kids. And people to an extent didn't really question it.

If your parents had a good childhood, they probably did the same. If they had a bad childhood, they either did the same, or they tried to improve on it.

Personally, my mum had a bad childhood and she tried to improve on it. She was brought up in a home with a lot of alcohol and gambling.

Therefore she was very against that.

However, she kept a very clean, tidy house, she worked, she didn't drink, I was provided for.

But that was the extent of it. Similar to @Dogateahotdog she didn't ever chat to me, or cuddle me, or do crafts etc.

I can remember going to a friends house, and she had a dressing up box of outfits her mum had made / collected for her, she had a booster seat in the car, they did crafts together, she had films that her mum had taped off the tv for her.

I just didn't have any of that.

Similar to @comoatoupeira my mum had parents who she would laugh about and look down on. For her, it was mums who drank and went to bingo. She felt superior to them, felt she was doing a great job because she didn't do that.

But there was so much lacking.

I turned up to every event just clueless and never with the right kit or a packed lunch or whatever. Never had a warm winter jacket because she just never thought to buy me one.

If I did ask for something like that we would go to the shop (only shop in our town) and she would stand with pursed lips while I chose the item, then pay and we'd leave. (She hated spending money). But she never helped me check it was the right thing, or that it fitted, or that it was warm enough etc etc. I can remember seeing girls with their mums and the mums would be fussing over them, smoothing clothes down, doing up zips, getting a different size etc. I was left to just use my own judgement from such a young age and I invariably got it wrong.

Having said all that, she is a much loved and very involved nan to my children. She adores them and does a lot for them, in a way that she didn't with me.

This is really interesting because my experience is the exact opposite. My mum stayed at home and was very engaged, always at pickup, always home cooked food, always extra curriculars etc.

I work full time, use childcare and I'm generally galavanting around trying to remember which reading book needs doing before school! My mum judges me for all of this.

But. And it's a big but. My kids are safe and loved and never overly criticised. Becoming a mum showed me how ridiculously strict and OTT my mum was, how often I was told off and how much time I spent crying in my room because she refused to speak to me as a result of some misdemeanour. She was completely over-invested in me as a reflection of her and I became a very anxious child as a result.

All the home cooking and helicopter parenting in the world is no good if you don't have psychological safety.

As to what you do with your realisation. In my view, probably nothing. You are choosing to parent your children in the way you see fit. As did your parents. Sounds like it might have been quite difficult if your mum was on her own and working, presumably she did her best with the situation that was presented to her? If you were actually mistreated then obviously that would be different....

@mitogoshigg I’m 46.

I have friends of my age who went to dancing, horseriding etc. When I asked my mum why I didnt do any clubs, she said that I never asked, which kind of sums it up. My whole life revolves around dd, yes I do have a career and friends etc, but im just very involved and invested.
In regards to the pads, a pack was in there and it often ran out, i do remember panicking sometimes if there were none left about how i’d get the money, I also do remember having to buy them myself. She discussed nothing with me.
Just seemed a much more selfish attitude then, even now when I take my parents out in the car somewhere and im playing a story/music cd for dd, theyll moan as they want nice music on, same with the tv and the news etc
I paid for all my own driving lessons, my first car, my house and so on. Everything I do is with thinking about Dds future, driving lessons, uni if she goes, savings account etc

I also remember going through a phase as a young teenager ot crying a lot-hormones maybe, sad maybe 🤷🏻‍♀️and my mum getting cross at me and telling me to stop crying all the time or she’d have to take me to the Drs, like in a threatening not caring way-insane

Your post really resonated with me @comoatoupeira. My parents were very much like this: they were liberal to the point of being permissive and looking back on it I find it astonishing how little oversight there was. It stopped short of neglect but it did leave me with a persistent sense of not being supported.

For example: my mother never spoke to me about periods and never bought any sanitary products for me. I had to buy all of this stuff myself.

They allowed me to go on holiday with a friend (in the UK admittedly) aged 15. They allowed me to stay overnight at people’s houses without background checks from 14. They let me go to pubs regularly from 14.

This wasn’t particularly unusual in the social world we lived in (middle class, liberal academic town) so I didn’t realise how unusual it was until I was a lot older but I always felt a cognitive dissonance between officially being grateful they were so relaxed but with an unconscious nagging sense that they didn’t really care all that much. I was lucky in retrospect that nothing really dodgy happened to me.

Some of this was also the era. I became a teenager in the mid 80s and my parents had grown up in the very permissive 60s where being “relaxed” was a byword for parenting standards. I think things are much less relaxed now. And while this can undoubtedly be taken too far with helicoptering, I think the emphasis on kids being allowed to “experiment” went way too far.

I don’t think they meant harm by it and overall on balance were good parents but I wouldn’t raise my DD like this.

What I think it pays to remember.is our parents were taught to parent by there parents and so on. This wasn't just a different time it was almost a different world . Times have changed significantly since I left home and people are now encouraged to talk about there feelings .I just think people do the best they can with the tools they have.

My mum spent alot of time screaming or asleep on the couch. She used to ignore us alot but want to know lots of information on our lives. She wasn't a coper. If anything happened it'd be world war 3. I often think thank God nothing awful happened to me as a child because there would be no way I'd tell her. She was lazy and selfish. If I fell out with someone or something happened in school she'd always blame me. I tell her very little now. Not worth the carry on.

I remember mum being really scathing about the very few women who were SAHMs/retired extremely early. They were beneath her ... uneducated, poor etc.

They were also the mums who were there, who talked and listened to their kids, who knew their teachers, who got involved when they were bullied , helped with homework etc.

Unsurprisingly, I liked and respected those women and wished she was more like them. Tbf, I doubt she would've given a crap even if she was at home.

I think some of the 2020s parenting is about losing yourself to your children though. Fully finding your identity in having young children. Being entirely child centric. I think there's a middle way.

I agree. It's hard to find middle ground. I have a life outside my child. I find it's imperative for my mental health. However I try to spend time with him and immerse myself in his interests however boring lol

Opposite here. Becoming a mum myself made me truly understand all mine did for me. She wasn't perfect, she forgot things and did at times struggle to juggle everything, but she worked hard, did her best and I'm grateful. God knows I was far from perfect when my turn came and in honesty of the two of us, she did a better job. Though interestingly my own DD has no complaints, and is very appreciative of her upbringing now she's a mum herself.

The best post yet! You shouldn't judge the past by the present, maybe in the future, using whatever platforms are available, current methods of raising children will be criticised because by then the ideology will be different! I think we all think/thought that what we are/were doing is best!

My parents were decent by 70s/80s standards but although my DSis and I are very different, we both agree that their major failing was that neither of them ever listen. As a result we both stopped telling them things. DSis and I have both vowed to listen to our DC (and to tell them that we love them, but maybe that was not so usual back then).

They also had no clue how to raise siblings. My dad got on badly with his brother and my mum was an only. They constantly compare us to each other critically. It takes such a lot of effort to maintain a cordial relationship with my sister with all the meddling and triangulating they do.

When I get frustrated I remind myself they were born just before/in WW2 and had pretty crap parents themselves.

DD is 11 and we can talk fairly freely about anything including sex, periods, sexuality etc. I'm not totally comfortable with this and DH finds it excruciating; but I'm sure it's much better than the 90% omerta, 10% 60s hippie liberalism I grew up with!

I think we expect so much from mothers and none of us have a complete skill set, everyone has things they are good at or not so good. I had good parents, as did DH but they were good in different ways and both had things that DH and I haven't replicated. My parents were quite childcentric in the activities we did and we were physically cared for but Mum's love always felt conditional (she was a fan of 'I love you but I don't always like you') whereas DH's expected them to fit round their lifestyle more and they neglected teaching things like basic hygiene or buying clothes in the right size but MIL was and is very affectionate and loving. She thinks her children are incredible and still constantly tells them, whereas Mum still defaults to 'I reserve the right to tell you when I think you are wrong'.

Thanks for the OP, it's refreshing (albeit sad) to hear that others have these feelings. I had a nervous breakdown when dc1 was a toddler because it hit me hard how lacking my own parents were. I've been working through it in therapy since then. Always thought that I'd understand when I had my own children but I just can't condone their behaviour the longer I'm a parent myself.

I think I came at parenting the other way. My childhood was amazing and I felt really loved and cared for that I knew I wanted to “copy” what my parents did for me……except, I now feel that I am “failing” and not living up to my own expectations because I don’t feel I am as good as my parents.
My mum is still amazing and tells me not to be so hard on myself (I have to work full time) and my mum only did a few hours in the evenings when my dad got home, but I just feel like whatever I do is not good enough. I worry that my children will not grow up with the same happy memories I was given.
so which is worse? Realising that maybe your parents were abit neglectful and that you want to parent a “better” way……or having the “perfect” childhood and now feeling like you can never live up to your parents?

My parents were great, there are several things they did with me that I try to emulated. But they were quite critical of all the other parents in the family! According to them, no-one had the right boundaries and all of kids cried for attention. I take it with a pinch of salt when they start saying the same about my kids (we are both too strict and too lenient, apparently...)!

My family was very loving, and my parents were overall good, but I've still experienced this clash. It's actually awkward with my mum as she made such a thing about certain aspects of her parenting, vocally looking down on all the other parents and letting me know how much better her way was. Now that I do some of those things it's awkward, like a rejection of her.

Examples are things like lying to children, which she was always against at all costs. So no sweetening the truth about what happens after death, no Santa, bombarded from young with information on Wars, politics, all sorts. As a mum, I now think a little bit of a white lie is no problem, provided it's for things that either children are too young to understand or which are part of a tradition.

Other things are helicopter parenting, which my mum definitely did, she now thinks I'm reckless. And over sentimentality, which she is and she often thinks I'm uncaring about things, just because I don't want to get a baby handprint or make a detailed journal of everything my children do.