Are there people in your life where you just think ‘ I can’t wait until you’re a parent and finally get it and rub that smug look off your face ‘?

[doyuever]

This is a bit tongue in cheek and I know I’m evil. But DH has younger siblings and they just get on our nerves SO much. They just DON’T get it and have NO idea how hard it is to be a parent.

granted, neither did we. My DH was such an unsympathetic dick when my older sister had kids. She had her first and then two years later, she was blessed with twins. It was an absolute fucking nightmare.

a beautiful blessing, but very very very difficult time for her and her husband. I used to give a lot of moral support and try my absolute best to be there to help practically too. It was really tough and took it out of them.

my DH would say stuff like ‘ they’re not the first to have kids ‘ and ‘ they’re too dramatic and not the only people to have problems. They’re not the centre of the universe ‘.. he just didn’t get it at all.

now we are parents with small kids, he kicks himself for being such a dick and says how wrong he was.

now we have his siblings coming to see us a fair bit and they just don’t get it at all. Obviously. They try to give absolutely rubbish ‘ advice ‘ sometimes. They try to visit at 5-6pm sometimes and we’ve had to try to explain why that’s just not good right now. When we do talk about things being hard or we seem frazzled, they never have the emotional intelligence to say anything kind. ( we don’t generally say anything anymore about it being hard going as it’s just pointless ).

SIL just thinks it’s pretty much normal for mums to do it all. SIL was saying how when they were kids, the dad would go on overnight fishing trips with his friends almost every weekend… I said quite horrified that it must have been hard for their mum and she was like ‘ but why ? ‘… so no fucking clue what so ever!

me and DH say quite frequently that we just can’t wait until the have kids and we can finally understand each other again. ( they all want kids btw ).

can anyone relate ? It’s kind of funny but also annoying.

Similar theme but not the exact same. We have lovely neighbours with one DC and an active healthy grandmother who adores her and used to take her to her house in the country every weekend and school holidays. We have three DC and my husbands parents are dead and my own not up for babysitting (which is fine to be fair they've just retired and my dads health not great). Anyway the neighbours just could not get their head around our lack of availability to just go to the pub for a few sociable drinks. Now we do have great local teenage babysitters but they aren't always available especially if it's a bank holiday or whatever so the neighbours just couldn't understand how we were at home all the time. Anyway now their DD wants to stay home at the weekend and it's their turn to be stuck in and my DD old enough to mind her siblings for a few hours so we are able to get out and about a bit .

This is you actually doing the thing we are talking about! Do you have ANY self awareness?!

‘If ME MYSELF I ever have kids, I will be SO much kinder, gracious and MORE ‘DECENT’ than ALL OF YOU worthless slatterns, you know. It’s just that, when I have the kids that I currently don’t have, I just somehow instinctively know that I’ll just ‘really enjoy’ raising kids. Maybe I’m just better, worthier, more inherently a better parent than all you scrabbling, bitter wretches? Even though I’m not a parent? And you are?’

Do you also feel you’ll just be Kind But Firm, and sense yourself as having a natural empathy with kids?

Wow, you really WILL be so much better as a parent than all of us. When and if you, you know, become a parent.

Yes, my best friend is a SAHM with 2 primary-age DC and a baby, and I cannot believe the vitriol she gets from other mums. It's nuts. She had a tearful conversation with me about it a few weeks ago, and I also told her the judgement that I've got for working full-time with young kids.

We thought, what situation is 'acceptable' for people? Working part-time? Then your DC are still in nursery. Working full-time? Then your DC are in nursery more often and are 'neglected'. SAHM? Then you are wasting your life and making yourself vulnerable if something goes wrong in the marriage. Working and your parents take care of the kids instead of daycare? Then you're taking the piss because don't you know that your parents have already 'done their time!"'?

Anyway, we concluded the same as you, that we can't win.

If I could have my ideal life, I'd work 2.5 days per week. I love my job but would also like more time with my DC. However, finances mean that I have to work full-time. I try to make the best of it.

I could fill this thread, I also have the results.

20 years ago DH & I had the first kids of our generation.
BIL with partner on tax free, high income heavily criticised poor us for not buying organic baby clothing because of the damage it did to the cotton pickers children. They were going to do everything wooden and Montessori and extreme attachment They actually went out of their way to find and present us with a toy golliwog which I refused to accept. (So pleased I found my backbone on that one, what the hell were they thinking)
They had kids after us, attachment parenting broke the kids, anxious kids worried constantly about doing the wrong sort of child led play. School refusing, low demand timetable, lots of counselling and a broken relationship.
SIL is a secondary teacher so obviously was keen to tell us all about parenting small children. She went on to make the most of the long holidays by dumping her kids on the grandparents.

We marvel at the cousins, and the new step cousins have brought even more gold. The advice has mostly stopped but the grandparents like to grab hold of any imperfection and relaying it all around the family to try and even up the misfortune. So they are now on an information diet.

i had to children by 22 first child was diagnosed with ASD when I had a newborn. My older sister stayed at my brother and sil house for a few days to look after our nephew while they had a break away. My nephew is a few months older than my older dc about 3 or 4 at the time.

Whe she got back she asked me how I did it? Said she was knackered. She did plan on having children but because of health reasons which I don’t want to mention as it’s outing she was advised not to. But in a way was a blessing in disguise she’s now an alcoholic.

I think this is the thing - it’s just another metric by which women can’t win!

You can see it in the dreadful tone policing on this thread. You’re not criticising child free people at all (I hope). I wouldn’t either, I hope they’re all living their best lives, as indeed am I.

Youre very specifically criticising thw hopefully small section of people who like to criticise parents’ child raising without having direct experience of child raising themselves. Many, many posters are coming on to agree with similar experiences. You would think that on a discussion board, we’d be allowed to discuss!

And yet here we are surrounded by critics and derailers and scolds, adamant that you keep quiet, pipe down, and not call the patronising inexperienced fuckwits who specifically if foolishly critique parenting, patronising inexperienced fuckwits who specifically if foolishly critique parenting.

If you have seven children or none, and DON’T proffer your unwanted thoughts out to parents you know, it’s okay! (Or should I say, I’m so sorry, this is difficult news for you to accept) - this thread is shockingly and in some cases clearly unacceptably Not About You. Not everything is.

When my younger sister had her own kids she apologised to me for not being more supportive when I had my two - thing is, I thought she was fine and I appreciated the help that she did give me. It wasn't loads but it did make a difference.

The interesting thing is that when she apologised I recognised the inequality more and I realised that she expects help with her two small children but seems to think that my older children are a total breeze. She seems to think I have tonnes of time to help her out. My children are great, but parenting is still quite tiring and hard. No doubt when her two reach the same age she'll be apologetic again, it just doesn't help me much right now! I won't make a big deal of it, we all have our blind spots.

I was the first among all my friends to have children and it was quite a lonely experience. One friend completely dropped me because I didn't text her to tell her the baby had arrived. I did explain that I asked a family member to spread the word but that wasn't good enough. She has no children so I don't think she'll ever realise how petty that was. Another two friends called me at 11am, drunk, to congratulate me, a week after my first was born. I hadn't slept in a few days and had just managed to drop off, so I ripped their heads off. They were sorry, but I don't think they quite realised what a stupid thing they had done.

Another friend told me that having a dog gave her good insight into being a parent. I used all my restraint and said nothing. She apologised when she had her first - and that point I just found it funny!

I am one of the oldest cousins in a huge family so I grew up with babies and children all around me. It is striking how little contact a lot of people seem to have with young children, until they have their own. I can't imagine being thrown in the deep end like that. Even with a very realistic idea of what was ahead of me, it was still a huge shock having my own.

God, that was my manager. Was such a dick to me when I returned from maternity leave and expected me to pick up like I left off after two weeks.

She’s back from maternity leave now, but I’m off for number 2, and I really hope she’s having a hard time. Feel awful saying that, but she was so horrible to me and made me feel awful for 4 months, especially when I was in hospital with my 18 month old who has RSV.

I don’t wish bad things on others, but her, I hope she’s finding it hard and realises how badly she treated me.

Ah yes. I have twins. I have wished arsehole triplets on loads of people.

I'm the opposite. My DC is grown now and when I see modern parenting styles, I really have to bite my tongue.

Everything is A Thing. Lots of unnecessary gadgets and faff.

And then the new parents explain things to me like I've not raised my own child into adulthood.....

Most of my team are 50+ and their kids have all grown up and are at uni or moved out, but they seem to have forgotten how hard it is! I’m 29 with 2 under 4 and I work full time. It’s ROUGH some days, especially if one of them’s off sick and we have absolutely zero family support anywhere near us. But these women genuinely act like early 20 year olds who have never had kids with the way they talk and act. I get it was a while ago that their kids were as young as mine but bloody hell they must remember some parts of how difficult it is.

Not really. After the first year I dont think its hard at all. But then my DH is an equal partner. I’m the opposite and think having kids its way better than I thought and easier too.

Why are people so obsessed with how hard they find it having kids, and with what other people think or say about how hard or easy it is to have kids? Don’t you just sort of…get on with it? And kind of ignore stupid things said by other people? I mean, having kids is great but you don’t need to be so utterly defined by it.

Lol she said exactly none of those things, but you just had to go and project, didn’t you? Cut a little too close to the bone?

I think modern life/social media puts additional pressure on people and makes it harder than it has to be in many cases.

And then a lot of modern parents have strange ideas that 'back in the day' all mothers were stay at home Mums but also neglecting their children, (which usually wasn't the case) so they think modern parenting is so much harder that previous generations don't understand.

My old boss gave me a huge speech one day about children and sugar when I opened a tiny packet of chocolate buttons and shared them between my two toddlers.

Went on about his wife breastfeeding for over a year, and there'd be no screens or chocolate or sweets in their house.

I just nodded along but felt a bit crap even though I knew my kids were well fed and a treat now and then was ok.

Bumped into him after Easter in Tesco. His three year old was cradling a half price chocolate bunny while watching something on his phone.

Oh yes, BIL & FIL cannot understand why my husband doesn’t go round every weekend to watch whatever sport is on all day and STAY OVER the night😳🙄 BIL also doesn’t understand why DH spends Xmas with us (his wife & kids) and doesn’t stay at his dads on Xmas eve… He’s a 31 man child who splits his time between either parents house & his girlfriends. He also suggested we locked DS in his bedroom when he woke from a nap upset (he was 1) until he’d stopped crying & didn’t understand why we’d gone to get him out the cot when he was upset as “kids should be left to sort themselves out” … waffling now but sure you can all get a sense as to why (besides wanting to spend time with his wife and kids) that my husband doesn’t spend every weekend and Xmas with his dad and brother 😂

I can imagine that is really annoying!

Basically, it’s telling other people how to do stuff!

I mean, I don’t run marathons but I also don’t criticise my many friends who do and tell them what’s wrong with their training schedules! Because that would be 1) weird and 2) rude.

He should have said ok, let's put it away and you can come and get it when you remember what we need to say. Store it out of sight and then try again later.

It is normal not to appreciate the difficulties invilved in something you've never experienced, and it's certainly not specific to parenting. Also I honestly haven't found parenting that hard tbh.

People definitely do forget. And they don't realise that they've forgotten. My MIL, who is annoying but very responsible, was looking after DS when he was about 9 months. I came in to find she was at the end of the long garden and DS was in the sitting room on his own! I lost my shit, unfortunately, which wasn't warranted but I got such a fright. Poor MIL was genuinely apologetic - she had totally forgotten that a crawling 9 month old can never be left alone. She never did anything that stupid again.

There is 6 years between my youngest child and my sister's oldest. She asked me a lot of questions about how I did things with my two and I simply couldn't remember. I was surprised how difficult I found it to look after hers when they were babies - I was in a different 'mode' of parenting and my brain couldn't access much of the experience I'd had. It was embarrassing.

Not family but a mum in my DS class.

Her DS was just one of those impeccably behaved DC. Maybe a bit dull but could def sit at a 5 star restaurant and know what spoon to use (ok that didn't happen but you know) The Mum was the absolute worst judgey cow. Talked audibly about behaviour of other children for things like fidgeting at the Carol concert-which was ridiculously long for a 4 year old. She was also always having a little passive aggressive word with other parents or complaining audibly to the class teacher about other disruptive children and was so smug and triumphant as she had obviously won parenting.

Anyway she was then blessed with her DD. Who was a little out of control.
She didn't respond to the gentle parenting that worked with her first.
The highlight was when the boys were doing a year one year end play and she escaped from her Mum, ran on stage and began performing and racing round destroying things. I actually enjoyed it more than the play they had organised!

@Readytohealnowhe should have done fuck all. It’s not up to him.

I have this too from a sibling with no children, comparing looking after a cat to me being the lone parent of two children with disabilities and absolutely zero family help, ever. My remaining parent never bothered to do any parenting of us as his own children and his wife has no children and announces that “they didn’t come here to do childcare” if they come to visit my house and I leave the room to go to the loo.

None of them have a clue, or care, or lift a finger to help.

Some people are just unpleasant and it’s best to have low contact with them.

My mum worked full time when we were younger too, so I know it was definitely something that happened with older generations. I know most of the older women I work with did have the luxury of being able to work part time until their children grew up and moved out, so maybe can’t relate to me having to work 40 hours with young kids and struggling a bit with managing household stuff after work. Don’t get me wrong I’d love to work part time, just not affordable right now.