To ask if anyone finds parenting just fine and natural and easy any more (I feel like some people used to?)

[Fragmentedbrain]

My mother in law is obsessed by parenting - she loved it and it completed her. She was a mum in the 80s/early 90s when, in my opinion, things were much less pressured for both parents and kids.

i think she is completely blind to the practical realities her kids and their partners have to deal with now and is very judgemental as a result. In particular, she hassles the stay at home parent for not working (even though she's doing absolutely everything to keep the household running) and the working one for being late to nursery pickups and too tired to play some of the time (even though the mortgage just requires two incomes it's not negotiable).

I don't have kids and a big part of the reason is I think it looks so impossibly hard to do in the rigid framework that modern society has made, at least in the UK. Or am I just a weak and lazy cow?

I find it fine and natural, but it's not easy. That doesn't mean it isnt enjoyable though. We have a set up that works for us and a very balanced life between work/social/exercise/3 kids. Appreciate we also have local family that help out and a friendship group with similar aged kids which makes it both less intense and more enjoyable - id say this is the key thing.

You're not being unreasonable in that she shouldn't criticise. Being a mum is a skill just like any other. You get better with practice. If your MIL is good at it, that's because she's had decades of practice. She's probably forgotten the chaos that is most new mum's lives.

I like being a mum. I find it easy. I also work full time, but I am a single mum with one child, and I find that makes it much easier.

I don't have to worry about negotiating with a second parent. There are no arguments about who is doing pickup or making supper, no petty resentments. I just get on with it.

I don't have to worry about cooking food that a second person likes, or tiptoeing around someone else's feelings or making sure they don't feel left out. I've no relationship to manage alongside motherhood. I'll never worry about a mismatch in spending habits or a partner drinking too much or playing away. None of those worries.

I have a happy cheerful teen ds, who will head off to uni in a year.

My challenge will come then, with empty nest syndrome. Hopefully I won't start criticising people as a result 🙂

I find it easy and enjoyable but I have one child for this reason. I worry I would stretch myself too much with two+

(I am taking comfort from the yes it's nice messages btw makes it feel a bit less like the world is spiralling to a halt - although I do think everything is over bureaucratised now)

I am incredibly happy being a mother, and it feels very ‘natural’ to me in that I feel completely at ease with it.. you just don’t really hear that side because it sounds unbearably smug, even to my own ear 😂 I’ve got a three year old and a four month old, so not rose tinted specs looking back or anything but it’s not ‘hard’ as a rule.. it’s tiring of course, particularly as my husband works away/incredibly long hours so I’m on my own an awful lot, and sometimes my patience is pushed and tempers fray a bit but I never get to the end of the day and think ‘oh god that was awful!’

Apart from when they both had a sickness bug, and then I got it too. That was awful.

You're not a weak and lazy cow. I think everyone should think long and hard about whether parenting is something they really want and would manage before they do it.

I personally find being a parent hugely enjoyable and rewarding, but raising humans is inherently not easy. And I have a lot of support - a husband who easily does his share (and probably carries more of the load than me in fact), a job that gives me flexibility, an absolutely unbelievable amount of help from my in laws and parents.

I don't know if it's easier or harder than it used to be in the 80s and 90s. Some challenges are new (screens, social media, reduced outdoor time) but the fundamental thing that just makes it hard is that children require your entire attention an awful lot of the time and you have to be very conscious about the things you're teaching them and the messages you're sending. It's incredibly difficult to give someone a roadmap for life when you're doing it for the first time yourself too.

Either way your MIL sounds difficult and judgmental. Sometimes people look back with rose tinted glasses and imagine their parenting experience was all sunshine and joy, glossing over all the parts that were tricky and unpleasant.

Happy here too. Feel like it's the first thing I've ever done I'm supposed to do. I work FT and yes it's hard but it's rewarding and more than possible if you are organised and efficient with your time.
Yes there are moments of frustration but having kids is like walking around with your heart separated into three pieces and you feel everything they do with such insane intensity.

Yes I find it easy, but I have one very chilled out child.

I find it easy. No family support, so it is quite full on but co-parent fairly equally. I have only had 1 night away so far in over 5 years. But no dramas here and I actually enjoy it (one DD almost 6).

I found it very easy with 1 but much more challenging with 2. I still love it though.

I find it easier when I don't pay too much attention to the "experts" and do what feels natural for my family. There's difficult bits for sure but a lot of fun too.

I wonder how much your MIL might have enjoyed parenting if she’d had a baby with colic, a bad sleeper or who had to spend lots of time in hospital as a toddler like my son. My youngest has been much easier than my oldest and it’s been a bit of a revelation that some children don’t build up a file of hospital letters several inches thick or struggle with school. Some children are easier than others and it’s not always how you parent that causes that.

I’m married to someone decent so don’t have any of those worries either tbh.

I think rose tinted glasses come into play with the older generations OP. My Mum is like your MIL if you were to believe how she talks but I remember the reality and she was short tempered and emotionally distant, she was obsessed with cooking and cleaning and often told my brother and I that we were so annoying she was going to put her head in the oven.

She loves to give me guilt trips for being a working Mum and talks about how she would spend all her time playing with us blah blah blah. Never happened though.

My MIL is similar, she won’t listen to any negative parent talk she had the best time ever apparently, again her children remember it differently.

Obviously we can only directly compare what we have experience of, and I wasn’t a parent in the 80s so can’t say for certain. But I have a 1 year old and a 4 year old now, and what feels different from my upbringing is the ”village”. My mum had both sets of grandparents round the corner and she used to drop in a lot for a cup of tea, leave me there for an afternoon etc. I don’t have that, and so it feels relentless. I have no “home from home” around the corner and so all the pressure to entertain my kids is on me. My life would be significantly improved if I could just have say 2 or 3 hours a week where I could get on with a couple of things for myself. I do pay for extra childcare every now and again but of course this is very expensive! Hoping it improves as the kids get older

Same. Plus a DH who is mostly a SAHD and does all the housework. I have a pretty full on job so my life isn't all easy but find hanging out with my son is a delight.

I found it easy and natural until my disabled child was born, but now it is anything but. I’m way out of my depth.

I love being a mum. It has fulfilled me in a way nothing else has. That doesn't mean it's easy. Your MIL likely doesn't remember the hard parts - sleepless nights, food thrown everywhere when you have toddlers, the tantrums and constant mess. We have selective memories.

I think we are much too analytical now. All types of parenting are analysed and given names. Helicopter? Tiger? Whatever.
Then as soon as you Google something to do with parenting you'll be bombarded with "IS YOUR PARENTING STYLE GOING TO PRODUCE A PSYCHOPATH" type articles (just a made up example haha)

Some might enjoy it and be quite "good" at it but we are SO aware of what one another are up to we are constantly comparing and reading things. I remember thinking I was doing the right thing then Google would say otherwise.
Must have been nice in a way just to get on with it in your own way, completely oblivious to how most of the rest of the world were doing things. No wonder people were happy to think they were good at it.

Yes - I would describe myself in that way.

I didn't expect it to be that way though. I don't like children in general, especially other people's children. I've worked in education for a long time, and I am "good" with kids, but I never ever enjoyed it. I hate having to pretend to like being with other people's children and get 0 enjoyment out of it at all. I don't want to hold babies, or hear about your child at all. etc.

Yet for some reason, when it was my child, it was entirely different. I genuinely enjoy being with him, and find it to be very fulfilling. I would rather spend a day with him, than by myself (or with some other family members...)

I don't think it is something you can control, so I don't think there should be any shame or negativity on mums who don't find it natural/enjoyable/rewarding etc. I think its a lot of luck, and you can't fully predict it before giving birth.

People fully expected me to not be very maternal/caring because of how I was before having children, and equally I've known very over-the-top loving people who then had kids and struggled to bond/find it natural.

A lot of luck.

If I were you I'd wait until you do have kids before you take a position. Because women's experience of parenting is subject to a lot more variables than the decade in which they had young children. The amount of support you have and the amount of money you have are key. Working class and lower income women always combined parenting with paid work and in a context where all the domestic work was their responsibility and that work was harder without modern conveniences. Just as there are women today who don't have to work. The most significant cause of inequality in quality of life is wealth/class. Its far more of a divide than generation.

I have been surprised by how easy and enjoyable I find it, I think there has been a bit of an over correction in people talking about how hard it all is which definitely put me off before I had mine.

However, lots of caveats: I only have one, not quite two year old; we have enough money and space, and are in good health; both work in flexible wfh jobs; my husband absolutely pulls his weight; we live near very supportive family who help out with babysitting.

So I would never tell other people I find it mostly easy, especially if I knew they were missing even one of the above.

As @JustMarriedBecca said, it’s the first thing I’ve done that I feel like I’m supposed to do 😊

Oh there is no "until" it's definitely not for me and I don't think it's right to make a person exist without being willing to sacrifice for their wellbeing, which I'm not. And in case anyone is wondering yes mil hugely judges me for not giving her extra grandchildren (if she knew for a fact that it's a choice rather than a medical situation we would get it a lot worse).

I'm a single mum, I don't find it hard - well, not the mumming bit of it - the relentless timetable of places I have to be and things I need to be doing is a lot, but the mum bit is fine.

It does help that my kids are very reasonable/easy to parent.

I love being a mum - the positives outweigh the negatives a million times over for me and with most of the hard work behind me, whilst I wouldn’t necessarily say it was easy, it’s never felt hard.

but (and I accept these are huge buts) I have a DH who is an amazing dad. He works hard and pulls his weight and so parenting has always felt like a joint responsibility.

we’ve been massively fortunate that we’ve both been able to build businesses and work around the DC so up until the youngest was 12 there was always one of us at home and we had an enormous amount of paid help so I’ve never done what is commonly called the “drudge work”.