Combination of factors. The stigma about talking honestly about childbirth and its complications is reducing so you’re more aware of them. This may be controversial and I’m not advocating a return to the olden days but I feel with the increased choices available to women for childbirth (home vs hospital, do you want a water birth, do you want an epidural, do you want a section etc) there’s a mental load that potentially wasn’t there a few decades ago. If something goes wrong it’s easy to internalise that as you making a poor choice/contributing to it. By the nature of childbirth you’re asked if you give consent to various procedures when you’re physically and mentally exhausted. It’s totally valid that women should be leading the decisions about them but we also need to acknowledge these decisions are often very complex/there is no ‘right’ choice - there’s a reason O&G doctors have a 7 year training programme on top of medical school and foundation!
People tend to live further away from family (and in many cases grandparents are still working full time) so there isn’t that support as readily available.
Expectations have changed too - as there’s been a loss of that traditional community you get most of your info from NCT/antenatal groups or the internet. Both of which have the potential to be a bit competitive or completely sanitised. It’s so easy to compare yourself now to other mums and feel like you’re coming up short. Daily routine videos where other people’s babies have predictable ‘wake windows’ where it’s important to make sure they’re doing tummy time, looking at high contrast flash cards etc. What baby groups are you doing? Not just the local church hall playgroup but baby yoga, baby ballet, baby music, baby sensory, baby massage etc etc.
Take weaning for example - I was a 90s baby, my mum started with rusks and baby rice then onto a few spoons of whatever she was having. I went to a 1 hour presentation from the local health visitors about how to wean - here’s all the stuff you definitely can’t give them, here’s stuff they can have once a week, have you been giving them vitamins, here’s how to introduce the major allergens, they can have white bread but not brown bread, have you thought about going to the park near A&E to give them peanuts, fish is great but not too much fish, here’s how to do CPR if you don’t cut the food up correctly, here’s an app to check that tells you how to cut everything up as per your babies age, don’t buy pouches make it all fresh, just give them what you’re having (but make sure there’s no salt, no sugar, no this, no that) etc etc. Then if you look online you’re in the realms of beautifully arranged plates, advice that your baby needs to have tried 100 different foods before they turn one, my baby hasn’t had prawns yet does anyone have a recipe etc. My mum and gran are fascinated by all of this!
You’re given constant messaging about everything you need to do to make sure you’re baby meets their developmental milestones (another thing to measure yourself against) whilst you’re absolutely exhausted and potentially recovering from major surgery. I haven’t even touched on the pressure to lose the baby weight, juggle KIT days, sort childcare out months before the baby has even been born, make sure you’re still finding some time to dedicate to your relationship.
I think it’s incredibly easy now to fall into a toxic mindset of setting incredibly high standards for yourself and your parenting which are inevitably difficult to reach resulting in you constantly feeling on the back foot.