....to think women find having babies harder now?

[PollyHutchen]

Partly I am talking about giving birth.
Partly I am talking about the experience of getting used to looking after a baby, while also gradually finding ways to carry on with other bits of one's life. And managing to hang onto some sense of well-being despite all the upheaval.

I think there has been a big shift in recent years but I am trying to work out why.

What’s that got to do with what I said? Very odd response! I will always help out other parents wherever I can, my point was that society has shifted so many people live away from family now and may find it harder then before - in answer to the original question. Is it tiring being so combative?!

Women did stay in hospital for longer in the past. My mother, who had four of us in the 1960s, said that for a first birth you stayed in for 10 days and for subsequent babies it was a week. But before the 60s, most women would have had their babies at home.

I think that people are right that there is less family support than there used to be, but I had absolutely none when I had my children in the late 1990s, so this is not a very new development. My mother didn’t have any family support in the 1960s either - both she and my father had moved away from the areas where they grew up.

I also agree that many people these days have expectations of everything being perfect. My (baby boom) generation didn’t expect that! Social media has a lot to answer for!

My grandma had 8 kids, without thought.

She got them onto a bottle ASAP and passed each baby over to one of the older kids to look after. She did a bit of part time work. Her tradesman husband earned enough to cover their modest expenses. All the kids wore hand-me-downs and entertained themselves. Her social network was all around her and happy to help out - and any neighbour with a pulse was deemed good enough to watch the kids.

There was no judgement from anyone, and - without social media - no exposure to what she was missing out on.

I think that new guidelines about care of babies makes it harder for new mothers.

It seems you have to be with your baby every second of the day to the extent that some mothers on here have difficulty getting showered.

My DC would nap in a cot upstairs during the day or in a pram/pushchair depending on circumstances. This meant that I was left free to sort household tasks etc or have a rest myself. Similarly in the evening, they were upstairs asleep while DH and I remained downstairs

I see many threads on here about women wanting to ban visitors (even their own mother) until baby is several weeks old and have their baby bubble alone.

Then they find it doesnt work so well.

Oh I completely agree - one of the things that has helped me whilst in the grips of PND was thinking of random historical figures and reminding myself that they almost certainly didn’t go to baby sensory. Pretty certain nobody was making sure Julius Caesar was eating the right kind of bread or Catherine the Great got enough tummy time.

What has changed:
social media (we had mother and baby magazines which I couldn't afford so was saved that)
Expectations of sleeping being in constantly temperature regulated cold rooms

I dont get sensory classes. They used to be for special needs children. Healthy children dont need their senses stimulated.

Sorry you suffered PND it’s crippling ❤️

I think people assumed life was going to be painful and tough and had low expectations when it came to wellbeing. They weren’t sold a media image of a carefree, happy, beautiful life.

I know what you mean, OP, but I disagree. Go back just a few generations and women had to keep having babies if they came along, whether they wanted them or not, with little or not medical intervention. It's always been better for the few that had money, but for the vast majority it was a miserable existence of pregnancy after pregnancy. Apparently the average Victorian marriage lasted 15 years, because the wife died in childbirth after this time.

Actual medical help and support is also very hit and miss. I dislocated my knee in labour and no one took it seriously or even followed it up. I was just released from care with a newborn two other kids a husband that had to go back to work. No family or friends. I couldn't walk yet had to care for three children.

I had other complications from my first pregnancy that I actually need reconstructive surgery for. It's classed as cosmetic where I am some NHS will do it unfortunately not where I am. So as of yet I can't afford it.
Yet men get the surgery straight off the bat As its seen as its part of women having children they have to lump it 🤷🏼‍♀️ as is most of women's Health issues.

I grew up watching my family help out babysit make meals for a sibling with their first baby. Do nursery drop offs etc Only to struggle when I had my first to even get anyone to visit us.

Paternity for Men is rubbish. Whilst the two weeks are suppose to be a certain. My husbands had workplaces that felt that was unnecessary so scheduled training in or heavily implied he didn't take the full time and was shitty with him about it. One workplace wanted him in the day after I gave birth because technically his paternity leave hadn't started (small business no HR) no family would come to sit with my for the day. In the end my mum came reluctantly.

The village doesn't exist anymore for a lot of people(4 retired grandparents in ok health not one interested). Workplaces and medical settings don't seem to genuinely care about people. Community support doesn't exist in many places. Our school doesn't even do any wraparound care add in children with additional needs of which there is very little support. I had no idea how hard having children would be and the personal sacrifices I'd have to make. Our society isn't set up for the best interests of children and parents yet requires both parents to work just for the basics. Trying to find a term time flexible school hours job is impossible finding specialised childcare is either non existent or eye-wateringly expensive.

The whole thing is just so ridiculously hard.

I can see why it’s frustrating but I think it’s just different struggles. For a lot of people now being in a position to buy a house full stop seems unreachable. They’re still juggling work, childcare costs, increased cost of living etc but money goes on rent to consolidate the landlord’s assets. Ultimately getting to a ‘big house, mortgage free’ seems impossible.

YES!

Our Grandmothers rarely went out to work once they had babies (rightly or wrongly), let alone pursued professional, high pressure careers.

Noting there will be the odd exception here, before the pile-on starts.

Although housework was far more manual

My mums experience raising children has been a whole other world to mine.

My mum made a comment once about how she couldn’t understand why I didn’t have time for anything, she never had that problem when I was little. That’s because it turns out my grandparents had me every week from a baby, from 2 my brother and I were left at a playgroup and my mum would go home and do her chores once a week, when she did the food shop she’d leave us with my grandparents again, and if she needed emergency childcare my next door neighbour happily had us.

My parents both work so can’t commit to childcare the way my grandparents did, nurseries are expensive if you’re not both working these days, meaning childcare was limited for when I’m working, not so I could do my housework, and due to DHs job we move every few years so not near family/not anywhere long enough to make the kind of relationships I’d rely on them for childcare.

As for birth, that may be because services are stretched and the NHs is on its knees. When my mum gave birth she was on a beautiful ward with just 2 other mums and was given lessons in jow to bath a baby, how to change a nappy, and proper help with feeding. When I gave birth, I was on a makeshift ward with about 15 mums where the nearest toilet was a 5 minute walk (a pain for cleaning a baby but also incredibly painful when your pre existing hip problem is made 10 times worse after giving birth) I was connected to an IV, shaking with hunger and exhaustion and was looked at blankly when I asked for help with a nappy change as I physically couldn’t use one of my hands, had to wait 2 hours for paracetamol, had about an hour of trying to breastfeed before the midwife just told me to “use formula as it wasn’t worth the stress” so zero support with breast feeding even though I’d managed a feed just after the birth, and when I was told I could go home, packed my bags only to be told I had to stay for emergency blood tests as if I went home I’d end up coming back in an ambulance anyway (had been told I’d been fine all day and would be able to go home after I got to grips with feeding with a bottle. Still no idea why this suddenly changed)
I don’t think it’s that we’re finding babies harder. It’s that services are stretched, facilities cut, the NHS an mess and the cost of everything is so much higher but wages haven’t improved at the same rate.

For me I think it's easier. I'm highly scientifically educated, so I can genuinely do research about parenting choices. I can't imagine how my mother coped without instant access to pubmed to confirm if the HV was taking bullshit and just had to rely on her gut. I can see that the Internet adds to the anxiety for many parents though.

I live abroad and we have a very different system. We get a nurse at home for the first week which makes it much easier if you had a difficult birth, plus my partner got the first 6 weeks off paid. We're expected to go back to work part time at 3 months though and most dads do 1 day at home until school starts. I have huge mum guilt about day care, but I think it stops mums getting so depressed and lonely. A year at home alone sounds like a perfect recipe for MH problems

My mum was a military wife so no village for her. But no competing advice or constant social media and mumsnet telling her how to do things. She had the Doctor Spock book and that was it. Although she was a SAHM due to dad’s job once I was past the young toddler stage I was left to my own devices most of the time.

It’s not true that women didn’t work. A lot of working class and a few professional women. Childcare was much more informal. No worrying about Ofsted ratings and ratios. Family and friends just helped each other out and parents worked opposite shifts.

Social media is allowing women to share how hard it is raising children but it’s also making it harder. The standards we hold ourselves to are impossibly high.

Probably because these women are so monumentally stressed by the all factors that have already been mentioned on this thread! Throw all those into the mix, and there's no surprise they don't want visitors!

One of my support workers pointed out that baby sensory was just exposing baby to new sights/textures/sounds etc and that I could easily just do that with items around the house if I wanted. At this point I was so depressed I could barely get to the postbox in my flat let alone a bus across town to a baby class - didn’t stop me from having a ‘I’m failing my baby’ panic attack when one of the mums on my antenatal group chat posted saying that the baby sensory bookings were opening at 10am online and were likely to get booked up quickly so we should all set an alarm. Again, I can appreciate how much my mental health was driving this and my reaction wasn’t a normal reaction but baby sensory wouldn’t have even been on my gran’s radar to consider worrying about.

Physically giving birth and the recovery is easier on a younger body. Women are having their first child at an older age..

It is easier to parent when other supportive things like housing and extra family TLC are available.
Women are working very hard to earn money due to buying houses later and having to contribute to the mortgage. Reality is that the economy is no longer really suited to one parent caring for young ones and the other out working any more (or both having part time employment).
Cost of living is a strain. Houses too expensive. Too many people are flooding from other countries. Grandparents often work until they are seventy - thus are less available to give parents a break.
Every where one looks is busy and congested.
Nature is not as accessible. That makes a big difference to one's feelings of well being.

I think there's a huge amount more pressure (on women especially) around what being a parent looks like - many more expectations on baby groups/particular food etc, you re-make your life around the child(ren). I think it used to be the baby fit into the parents lives, ate what they were given and children occupied themselves more.

And women had more time to do those things as they were less likely to need to work full time.

So - more to do, less time to do it?

On birth itself, I would assume (not checked) that as nutritionally dense foods have increased, maybe typical birth weights have too? And less time being looked after in hospital to recover too!

This is one of the best posts I have ever read on Mumsnet ❤️

It's easier in some ways - being able to plan when we have children and support ourselves without trying to stretch a husband's broken pay packet. We don't have to spend big chunks of our lives pregnant. But it's also harder in many ways right from the start because many of us don't get the chance to even properly recover from childbirth with supportive midwives any more before we're back at home and thrown in at the deep end, still expected to do everything but more of it. While also being held responsible for the loss of 'community'.

My granny worked as a domestic in a hospital with many, many other women. Quite a lot actually, considering women didn't work, in just one hospital. Women and mothers have always worked.