....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.

Also I don't think making ourselves fully responsible for how hard we can find it because we put pressure on ourselves is really fair. We're constantly being told we're responsible for all society's ills and that's a lot of external pressure whether it's conscious or not. And many women are still doing the lion's share on their own.

There isn’t the family support network there once was. We are living in smaller homes. Growing up I was walking distance to my cousin’s homes and had a massive backyard to play in.

Now I live in a townhouse. No one throws birthday parties at their homes anymore - it’s always at a play centre or other venue.

I didn’t find having a baby hard.

Even making sure your DC socialise with other children is a massive faff nowadays. Playdates, trying to befriend other mums, inviting people round and trying to find a convenient time etc. Whereas in the past you could just open your door and send them to play with the neighbours kids.

I think it’s easy to make assumptions that having babies was easier in the past. I don’t think that’s necessarily true speaking to my family. Women just had less of a voice. Having babies is hard during any era for varying and different reasons.

I think this is driven by people turning up and being unhelpful though.

If relatives were coming to do the cooking and cleaning and allow the mother to stay in bed - then people probably would be more on board.

Most of the time the arrival of a new baby seems to be an excuse for relatives who haven’t been in touch for years to turn up and expected to waited upon, while the mother is trying to recover from birth / learn to breastfeed etc.

So many of the ‘oh my god my relatives after birth’ threads are because the relatives are thinking about themselves rather than the new mother.

I think it’s the external pressures.

1. The pressure to have a natural, pain relief free, birth
2. The pressure to breastfeed
3. The pressure to do sensory games and tummy time and baby yoga
4. The pressure to wean ‘correctly’ finger foods, all home made
5. The pressure to get them sleeping regularly
6. The pressure to keep up with the domestic stuff

Etc etc etc

It’s everywhere at a time when you are your most vulnerable. It’s easy for it to worm its way in. Social media algorithms feed it, even when you aren’t seeking it out.

Some mothers have always worked but there has undoubtedly been a shift in the last 50 years. In the 1970s less than half of mothers worked whereas now three quarters of mothers work. It's not just the number of mothers working but the type of work they are doing with many more women now working FT in careers that demand long hours. This will have a huge impact on family life, just as expectations around parenting have increased.

As a lonely mum with 2 special needs children, I agree we have lots more diagnosed kids now and no real support. This shouldn't be overlooked as to why a lot of mums are struggling. Kids are very difficult now. Is it the modern human way ? The modern world. I think so....

Mu mum told me that her mum had 7 kids and left them from a young age to bring themselves up past basic feeding them and things. Now mothers work hard to establish a bond and relationship with their children which can be hard if you have more than 1 child. Those who "gentle parent" you know those social media accounts. It's tough.

I’ve seen this too. And it’s like they feel threatened by offers of help from relatives. I don’t get it at all.

I think @butterflies898 has nailed it. We weren't meant to do this alone, that's the simple answer why it feels incredibly harder. Only thing I learnt from the experience is that I will ensure I am around as much with my DC when they have their DC.

People are encouraged to leave it too late, young mums are treated like shit I had my first at 16 and am in my 20s now and people still treat you like shit for looking young. Back in the day you only got treated like this if you didn't have a wedding ring being young was irrelevant.

Some woman have no problem conceiving in their 40s others start to find it a struggle in their late 30s and need to spend thousands on IVF then the birth can be more riskier so it probably puts them off having a second child

So women are always meant to be the help raise children to some that is their only purpose in life is dont know why girls are told to try hard at schooor co to college then university if their only purpose is to get a man so they can have children then help raise the next generation

In terms of the giving birth part, women are generally much older when they start a family. The incidence of intervention during labour rises sharply with maternal age. Recovery also takes much longer when you’re older. Then there’s the additional pressure of having to go back to work much sooner than many would like. The stress of having to work out how to make that work, plus the mental distress it causes has a knock on effect on mental health.

Women have natural caring nature's. It's just the way it is.

I think previous generations felt more of a need to hide any struggles and suffer in silence. Especially women who would find it shameful to say they found any aspect of childbirth or parenting difficult.

There's still stigma attached to things like childbirth injuries, post natal depression, miscarriage and baby loss. But now women are much more open about talking about it all, there's more help available and I think on the whole that's a better way to be.

I agree with a lot of posts on here and think that generally parents today have a lot more stress to deal with than even my generation, which was the start of professional working women.
What i will say though, is that back then, maternity leave was a lot shorter and work was a lot less flexible than it is now. I went back to work when my first was about two months old, and started at 7am, even though my job could have started much later.
I think social media and the Internet in general is the biggest change though. Pps are right, people do tend to live further away from family now, but whereas my generation very much looked to our mothers and even grandmother's for advice and guidance, nowadays it's the Internet and research. You only need to look at MN to see the many many posts from younger mothers who are convinced they are doing everything right and every generation before them has been wrong, and you can kind of see why families don't really want to get involved.
I also agree with the pp who said the modern way of basically shifting your entire life to revolve around your child is stressful, along with the constant micromanaging of every aspect of their lives, from what they eat to play dates.
Babies used to fit into family life. Some could be difficult (my son was) but generally, a baby 'refusing' to be put down was not really a thing, as they would have been put down regardless. Now there is endless angst and judgement around the perceived harm of this because of, again, research.
I also think shorter maternity leave focused the parents' mind into getting a routine going. When my oldest was born, 3 months was considered the time you could reasonably expect your baby to sleep through in most cases. By the time I had my second in the early 2000s this had stretched to six months. And now I see on here people saying it's unrealistic to expect a 18-month-old to sleep through, which is mind-blowing to me.
A lot of today's accepted wisdom around routine, habit etc promotes poor sleeping habits, so on top of everything else, parents are sleep deprived too.
I have posted thus before and my thoughts are always pulled apart because, as i said, today's parents,are confident everything that has gone before is wrong, but i think what I have said makes sense.

Won't be a popular view, but I think babies/toddlers spending so much time in childcare means that the parents don't really learn how to be parents - what their babies want/need, how to just 'be' with their children, how to put boundaries in place etc. So when it comes to holidays and weekends they just don't really know how to deal with them.

Hmm ... not sure about that.
I think there is a lot of pressure today to 'enjoy every minute' regardless of your actual situation.
Every time a frazzled new mum posts about getting her baby to sleep, there's always someone bobbing up to tell them to enjoy the milky cuddles etc, when clearly the woman is struggling.

I have two children , severe pre eclampsia on the first I was in hospital for 6 weeks, couldn’t be stabilised after the birth could have died . Second baby I had a uterine rupture we both could have died ….both my great grandmothers died in childbirth and my grandmother had 3 still births and a child die young ..,,even in modern times childbirth can be a very dangerous time.

Having children is genuinely a choice for women nowadays, rather than an expectation with women who can't or who choose not to have children perceived as 'odd' in some way. There are still regressive attitudes around but much less so.

Given greater acceptance of this and the greater opportunity costs which children represent (since there are more 'alternatives' such as increased travel, leisure, time spent on your career), I don't think it's surprising that actually people are much more honest about how hard having children can be, compared to it just being swept under the carpet in the past.

My mother worked full-time, did all the cooking, practically all the housework and the majority of what we would now describe as the 'mental load'. She spent her Sunday afternoon for years ironing work or school shirts and blouses, pressing trousers and organising clothes and uniforms on hangers for the week ahead. When I mentioned this to her recently, she said the expectation back then was that you 'just got on with it' and so that was what she did.

It was a stressful life and many men haven't stepped up sufficiently at home to make it less stressful. And in some ways there are additional pressures now which make it worse. I'm not surprised many women are deciding against children.

I will put this as fluffy and dress it up with kittens and rainbows as much as I can

Bollocks

I don't know, I had babies in 2008, 2018, 2021.

I don't think it has got especially harder since 2008. I remember absolutely heart rending discussions on MN about how hard it was.

The only thing I do think has increased massively is the tendency of algorithms to latch onto new mums' worst anxieties and feed you loads of stuff which increases it rather than alleviates it.

For example I know a lot of people recognise my name on MN as being associated with car seats. But recently my algorithms seem OBSESSED with showing me horrific car crashes and if I didn't have a quite robust view on what I see as the risks of car travel already I can see that it would feed into anxiety.

Likewise sleep based "safety rule" content seems to have ramped up hugely, and I know that SIDS is a major anxiety provocation in general, I know I was worried about it when my DC were little. But I never got fed article after article about babies who died from cot death or accidental co-sleeping suffocation.

I did get caught up in some antivax stuff at one point which scared the pants off me and this seems more rife than ever now. (I did later conclude that the risks of vaccination are miniscule and the benefits huge).

Weaning advice on MN in 2009 was brilliant, it was all BLW and "chuck them a piece of brocolli!" and now my friends who are new mums are worrying about allergy schedules and all kinds of things. That's not come from NHS advice, it's come from the internet.

I know that when I was a new mum I got caught up in online "camps" and this led me to dismiss certain helpful advice because I was worried it was from "the other side". I do think that with algorithms this tendency is much worse. But I don't think everyone gets caught in this.

Is there still a lack of toddler groups etc since COVID? That would make a big difference IMO because I think it really really helps if you can find IRL friends going through the same thing.

This and less pressure to go back k to work quickly. Childcare costs were not through the roof. In fact it was more common in the 90s that some mums didn't work. I can remember being in high school and a friends mum still didn't work with high school aged kids.

I mean - a bit but I was born in 1990 - the only thing I have that my parents didn’t is a dishwasher.