....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.

There definitely was more of a family and community point of call. My mums an 80s baby and her and her sister used to knock on her neighbours door and take their baby out regularly. Times have massively changed! People would be horrified if kids did that today.

I think we have over complicated things with motherhood and that is the overboard information that we get from the internet and social media. I remember once my Mum saying it is ok to feed your baby out of a jar, they won't die, but it will give you a night off. I also had pnd and was felt like a complete failure because I wasn't doing the tummy time, reading enough, cuddling enough, socialisation, organic homemade foods, language acquisition thing well enough. Plus having a baby is sold as a fairytale and while I love being a parent it certainly isn't one long sweet fairytale. There are hard, tiring and boring bits to it.
Also there are higher pressures on us financially. If we want to hold on to our jobs and most of us need to we have to return to work sometimes earlier than planned.

Yes, this is true
My first was born in 1993 and certainly then the expectation was that those with 'careers' went back to work. Certainly I and all my contemporaries did.
The difference was - rightly or wrongly- we had no expectation of any changes in the workplace once we returned to it. So flexible/home working was pretty unheard of and because there was no expectation, we did just get on with it.
Maternity leave was also much shorter - I think it was 6 weeks on 90% pay then another 12 weeks on SMP, then that was it. I think i even got a bonus for going back before three months if I remember correctly.
Because OUR mothers had either been housewives or retired at 60, there was more grandparent care done. And because much of our guidance on childcare came from our mothers anyway, there was much less angst about what they were doing 'wrong'. We were the new mothers so we did not assume we knew better. That is a key shift I think.
Different times.

It has always been hard, there was hardly any choice over it at all until well into the 20th century. Look at how many women used to die in childbirth or just after, even among the very wealthy.

Now we have a constant barrage of mumsnet / instagram posts / panorama documentaries berating mothers for feeding their child food from a jar, and making them ashamed to be seen to be doing so in public.

Example AIBU post: ‘Saw mum feeding baby from pouch in a cafe, it’s just junk food, why don’t mums today make and puree their own food?’ Followed by 200 comments saying how lazy and fat modern mothers are.

I didn't think it was hard at all, much easier than I expected from all the doom and gloom I saw online.
My kids are still very young oldest is starting reception in September, but the birth, babies part was a breeze to be honest.

Obviously can't say it out loud though or people think you are lying or goady.

Tbh, I think most of the criticism of younger mothers on here is from other younger mothers.

Why do you specify younger mothers?

I see all mothers of all ages being criticised by all people of all ages.

I meant younger, as in those bringing up young children today.
As opposed to the despised mil generation.

I agree with this. Being a home maker and mum was (and still is ..... ) a full time job, but now women often have to work full time outside the home, too

I'm in total support of women having all the choices and freedoms we fought so long to acquire, but I also think we shot ourselves in foot, somewhere along the way

I think that often stems from those relationships being quite poor to begin with (yes, even with their own mother). I couldn't think of anything worse than having a difficult person enter my home in what was, probably, the most vulnerable time of my life.
Some family members really do just show up for a photo with the newborn without even so much as a 'how are you?' to the person who literally just gave birth to it.

This is so true, I felt so sorry for the frazzled mum who posted a few weeks ago about whether it was ok to feed her child a pouch of baby food- she was bombarded with posts about how she should be better prepared, how it was ok if it was only a one off, but never to be repeated. Perhaps we should give greater consideration to the long term impact of frazzled parents and the resulting stress on kids... If mumsnet wasn't here maybe she'd have asked her mum or a friend, who would have said 'Yes- give them a pouch and don't worry about it.' She wouldn't have changed her values and fed them McDonalds for the rest of their life- she'd have done her usual thing, and felt ok about using the odd ready made meal. Instead she came on here and received a barrage of posts that would make her feel like a substandard parent, and likely spent the rest of the day and week feeling like a shit parent, not doing a good enough job...

I’d say I usually find other mothers of small children are fairly live and let live, as they’re all fighting for survival and can appreciate how that is.

It’s people who are even just slightly out of those small child years who give the most grief, presumably as they’ve forgotten what it’s like.

I think where mothers of young children egg each other on in the madness, is eg in telling their friend they’re on a 100 day weaning programme involving four three course meals a day, to introduce 500 new foods or whatever.

It’s much more isolating now. You get two weeks (if you’re lucky) of your partner being around to help, then you’re on your own for hours every weekday. It was about 50 hours a week in my case. In previous generations there would have been sisters, cousins, mum/MIL, aunts, grandparents around for company, hold the baby. We had precisely one family member visit twice in the first six months. And they didn’t do anything useful.

Plus it was much more of a lifestyle lurch. If you grew up around babies and children in the extended family, married young and had your own babies it’s an extension of what you’re used to. The mums I know who had babies in their late teens/early 20s seem to have adjusted a lot more easily. If you have babies in your late 30s you’ve probably had two decades of living independently, doing what you want when you want, getting as much sleep as you need so it’s a massive shock.

@RidingMyBike isn't that largely choice though - I was on mat leave in covid and I still went out every day and saw people, we had a mums and buggy walking group - socially distanced of course.

Second time round I was out every day again, coffee mornings, library groups etc. 90% were free or only cost a quid or so, and my kids are still little - on my NWD I still take them to a free playgroup, they play I chat to other mums.

I agree about being used to babies though, babies have always been in our family so I didn't feel shocked at another one.

I find the comments around visitors (or lack of them) interesting.
Speaking for myself, I genuinely don't think I would visit a newborn baby unless I had to because I would be so nervous about doing or saying something wrong.
I know mn is not real life, but I has a realise MN situation in a hotel spa which made me think I was so far out of step with acceptable behaviour around children these days, I have not interacted with another mother since. That was about 4 years ago.
I was getting changed and a mum came in with her baby of about 10 months and I was making conversation, the way you do. Pleasant chitchat followed and then she said she had been up since 3.30am and did that every morning because that's when her baby woke up so the whole family got up then. I grimaced and said something like oh that's hardcore or something like that. Her face changed and she literally scooped the baby up and marched away, as if the mere suggestion of anything other than perfection was going to harm her in some way. It was bizarre.
More recently, I was walking and could hear a toddler wailing and when he came closer, saw it was in a pushchair being pushed by grandma. I said something like oh dear, someone's tired, gran agreed and said she had taken him out to try and get him to sleep. I realised afterwards that I only said what I did because tge woman was about my age. Had she been the mum, I would not have said anything.
That may well be the reason 'the vilage' is dispersing.

The "village" is dispersing because mothers don't thank strangers for commenting on their baby/toddler/parenting choices without asking for input?
Unless you were following your comments up with offers of support, you weren't part of those women's "villages". So I don't think you stopping yourself before commenting has anything to do with the "village".

The idea of a village has disappeared because people live further away from family and many more women work than full time now compared previous generations. There can't be a village because people simply don't have enough time anymore.

Well I think that post has just proved my point. That's why I would not dare make conversation with any mother of a young child now.
So what DO you talk about then? Genuine question.

Would anyone else genuinely find my comment offensive? And what would the appropriate response be? To pretend the family getting up at 3.30am was perfectly normal and desirable?

Not in my lifetime and I’m 70. It was a week 50 years ago and most women went home to be on their own all day because there was no paternity leave.

So o true! I had DTs almost four decades ago and certainly was not in hospital for two weeks! No family help as my mum was still working full time and PiL lived a long way away. Just getting out of the door was a major endeavour.
New mums today have access to advice and shopping online and a plethora of groups/classes they can join.

When I was having my babies, in the 1990s, most of the women I know gave birth vaginally. Very few had c-sections.

My kids’ friends and friends’ kids are having babies now and it feels very rare that I hear of a straightforward vaginal delivery. I hear of lots of lengthy inductions, spanning several days, ending up in instrumental deliveries or emergency sections. I also know of many elective sections.

If one of my daughters was pregnant I’d be totally supportive of whatever she wanted. We just want a safe, healthy, happy experience and outcome.

A whole range of reasons:

-women being more honest about the challenges and not sugar coating it
-a lot more is expected of women e.g. my mum was only expected to look after the children, house and do a few hours work. In contrast l work full time, expected to not "let myself go", exercise, progress at work (have been doing an additional qualification, have a great marriage etc
-less support -my mum got a world of support of her mother / my grandma. She however prefers to spend all her time on herself which there is a lot of, as she's been retired for years and has no caring responsibilities

A third of births are now induced, and these are far more likely to result in instrumental births and emergency c-sections.

The reason for those inductions is the hospitals being more risk averse - that these then lead to very complex births… no one quite seems to be measuring which is the better of two evils.