....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.

having to earn a living
not having family next door or in the same house to help
lack of support networks

My mum had four babies in the 80s in NHS hospitals and has always spoken quite fondly of her births. She visited me last year when I was with DC on the postnatal ward and was absolutely horrified at the state of the ward and me. She was the first person that day to refill my water jug and help me walk to the toilet, so pretty basic care, but sadly non existent on that ward.

In those first few weeks i felt like the "rules" around having a baby were incessant, so many dos and donts that simply didn't exist 30 years ago. The pressure to jump out of bed and get moving, go outside, don't stop or reduce breastfeeding even if you're on death's door, or you're the worst mother in the world, it's almost intolerable. Your partner having no choice but to go back to work after two weeks.

And mums now are fully expected to be back at work within the year. I know ONE family with a parent at home. When I was a primary age kid most of the mums (not all, but certainly most) were SAHMs.

Wages haven't risen properly since 2008 but costs for everything have risen. So we all have to work harder, we are more tired, more stressed, further away from our families.

So yeah I think women are finding it harder because it is a lot lot harder.

@HotAndSweatyButNotBetty to be fair 12% on a mortgage of probably £30k or £35k does sound easy in comparison to 6% on £300k!

I can and will agree with you on the state of NHS care and the incessant rules that no one seems to question or adapt.
But I disagree about 'only' two weeks paternity leave and 'only' having a year off work make things harder. As i have said upthread, three months used to be standard maternity leave with no paternity for the father at all, it had to be annual leave.
The work/SAHM thing must be regional or something. My son is 33 now and certainly none of my mum friends or colleagues were SAHMs back then. It was not considered the 'done thing' for professional women.

Yes I hear this but I thought the same. I agree that the current rental being more expensive than a mortgage trap is ...a trap.

My children have all purchased homes with eye watering mortgages. Their standard of living is still better than mine was at the same age. I think expectations have changed. I didn't expect to still afford anything...one car and no cosmetic procedures. No hair salons (cut my own and all the family) What I would say is lucky is we didnt have broadband, no new mobiles and no IT to buy. Equally finding a bargain wasn't easy as you had to walk to shops.

This and the fact that family sizes are so much smaller now -

in my grandparents era it was normal to have around 6 kids.

now the norm is 2 - 1 is very normal as well now - but absolute max 3

Smaller families will make for a MUCH reduced network of potential Aunties uncles and cousins for your kids

im an only child - both my parents are uni educated and both have very different types of high flying career in their own right - think Tony & Cherie Blair level although my parents are not nationally known public figures. BOTH my parents are only children and neither settled in the area they were born and bred in.

So I’ve got no family at all in my home city and no aunties / uncles or first cousins anywhere !!

So I myself am a living, breathing, walking example of a ‘No Village’ scenario

Given that it's not possible to have it all, what is it that people see as the ideal work/life/kids set up and how do you see that being achievable, either in current society, or what policy changes do you think would be needed to make it work? just a couple of examples (and there are many others) I see threads about how hard mums have it all now without the support network they had 40-50yrs ago, at the same time as threads about the right to progress their careers at the same rate they would have if they didn't have children and the importance of financial independence etc. It strikes me that the 2 aren't compatible and if we keep chasing having everything, we're chasing an impossible dream...

On my full time wage now (40 years into my career and a master degree and career building included) I'd not have been able to afford my DD's first house.

Wages were a hell of a lot less then. You can't compare cost of housing to todays wages. I would buy a house £60,000 less than my DDs if we calculate my wage by the same amount.

I worked full time and raised 3 children as a single mother and cared for elderly parents. We weren't all baking bread and wandering down to school at 3pm having watched day time TV. Life was hard for some and easy for others. Same as today really

I think the real difference is lots of mothers have no experience of babies before having one. I was shocked the first time someone said to me their baby was the first baby they ever held and they were terrified. No wonder! I have since many mothers saying this.

In the recent past most teenage girls looked after brothers, sisters, nieces or nephews and babysat. Before I had my own babies I had changed countless nappies, fed bottles to babies and got them to sleep. Of course becoming a mother was different. But I think I and mothers around me at the time were more confident than mothers now, because we already had a lot of experience.

All the rest is partially true. People have always moved around for work away from family and friends. The town I lived in was full of people who had moved there for the new industry. Kids went to their cousins for a summer holiday, we and most others had no family close by. And many mothers have always worked. We also only got three months maternity leave and no paternity leave at all.

Support helps, but babies not being something new that you have no experience of also helps. And support is not always a good thing. Interfering mothers and mothers in law was as much an issue as now. Some caused more issues than any help they gave.

Wages were worth more back then in real terms, wages gave been stagnating for decades. uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-average-house-price-rise-2020-millennials-versus-baby-boomers-property-ladder-060042411.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKjuNu1FTJXtuLGK-SLqTqQGOqzdhpuM8DU1ljt5vTUtHEqspZx3f0LqyxHC8q9gVU94BJx273ysrKIo8T-w-CtzwZ_Qkop8iEyi_X5yU-6srta3qZSPCRKqHe2ZWlqMBbM3za9YuKkrCLJurPe-3IaBB8WT8Fu4Y4kfr5bRpQWb

Graduates barely earn more than what l got a bit over 20 years ago

Interesting - I’m not imagining it then.
I don’t blame the hospitals for being risk-averse - no one wants anything other than a safe delivery of a healthy child.

I'm going back 40 yrs to when I started work and I know my wages and the cost of my first house. I couldn't have afforded my daughter's first house

I remember when breech births became more common. It was thought to be because women no longer got onto their knees to scrub doorsteps and floors.
Lots of pregnancies now would have been seen as high risk in the past. First time mothers tend to be older, fatter and less fit than in the past.

Infant mortality is the lowest it has ever been (3/1000, against 30/1000 in 1950) , so that shows that though more births may be 'complex' there are less babies dying in the process. Given the choice between enduring a prolongued, painful or traumatic birth, or a dead baby I'd chose the difficult birth... The other option is to do more elective c sections...

This is very true. DH and I were both in our 40’s when we had our only DC. At that point DH said he had never held a baby before and I had very limited experience of it too. I’d certainly never fed a baby or cared for one.

We also had no family support so had to work out literally everything for ourselves. Google was most definitely our friend!

@HotAndSweatyButNotBetty it's probably something like the area your daughters house is in, has experienced a faster price rise increase than others

If you just look at average houses compared to average salaries: In 1970 average house prices were 3.8 x average annual salaries. In 2018 that figure is 8.4.

Numerous sources say mortgages were way more affordable in real actual terms, in yesteryear versus now. That's before we even get to not having to pay a deposit (my husband thought l was on the wind up when l told him about 100# and 110% mortgages!). Tax relief on mortgages, no stamp duty etc. All the things that today do not exist and make it so hard to buy property

Sure, but you need to balance risk and a lot of women are unnecessarily induced, which can have far worse outcomes for the mother when there isn’t anything medically wrong.

It doesn’t stack up that a third of births need to be inductions, a number which grows every year, and there needs to be a sensible discussion around the actual benefits of this.

All too often it seems to be used as a bit of a threat to mothers ‘oh you wouldn’t want to risk your babies health would you?’, when really the odds of something going wrong with their birth / baby without the induction are very small.

I think women are increasingly choosing elective c sections as at least this is controlled and planned - vs an emergency c section after hours (or days) of failed induction.

@Meadows9 That must have been very tough.
There was a lot I did not know when I had a baby. I had obviously never breastfed before. But all the other basic care I had done loads of. I also had an idea of how to treat common childhood illnesses.

It used to be normal for women to know this stuff. I did not know anything really about breastfeeding. But my friend seemed to know loads. She just said all the mothers in her family had breastfed and she had picked up a lot as a child and teenager.

A lot of young mothers also used to chat to teenage relatives and neighbours when they were a bit lonely. So I knew tearing was common, my mother would have never talked about this.

Are we also getting more like America and over medicalising birth? My hospital birth was so stressful and horrific, whereas as home for the other two, I was far more relaxed and it was straightforward. The call the midwife days where you could have a home birth more easily or choose the birthing unit or hospital were probably the best (although with today’s advancements in medical understanding and medicine).

I know a lot of people who have really found it hard. I actually have a friend who had always wanted a big family but is now “one and done”. The key difference is how much help you get.

I get a lot of help from my DH, as I should, but a lot of women have babies with losers. People say to me all the time how involved he is and how good a dad he is but.. he’s their dad… he should be involved. I also share childcare with my DB and SIL who we purposely live close to. I’ll have their younger kids one day and she will have mine ect. Her older kids can be home alone now, but they have keys to my house so they can come round whenever. My other siblings don’t do much childcare as they don’t have kids themselves, but in a pinch they’ll help.

My mum does a lot of childcare as do my in laws. I know a lot of people have a hard time with their in laws, and sometimes I do too, but I overlook things because at the end of they day they raised three great kids (my DH is their best work) so I trust them. My dad doesn’t do regular childcare, but he does days out and takes the kids on holidays ect. He is of the opinion he’s “done his time” raising six kids… fair point I think.

I also had my kids young intentionally so they would get to spend time with their grandparents and so they could help me. My mum also made it clear to me and my siblings she wants to be hands on. I am very lucky to have so much help. I do think in part, some people maybe don’t have the family help because they nit pick or go in with 100 arbitrary rules on how to care for their child.

If you want a “village” you need to meet people where they’re at sometimes and also be willing to help them. I always try and do stuff for my in laws when they will let me, same with my mum.

Its true mortgages were more affordable in the past. It is because mortgages were heavily regulated through legislation. Initially banks were not allowed to lend more than 2.5 time the main breadwinners wage, plus 1.5 times the partner. That kept house prices lower. But getting a mortgage was hard, and people got turned down. Unless you had a very steady job you had been in for a while, you often had to pay more than the lower mortgage rates in order to get a mortgage.

Then mortgages were deregulated and there seemed to be few rules. Mortgages just had to be affordable. You could get 100% or even 103% mortgages and people could self declare their income if self employed. A few years later the repossessions started and many houses were repossessed as people could not afford the mortgages. Regulation was brought in to ban 100% mortgages.

Then buy to let mortgages were brought in. Before then rent was cheaper than a mortgage. Landlords owned their properties outright. Buy to let mortgages changed that and rents started to increase.

@Shineonyoucrazydiamond1

The induction rate has exponentially increased in the last 15 years but the stillbirth and neonatal death rate remains the same, all the while birth trauma and life changing birth injuries are on the rise.

We over medialize birth like crazy, mainly because maternity is the single most litigated department in the NHS and it is far easier to defend overaction than a watch and wait approach.

That’s not always the case. For us the extended family structure just wasn’t there.

2 of DCs 4 GP were dead before he was born. The other 2 were late 70’s.

All his cousins were adults when he was born. He is nearly 20 years younger than the next youngest person in our extended family.

None of our friends have young children.

We have had to do literally everything ourselves through necessity not choice. The idea that someone would give us even an hour of childcare is fanciful.

Sometimes people’s arrangements are simply a quirk of circumstance rather than a result of anything they’ve done to rub people up the wrong way.

Physically it's much safer to give birth nowadays. But emotionally it's infinitely harder. As a species, we have not evolved to take care of our baby in isolation, which is what now happens in most First World, Western societies. We actually evolved to share parenting within a multi-generational, female family.

When my Grandmother gave birth to my Mum, they lived within close walking distance of both sets of in-laws, three maiden aunts, several cousins and lots of my GM's school friends. For the fortnight after the birth, my GM rested in bed or on the sofa and was cared for by her family. There was always a helping hand and someone putting the kettle on.

When I had DD1 I was a 50 minute drive from my family and didn't know a soul in the village we'd just moved to. It felt horribly lonely and completely unnatural and no doubt contributed to my PND.