....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.

@Arraminta I still live walking distance from about as many relatives and I know I haven't found motherhood as hard as I expected, or even as I see my friends find it - the support changes everything

Didn't feel the need for an extended rest horizontal for weeks after either birth though, that's just personal preference!

Full time work + no help from family or friends = greater stress.

Women had very difficult lives in the past, particularly poor women, 80% of the population was poor 100 years ago. There was no sympathy, there was no way out, they were trained to get on with it.

Mysogyny then, mysogyny now.

She lives in my area (left her university town to come home for planned free childcare 🙄 ).

I hear what the statistics say but am basing it on lived experience. She did accumulate a big deposit before buying which I didn't have to do. The reason for the big deposits are because lenders lost so much money when my generation lost their houses. House value plummeted and you owed more than the cost of the house. So repossession was inevitably rife.

I'm not saying there are no issues but I'm grumpy 😆 at the suggestion my generation had it all easy. Some of the comments on here are so ill informed about what life was like.

I do my best to help my children because I don't want their experiences to be like mine. Frankly motherhood was a survival, unless you'd married for money.

Look at the shops in the town to say where big problems are...vaping, mobile phones, nails, eyebrows and salons. Take those costs away and look at the extra money my generation had. We had clothes, haberdashery (we sewed our lots of our own clothes), fishmongers, butchers, chemists etc. Food was expensive because we didn't have supermarkets. Charity shops I don't remember but my mother used to adore the jumble sale at the church hall. Some of her best finds could be the basis for years of counselling 🙃

Yes, I think having that close support network around you is hugely important. I u derstand that the reason my GM had 2 weeks bed rest was because it was a particularly bad delivery? But I think most new Mums got a few days proper rest after delivery?

DD1 was a c-section and I was chucked out of hospital only 49 hours after she was born. I could barely shuffle and was in so much pain as they only sent me home with paracetamol. It was barbaric.

When exactly are you thinking of? Because women used to die in childbirth pretty often...

I agree with what other PP have said about family help and community being a big part of what helped with having a young baby, as well as most people having more baby experience. I'd never held a baby before I had my own.

A horizontal rest afterwards for weeks is very bad for you.
Just as people with back pain used to be advised to live in bed to rest their back and are not any more.
We know that the risks of being immobile are high, and that people need to move as soon as they can. Honestly if you have an operation they are these days getting you out of your bed as soon as they physically can. +

I mean I was told at midnight that I had to leave the hospital after giving birth 2 hours prior. I'm sure there's a middle ground between that and being laid flat on your back for weeks.

I think some of us just aren't around babies as much as previous generations. I had a much younger brother and a couple of nieces by the time I had my first, but many of my friends thier own baby was the first they had ever held.

No. I can only go by my mother’s and her sister’s experiences though. Three kids, husbands were not allowed in (we are talking early 60s) and with her last it wasn’t going well and she kept asking for my father (who was a doctor though not an obstetrician) and they would at the same time be telling him ‘she’s progressing well’. 36 hours in active labour for your third child is long.
So oldest would have been out of nappies but two of us in - cloth nappies this is. About 60% of houses owned washing machines by 1970 but I don’t know if they did. Certainly no dishwasher.
And my mother worked as a medical social worker. We had an au pair.
Her family lived abroad and she had a couple in the same country but they had their own kids and also worked (one as a dentist who became a single mother to two, we took one in while she trained up again and another went to live in Ireland).
I think even if a stay at home mum you had it tougher back then. Foods were more seasonal, everything was cooked from scratch (no frozen ready meals, though I do remember when TV dinners arrived). Mostly hand me downs and make do and mend. No or little TV to entertain the kids when you needed ten minutes of down time, no special lights or white noise or sleeping bags etc. If you needed to buy something you had to go to an actual shop. You needed to talk to anyone it was by telephone or letter. These were expensive and took time.

Today the majority of people have washing machines, microwaves, convenience food like frozen pizza or nuggets if you need to whip up a quick dinner. Everything is available delivered straight to your door, be it food or a stamp. Shops are open all day all week. If one works you outsource the childcare. I’m not saying it’s cheap, of course it’s not, but you haven’t got a child on your hip, a pile of dirty nappies soaking in a bucket, dinner in the stove and two others running around waiting for their turn in the bath!

There’s no community and often little family support. We are raising kids alone when it was never meant to be like this, that’s why it feels so hard, because it is

Given the falling birth rate this is likely to continue to be an issue.

In my family my brother is 2 years younger so I obviously wasn’t old enough to help out when he was a baby. I have one cousin who is three years younger, so again I was too young (and even if I wasn’t she lived in a different city). My son is the first grandchild and there doesn’t seem to be much sign of any cousins appearing in the near future. Even if they do they’ll be living three hours away.

Most support in the past came from teenage girls. It still is the case in traditional societies that older children do a lot of the babysitting. That is no longer acceptable here.

I had my 1st child and had a week in hospital. Husband then worked normally, left home early returned around 6ish. He was self employed he needed to work..end of. I had no family or support I just got on with it. Second child home in 11 hours, same scenario...took toddler to playgroup looked after the home and baby. Got an evening job as a waitress to earn a bit more money. Thought nothing of it. I had a rubbish marriage to be fair but really didn't find life that hard. Maybe I was lucky but when I read some of the posts I do wonder why women are so unable to cope.

Lots of women's lives were harder back then. Washing clothes was by hand or the twin tub which took ages to do. Most shopping was done by walking to the shops and cooking from scratch was just cooking. Kids played out, and the only baby and mum groups were run in a church hall or by other mothers. There was no baby massage classes or baby music classes.
But expectations were lower. Working class women did not expect to go out much once married, except maybe to the bingo sometimes. Most socialising was going round someone's house for a cup of tea.
You loved your children, but nobody asked themselves if they enjoyed being a mother or were having fun being a mother. Just as people do not ask themselves today if they enjoy having their daily shower and getting dressed, it just is something you do.
Childless women used to be pitied and the stigma was very real. To have any social status at all, you got married and had children.

Watching my DM parent a new born in 1970 looked very easy. If “it” cried put it at the bottom of the garden, where you can’t hear it. Three years old send it up the shops . Walk to school on your own.

I get accused of being a helicopter parent . I’m glad. Parenting properly is hard work.

Think women pulled more ways now. Maybe young children then elderly parents need minding aswell you never swich off.

I don't think finding having babies hard is something unique to any generation. There has always been challenges.

That said I think the lack of a village for many modern mothers, the increase in traumatising inductions and how fear based baby advice can be are all problems.

@DustyMaiden It was common in the past to put babies outside to sleep. Most do sleep better in the open air. It was not common to igno0re them crying and sending a 3 year old to shop by themselves was seen as neglectful.

They struggle to cope because leaving baby at all is regarded as the wrong thing to do. Hence adults going to bed at 7pm in the dark because baby is in bed and they are not 'allowed' to leave them. Many posts about babies to 'refuse' to be put down (get a sling! Enjoy the newborn snuggles!), 'refuse' to sleep anywhere but on someone ('Enjoy! They are only little once!), are still waking for a feed at 18m (Enjoy the milky cuddles!). It would drive me stir crazy, then we are told we should be enjoying every minute into the bargain.
I would struggle, and badly. But then I have had many 'your poor child' responses when I suggest made things like leaving baby to cry so you can go to the loo or putting them in their own room at a year old so everyone can sleep.
Madness I tell yer

Because of course only your generation knows how to 'parent properly'
Time will tell

I actually agree. It seems to be so common for children, not babies but children, to wake up their parents in the night. I think being clear they sleep and do not get up makes a massive difference. Living life sleep deprived is hard.

I had my babies in a private hospital which I’m very grateful for. I stayed for 4 days with all the support you could imagine and to rest and recover properly. Dh stayed too in a proper bed too

I agree. I had mine 30 years ago with next to no support and I really struggled. I found it exhausting (no help from exH, he never did a single feed or nappy change), often overwhelming as I never had a break until they started pre-school, and mind-numbingly boring.

I felt like the worst mother in the world because everybody else seemed to be loving motherhood and coping admirably. It’s only since the advent of social media that hear many women openly admitting to the same thoughts and feelings. I don’t think it’s anything new. Women were just to scared to admit it before.

That said, I do think there’s more pressure on Mums now. All this guff about not being able to put your baby down lest it grizzles for a few seconds and grows up traumatised, and not being allowed to say no to kids must make life massively harder.

Women used to stay in hospital for longer because it was thought bed rest was good for women who had just given birth. Its not. But a lot of those mothers would have been expected once home to be doing washing by hand, laying the fire, scrubbing floors. So they maybe did need a break from that to medically recover?