Guest post: This generation of parents is the best ever

[MumsnetGuestPosts]

Family, work, friendship, self-care - all of us struggle to get the balance of these things right every day. We have days when these all work out, but we all have the days where things seem to fall apart as well. I've worked with families since the mid-1970s, and what I know is that it's so important to enjoy every day that goes your way when you're a new parent. When it comes to the other days, we have to let them go.

So many of the new parents I work with come to learn this lesson - if you're kind to yourself, its enables you to be even kinder to the people you love the most.

This isn’t always straight-forward though, and that's partly because we compare ourselves to others. It's tempting to look back at previous generations in particular and think they're making life look easy. Maybe though, those generations weren't being honest.

What I see now is that more mums are open about the ups and downs of being responsible for another human being 24/7. It's good to share the reality of this, and recognise that none of us are perfect. More and more, that's what parents are doing.

No matter who you are or how things might look from the outside, every good parent has doubts about their abilities or the choices they are making. There isn't one perfect way of parenting; every single baby and family is different with their own set of circumstances. And, when you become a parent, it is you as the main carer for your child who has the greatest insight into their needs. For new mothers and fathers, this can be hard sometimes to keep hold of.

As well as being more open and honest, I think families are changing for the better. What I see today is more and more mums and dads working as a team and putting their baby's needs at the centre of family life. They're actively making space in their lives for the little bundle who turns their world upside down.

In previous decades dads often weren't around the home as much. I'd visit new mums at home about six times in the first eight weeks and mum was usually doing it all on her own; caring for the baby and still doing all the cooking and cleaning. Often before we even started the visit my first task was to go and make her a cup of tea.

In recent years, more dads have been there on those very early visits. I'd be with them for well over an hour often giving advice but also listening to these wonderful new parents telling me all that they were doing for their new baby. More dads today realise that when your partner is breastfeeding you can be supportive by making her a cup of tea, or fetching her a glass of water and a snack. Dads are often a dab hand at settling the baby, changing nappies and taking over a lot of the domestic duties while mum gets a rest.

Today, when I say to a group of antenatal or new mums, 'Your baby has the same rights as you and you're the custodian of those rights,' they get it in a way some of their parents didn't. This is also a major shift. For me, it's a pleasure to hear about all those books they're reading, their pregnancy and baby yoga classes, and the changes they've made to their diet and lifestyle before their precious baby has arrived. We have access now to so much information, and seeing it accessed by expectant parents is brilliant.

Does that make this generation of parents the best ever? Well maybe, partly, it does - along with these five reasons why I'm convinced parents are doing a great job.

1. Saying 'I love you'
   

Today's parents openly love and praise their child right from day one. Often previous generations worried about spoiling children without realising love, security and praise are essential to creating a positive self-image.

1. Team work
   

More couples work as a team and there is increasing equality when it comes to childcare, household duties and work. Both parents are more hands-on these days.

1. You're the expert on your own baby
   

You're the rule breakers, who bravely research, think, talk and then work out what's best for you and your family. More and more parents recognise there is no perfect way to parent.

1. Happy family times
   

It's not what you do but how. More parents focus on creating positive new experiences with their children and treating them with equal respect -whether it's making them part of the weekly shop or a trip to the park.

1. Parenthood is so much more than biology
   

Gay parents, adoptive parents and parents who have fertility treatment often have a more complicated journey to parenthood, but the obstacles are lessening so parents can get on with making their baby the centre of their world.

Sarah Beeson MBE, writer of Happy Baby Happy Family, will be speaking at Bumpfest.

[coffeeisnectar]

Fabulous post!

It's so hard being a new parent. I remember vividly, 17 years ago, bringing my oldest home after an awful 6 days in hospital recovering from a traumatic birth, putting her into a Moses basket and thinking...now what? What do I do?

But I did it. As a single mum who juggled work and home and made weekends fun with my child. And I did again with my youngest whose father was useless but I love that my dp is so good with my kids, very active in a parental role.

[Floggingmolly]

There were good and not so good parents then; and there are good and not so good parents now.
"Parents" are not one huge homogeneous group.

[Owllady]

You used to be my health visitor! But I know you by a different first name. I think you might actually remember me, you spent so much time round my house :o!

[OllyBJolly]

Not sure I'm convinced. I agree with flogging - there's better and there's worse.

I agree parents have it easier than our parents did, and work is far more family friendly now than it was just 20 years ago. Does that make for happier, healthier more secure kids?

Too many children seem to be entertained by computer screens now - how many families do you see on a day out where the kids are on tablets and the parents are looking at their phones? On a day out?!

I haven't seen the idyllic family walking around Tesco sharing the experience of a happy family shop. I see unhappy kids fed unhealthy snacks to keep them quiet, and miserable, stressed mums filling their baskets with over priced "offers" and a lot of over packaged, over processed food.

I'm glad we've moved on from the "seen and not heard" days. When I hear kids dictating where families go on holiday, where adults sit at a table, when it's time to leave a restaurant, I think we've lost sight of who the adults are, and where responsibility sits.

The biggest issue is the obesity problem. If parents are so good, why are there so many unhealthy kids? I go swimming every Saturday at the local pool and more than half of the kids are obviously overweight. These are kids who are swimming fgs - what about the ones who don't even do that.

And some kids behave impeccably and have happy, responsible parents. From where I'm sitting, this is far from the majority.

Bit early to be congratulating ourselves.

[MsJuniper]

This post made me cry. There is so much criticism, so much judgement, so much to worry about as a parent - particularly a mother. How lovely and refreshing and affirming to read about all the lovely stuff. It makes you feel like carrying on.

[TrojanWhore]

I think this is a heap of lazy generalisation, based on the blazing key obvious truth that you tend to remember the good bits.

I really hate the stirring of inter-generational strife (we're better, so you're worse) and the sooner everyone realises that parents then, like parents now, and parents throughout the whole history of the human race, are the best parents they can be in their circumstances.

[Amymarie90]

For me, the biggest difference is that my own parents take a massively active role as grandparents where as mine didn't so much. This allows me to work and study, which in turn makes for a happier me and a happier child. The time we do get to spend together is always quality time and the time we don't I know he's being well looked after.

When my parents had me and my brother, my mum stayed home with us whilst my dad went to work. I can imagine how stressful it would have been to be with two small children 24/7. I don't think we are better in this generation, we are just more fortunate.

[Gunpowder]

I don't know if this generation is better, (I think almost all parents have always done their best with the resources and knowledge they have) but like Juniper, this post made me cry because I do feel judged and as if my parenting is being judged, all the time. Some positive affirmation is very welcome and has made me focus on the bits we are getting right.

[Lightbulbon]

The equal parenting thing doesn't match up to research though.

Ft working mums are doing as much housework/wifework as ever and pt working mums are in an even worse position.

That's not even mentioning the many many dad's who disappear out of their DCs lives.

[Sleepybeanbump]

I find most of this pretty dubious tbh.

Happy family times...For a lot of people, quality family time is a rarer and rarer commodity and at the same time parents are under insane pressure to 'do' so many things with their kids. And I don't think deferring loads of family decisions to the kids is necessarily a good thing.

Saying i love you- I actually think (if we're making sweeping generalisations) that previous generations were better at bringing up well behaved polite kids with boundaries. Yes, there's more focus on self esteem now but it sometimes comes at a price of selfishness.

Recognising there's no perfect way to parent? Hmm. Yet we are swilling around in what surely must be the highest level of perfectionism and anxiety about parenting, and so much conflicting societal pressure and 'advice'. I don't buy this at all.

Team work...is this actually true? And besides, it rather belittles the contributions of the older generation of fathers where work was split more down gender lines. We wouldn't belittle the contributes of that generation of women because they didn't do so much paid work. Now the 'average' family - inasmuch as there is such a thing - shares paid work and family work between the sexes more than before. But are we happier and better off for it? Debatable. In theory it's great. In practice everyone I know is permanently stressed and distracted and over busy and spread too thin. Our kids will come up with a different way of doing things and wonder what we were thinking. And so the cycle goes on.

I think every generation has it's challenges as parents, and it deals with them as best it can, and every generation collectively makes some mistakes. I'd find this pretty insulting and dismissive if I was a parent from an older generation, and as a mum to be can't say it chimes with me.

[FadedRed]

So good to read the balanced and sensible replies on this post.
I read the original post before there were any replies and it made me sad that there appeared to be a need for comparisons with previous generations of parents.
Last night I had a bit of a rant on another thread that I felt was unnecessarily making fun of previous generations of parents, and the only reply so far was along the lines that "We try to do our best with the knowledge we have at the time", which made me feel better.
Why compare? Yes, it's great to have positive feedback, but why at the expense of our parents and grandparents?
The generation I admire is the wartime (WW2) women were forced to send their children to strangers, their husbands to fight and maybe die and to do long hours in factories or other work, not sleep at night without fears of being bombed, losing their homes, managing rationing and all the miseries that came with the time. How did they do that? It's beyond me....Were they worse parents than today's? How can anyone compare?
I'm a 'baby boomer' generation parent- one of the ones who delayed having children so we could pay the mortgage, fought the system to keep our jobs when we had our kids, looked after ageing parents while working and raising children, rallied and spoke out for better conditions for single parents and equal rights, and now get slated for 'being lucky' for having a pension to look forward to after 40+ years of bloody hard work.
Less of the comparisons, please.

[nooka]

I'd be very glad if the guest poster is right and new parents are now in a much happier place, but I'm not totally convinced. My children are teenagers so I don't even know if we count as this generation or last generation parents, and I'm generation X which never seems to interest anyone much either (not that that is a bad thing really).

However it strikes me that parents are more anxious about getting it 'right' and that's the reason they consume so many parenting books. Most of which are full of opinionated unevidenced guff. Yes it's great that our children feel more overtly loved (I'm an 'I love you' parent too) but there's also evidence that too much praise for the wrong things can be really quite harmful.

But then I don't look back to previous generations and think they had it easy so perhaps I'm not the target audience. My mother loved being a SAHM and my father earned enough for that to be possible so that was great, however as I hated being home and was more than happy to go back to work I am incredibly glad that I didn't become a parent when she did and be effectively forced to say goodbye to her career. My grandmother parented through the war. I'm glad I never had to get my children down to the bomb shelter (our family table has a shrapnel mark on it!).