Not to offend anyone but why is it that older generation seem to be more prone to harsher parenting?

[crunchymummy]

Really don't mean to offend anyone but recently have noticed that DM (45) and DMIL (65+) are much more happy to let 11 week DS cry and seem to think that BF and co-sleep is "spoiling him" - especially DMIL, she also thinks that BLW is a load of rubbish and babies have to be in a strict routine ect you get the idea... is it the older generation that seem to have this approach or is it just my narrow minded personal experience that leads me to think this?

I'm so glad that I was spared the internet and Dr Google.
I BF on demand, co-slept on a lot of nights, did the ancestor of BLW, let them sleep when they wanted, let them have peanut butter sandwiches, dressed DS in his sister's hand me downs for a couple of years.
Harsh parenting?
I saw a lot of that around me, but I was in an economically-deprived, white, northern town with a dreadful post-16 education rate, third generation unemployed and grandparents in their 30s. So I could judge the amount of yelling and slapping as attributable to any one or more of those indicators.

I do think BLW exclusively is a bit much. I don't think young babies have developed the necessary hand eye co ordination to eat a yoghurt with a spoon without 75% of it going in their lap, hair, on the floor.
I also think some parents seem afraid to say no to their child or tell them off.
I'm not old by the way.

I would say that a lot of our older generation remember their child rearing through rose tinted glasses and have forgotten how they muddled through like all parents do.

I definitely remember the muddle!

My DC1 is 30 and the trend was only just starting towards feeding on demand then. My DM was quite horrified and thought we should be in a routine. Some of the guidance out there was still saying BF 10 minutes each side. I can remember raised eyebrows at Toddler Group feeding again with DC3 (now 25) so there obviously were young women at the time not feeding on demand.

My friends at the time were a mix - some trying to stick to a 4 hourly schedule and others going with the flow. I was quite shocked that a few of them left their baby to cry; I never did, having been left at the bottom of the garden to scream, myself.

We were all warned not to co-sleep, but did so once the baby stage was over. I'm early 50s, so I'm surprised your DM would be this way. Your MIL would be the tail end of the older generation.

Having said that, DC3's school friend had her first at 18 and to start with was very much in the 4 hour FF, leaving to cry camp. Her DM was horrified. She's now done a complete about face and 7 years later is into babywearing, lentil-weavery, co-sleeping, extended BF, so there is hope .

I followed the family tradition and had my first child at 24, as had my mum before me, and my grandmother before her.

My grandmother had a hard life in a small mining community just after the war. Not much money, very few modern conveniences and intergenerational living (there was my great-grandparents and my grandparents all living in a little house together!), I don't think there was time for a lot of navel gazing about child raising back then; I think my nanny just had the babies and did whatever was most expedient and easy. This did include smacking, leaving babies to cry in the pram at the end of the garden etc etc.

My mum had me in the seventies, she didn't go back to work until I went to school and we co-slept and she was a gentle parent. Loads of love and cuddles, few and far between smacks.

I had my first child in the late nineties, co-slept, couldn't bear him crying, breastfed him for quite a while, BLW wasn't 'a thing' but I home cooked all organic food for him (! Huh. Only to now be only able to shovel beige food into them when he slopes home), no smacking!

I have a little GC now - no co-sleeping, they did do BLW, no smacking, lots and lots of love.

None of the women in my family would dream of telling the next generation how to raise a child, I was only ever offered advice if I asked for it and I am the same with my GC's mum! Things change as research is done and science moves on. Weaning for example - i think they started weaning at 8 weeks BITD, My first son was 12 weeks, my second 20 weeks and now it's six months (or has that changed again?) I don't think that's a bad thing, it's just that we've become more educated about how the human gut works.

That was an epic post!

If kids these days are acting up more, they're not doing it in ways that lead to more crime or teenage pregnancy, at least not here in the US. Rates for those things have been declining since the early 90's. If we've got more petty misbehaviour and less serious misbehaviour with long-term consequences, I find it hard to think of that as anything but a good thing.

I think whether kids are brattier or not would be a hard question to answer. People's perception of the crime rate is a really poor indicator of the actual crime rate, and the same might apply to minor misbehaviour. A feeling that kids behave worse now than they used to isn't data. Most people in the US feel like there's more crime now, but the actual data tells a very different story. The problem is, there is no actual data that I know of about petty misbehaviour. If there were, you'd have to make sure the definition of misbehaviour had stayed the same over time for it to be worth anything. You'd also have to make sure there wasn't a greater stigma against reporting certain kinds of bad behaviour at different times.

I think people back 90 years ago had life a lot harder.

often more illness and disability, diagnosed or undiagnosed. Anything up to 10 kids or so. No safety net; the welfare state didn't exist. Often huge worries about money; sometimes worrying where the next meal for your kids would come from. A massively greater view that parenting was the woman's role ... it's not that long since you never saw a man with a pushchair. Plus much more deeply ingrained and widespread sexism.

Life was tougher, and people dealt with the most urgent thing first often. It bred a harder attitude, without realising it. Sheer demand of time if you had 5 kids and had to wash, iron, cook and clean for them all. (broad generalization; there are still people who have very very hard lives even now).

We have fewer kids and put more effort into each of them now and can afford to be gentler. I think that's a good thing.

I'm 48 when mine were babies it was routines all the way and none of them ever slept in my bed. Dsis a couple of years younger co slept and breastfed and wore her babies.Nothing to do with age more our own personalities.
As they got older I was far less strict than my dsis, never smacked,rarely raised my voice and can count on the fingers of one hand how often they were punished. My dc are calm, placid, easygoing my dn's are far more spirited and challenging so think our parenting was more down to our dc's personalities than anything else.
Eleven weeks is very early days you have no idea what sort of parent you will be tbh no matter how good your intentions as in my experience it depends on the child more than anything.

It was just a different way of thinking. Yes to all of the heavier burdens on parents at the time, but it was also that people just didn't really think of children as having thoughts, emotions, etc worth paying attention to. (I mean, most people didn't think emotion in general was important even in adults!) It was simple, they did something bad, they got a punishment, they wouldn't want to do it again. You had a routine so that the baby knew what to expect, yes, they cried, but you weren't encouraged to think of the crying as distress like we do now. Nowadays we have a more sophisticated understanding of psychology and we recognise that there are other ways to encourage different behaviours so we don't have to use the cruder methods. And I think society in general is more empathetic, but I do definitely take the point that empathy comes when basic needs are taken care of. If you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that's relevant. We need to be sure that the bottom layers are fulfilled before we have the energy to address the top ones.

I thinking will swing back again.

I had very liberal parents and don't want the same for my own DC.

I was smacked, I don't have any bad memories or trauma from such behaviour and I remember when I called my sister a b*h and my dad said if he hears it again, he will wash my mouth out with soap, I believed he would and never said it again. When we go to the park after school now, more than half of the children, as young as 4, swear at the park now, whilst their mothers do not care, I've had to leave the park before because it is just very unpleasant and my dad who was there once, was mortified, I've also had children fling swings into my baby daughters swing with no consideration. I wouldn't say my generation, or my parents generation were harsh/strict, I think standards and expectations were a lot higher. I see some grandparents being told to 'shut up' by their grandchildren too and they don't bat an eyelid.