So, how did our parents do it then?!

[Luckystar1]

I'm intrigued really.

We often get 'advice' from people, especially our own parents/grandparents, in relation to bringing up our children.

For example, the most recent thing from my father, is that I'll have to 'wean the baby off that soon' in relation to the baby (6 weeks) wanting to be constantly held and be in the sling. I also have a 22 month old so it mostly works for us all (although in fairness I would like to be able to put her down occasionally!)

I know for a FACT there is no way my parents did or would've carried me round constantly, so how did they do it?!

This is also in relation to things like getting us to sleep through the night etc.

The advice is given out as though it was so easy/obvious... So how did they do it?!

I'd be very interested to hear from those of my parent's generation (late 50s early 60s) as to how children were raised.

Do you think they just remember the good bits though?? Im sure they weren't the marvelous parents they make out.

I expect they had the same struggles we do.

Do you think they just remember the good bits though?? Im sure they weren't the marvelous parents they make out.

I expect they had the same struggles we do.

Obviously I can remember my childhood and also my mother was a very honest person and we had open discussions. I also saw how my parents interacted with my DCs, they just loved them unconditionally.

Whilst my parents were not perfect, (who is?) I was a very confident and secure child and I am sure it stemmed from being happy, loved and having my needs met. I have always felt very loved and wanted as a child and as an adult.

I also think my parents expectations were lower. They had both been through WWII. Both had lost friends, my father was in the army for the whole of the war, he was at Dunkirk at the age of 19 and also at the liberation of Sicily amongst other places.

They both were just glad to be safe and be able to just lead an ordinary life. They weren't particularly materialistic. Our home was comfortable, but not luxurious.

See I'm pretty attachmenty with my 7 MO but the thing about not interacting with them at nighttime wakeups. Of course I don't do that! I'll pick her up and feed her but I try and avoid eye contact and do all I can to make sure she doesn't wake up any more than she is already.
I think I do respond to her a bit quicker than I should, need to let her grumble and settle a bit more than I do. But so much of it is temperament. In the late 70's I slept through from 3 months old and my twin sister from 3 years...

My mum had 3 children under 4 in the late 1960's.
She said she loved it. Life was busy but fun. I learnt from her to try and relax, only little for a short while and time goes by so fast.
Have to say I admire her really.

Will add, she never used drugs to keep us quiet!
She was shocked I didn't rock my children to sleep! I said they need to learn to self settle. She said I was mean

I do wonder whether babies were more easily entertained? DS can only go a couple of minutes without me actively playing with him. Is that because I have always prioritised that over housework etc or is it a temperament thing?

Just realised a pp kind of answered my question in terms of there being more people around so a more stimulating environment. DS is great when other people are around, a really happy laid back baby. When it's just me and him or DH and him though he is so demanding. He must just be really bored of our quiet house :(

I asked my mum's aunt (young) who is a mum of four. She said her mil would take care of the kids whilst she did house chores. My mum says we were put in a buggy and rocked. I still think they're superwomen.

I'm not that old, and even my mum is a bit that I don't leave DS to cry very long.

Also, another difference (I hope I'm not generalising here) is that dad's are more involved now I think. My grandfather barely held my mum and uncle and my dad wasn't very hands on. Is this a generational thing maybe?

I don't think that most people left babies crying for hours and hours - I'm sure some did but not most. But there was a different attitude. In the past when babies and children cried people thought of it as they were just making noise, being a nuisance really. (Hence threatening to smack children for crying, which would be thought of as awful parenting these days!) Or you didn't worry about them crying so much because they cry at the slightest thing so you didn't worry that it was something serious. It's only very recently that we have changed our thinking and believe that crying is babies trying to communicate with us or expressing that they are distressed in some way.

I think neither is quite right, I think it's mostly instinct that makes babies cry. But certainly, in British culture there is (and definitely was) an expectation that babies will cry, it's what they do! A baby who never cried would be seen as very strange and a cause for concern. In some other cultures where babies are routinely carried constantly, it's not expected that they'd cry, and a baby who cries is seen as a cause for concern. Nowadays we accept that babies cry, but we definitely seem to see it more as a puzzle to be solved than as something which just happens and is incidental.

There was more of a culture in the past of it being expected that there is a hierarchical kind of respect with adults above children, particularly with parents being higher than their children and you were supposed to establish that you have the upper hand right from the start, not running around after the baby, but letting them wait for attention, as they would be expected to come second after adults for all of childhood. Some of that kind of thinking remains today but we've mostly moved away from it into a feeling that while adults are in charge, the priority rests on who has the highest need, and mostly that is children, because we recognise now that children find it more difficult to wait for things or control their impulses because they are children. Most people try to avoid their children negatively impacting on others, but apart from that, they will tend to put their children's needs in front of their own, and certainly ahead of the wants of strangers. In the past people didn't think it was important that children find it harder to wait (etc), because the attitude was "How will they learn if it's not expected of them?"

I suppose, too, in a way children were expected to develop responsibility for themselves in the sense that they were told the rules and expected to stick to them, and punished if they were not. Today we don't expect children to take so much responsibility; we recognise that developmentally they are not always able to act in the way that we would ideally like, and we tend to accommodate that, taking the view that they will get there in their own time. And this does seem to work.

The culture of parenting has just changed hugely in a single generation, it's quite incredible if you think about it.

My dm enjoys retelling the tale of her younger sister refusing to sleep and crying all night and how my dgp would put her in the Pram in the garage so they could hear. She was born in 1960 btw.

As for how I was raised, I'm not sure, but my df was very strict and of the "children should be seen but not heard" mentality. I think they world was just a lot less child centred. Children were expected to join in the adults world and know how to behave as opposed to everything being focused on making the child happy.
Oh and smacking. That was an acceptable punishment in the 1980's. just like the cane or belt was in the generations before. attitudes have totally changed through the generations

I'm mid 30's and I guess my way of parenting is quite like it was in the 70/80's

All 4 of my children were doing feeding routine from birth, all slept in own cot, and was sleeping through by 4-6 weeks old, naps during the day they were also put down awake in there rooms and I never just sat cuddling a sleeping baby and certainly would never dream of carrying them around in a sling. I just got on with it, life resumed shopping needed to be done, housework, dinner needed putting on the table etc, I was at home taking care of house and children and husband was at work T that's just the wY it was.

Attachment parenting is only something i have heard of in the last few years and to me it sounds like hell... I'm not saying it wrong, if it works for you then crack on but it would never of worked for me.

One thing I never did was put my babies outside to sleep they went upstairs in there room but my childminder does put my dd and other babies she minds or a nap in the back garden in fine weather... She is in her 60's

I think it's a bit of both night my sister's eldest was a very demanding child and couldn't entertain herself at all and she's still pretty demanding and not happy in her own company even now in her twenties. My dd was entirely the opposite and could entertain herself for hours from being very small. Dsis certainly did more organising entertainment and playing than I did probably because she had to. I do think though children need to learn to entertain themselves so was more active in teaching mine to entertain themselves than dsis was.

Thanks insan. I think once he is past the baby stage I will have to encourage self entertainment. Once my brothers stopped napping every afternoon there was 'quiet time' when they would go and play in their own rooms. They would grumble for the first five mins but by the time we would go up to get them they often would be so immersed in what they were doing they wouldn't want to come back down! Will have to try that :)

My parents kept me quiet by putting whiskey on the dummy and in my milk. Also left to cry for hours. I am completely fucked up, whether because of that who knows. Traditionally we did cuddle our babies and carry them, only post industrial society left them screaming. It's not good for mental health to leave babies to cry for long periods.

I think it's more when they are pre schoolers rather than babies when you can help them learn to entertain themselves. I'd set up some bricks and play for a minute or two and then get on with something and would re direct them back and settle them to play again if they followed. Poor dsis never managed to get away because dn would scream in fury. FWIW she was exactly the same with me so definitely not down to parenting.

Minnie a question for you if I may... As you're my generation but do things differently to me.

What would you have done if your children didn't go to sleep when you put them down as you did? I appreciate its hypothetical, but would you have left them to cry, or rocked them or patted them etc??

I'm just interested to know if there's anything I can use.

Also did you breast or formula feed? I breastfeed as do all of my friends with babies if the same age (DD is 6 weeks) and they're all up on average every 3 hours. Just interested to see if that's a factor.

I don't think my mum left me to cry (though she did say I was in my own room from birth and had to cry through closed door + hallway + closed door!) But she'd come if I woke up.

She mentioned using a playpen and there are photos of me and DSis in playpens just sitting happily entertaining ourselves. DS never did that, if I put him in a playpen he'd stand at the edge crying with his arms up to be picked up. Likewise when he was older I could never just tell him to go off and play, he was bored by playing unless I was right there with him. I could sometimes get him to play with his trains on his own, but that was it. And there was a brief period he would do a lego model on his own but even now, at 7, he prefers to be entertained than entertain himself and he never ever plays with toys on his own. Ever. He sometimes reads now - but not for very long. He mostly relies on electronics or bothering people for entertainment unless given a specific task (which he's quite often happy to do! So I think he is genuinely bored) - if none of these are available and he's exhausted his capacity for reading, he'll either sit around whining or go to sleep.

I'm psychologically damaging her if I let her cry.

Your parents most likely left you to cry, do you feel psychologically damaged by it? Do you feel your relationship with your parents has been damaged by your cry's being ignored? I'm pretty sure most of us have turned out ok with the old fashioned methods, it will be interesting to see how our child turn out in 20years time

I think the main difference is that nowadays kids and babies take prime position in the family hierarchy, whereas a few decades ago they were not.

Lucky - I don't think breastfeeding is factor. Mine co slept and breastfed, but from a few weeks old would sleep say 10-11pm until 7-8am without waking. From 6 weeks old though I stopped feeding on demand overnight. On demand 7am-11pm, then after 11pm feed would only feed if they woke after 4am, anything 11-4 would be Dh or I just cuddling/ rocking back to sleep.

Mine have always entertained themselves, though I have never entertained them so maybe they just didn't know it was an option

To be honest, I never really saw entertaining as my role. I'm pretty responsive in terms of feeding on demand, feeding/rocking to sleep (though only one needed it), cuddling and carrying etc. But I kind of see playing as something children do naturally without too much adult interference.

Bertie I think gadgets and electronic toys have lessened children's ability to play by themselves. My older ones were children before gadgets became prevalent and could play for hours with their cars/trains/dolls/teasets etc. There wasn't the immediate gratification that you get from a gadget and so playing alone and without input lasted longer.

It's hard to believe some of these responses are from the 70s/80s! What a lot of change in a generation. I am American, and to me these responses would have seemed more likely from several generations back.

My mother raised 4 girls in the early 80s. We were all breastfed, carried in slings, picked up and held and I don't think we were expected to sleep through the night. My mom just shrugs and says babies don't like to be put down when I complain about mine! My colicky sister rarely touched the ground for the first two years of her life apparently.

What was different was that there were a lot of 'girls', ie other mums about and kids were encouraged to play in a pack of other kids. Looking back it felt very communal and older kids are great at keeping babies quiet!

Maybe the change came about sooner in America but scheduling feeds and the like was definitely out of vogue in the 80s.