Why do parents seem more overwhelmed / anxious / struggling with parenting these days?

[Gagamama2]

Looking for help really as I feel so overwhelmed by life as a parent and from speaking to other mums about it they then open up and say they feel the same. I know quite a few people on anti depressants because of the stress of general everyday life - no big traumatic event or anything you can really pin down as being the cause of it.

Have parents always felt like this? Did the previous generations hide it better or has something changed to make it harder these days?

particularly interested in hearing from grandparents who can compare their parenting years with how their children are bringing up their kids today.

I’m doing my absolute best to cope, am a (I think) strong and intelligent person who isn’t using anxiety as a pass for benefits or help with anything. It is a genuine situation for me that I want to get to the bottom of and try to solve as it’s ruining the best years of bringing up my kids.

DD does not believe me that parents would go in the pub while DC sat in the car with Coke and crisps!

One thing I have noticed are birthday parties that wreck many a weekend . Back in the day the party was on the day Monday to Friday at the child's home. Much more low key. Now parents struggle to park in town for soft play, or some farm park. The whole day has gone. Sometimes you're doing a party on a Saturday and again on a Sunday.

Depends on the parents and the kids because this doesn’t square with my experience as a parent. I wouldn’t cope with squealing all day long.

Maybe you just don't notice it when it's yours?

Certainly the screaming like you're being murdered as you're put to bed thing seems fairly common.

Sitting in my garden now with renewed appreciation for the chill.

True about the birthday parties, but the vast majority of people (well mums) couldn't host on a weekday (work), nor would guests come (after school club). Plus houses are smaller nowadays.

Definitely not. I’ve a low tolerance for that crap. I see the squealers, shriekers, whingers, and baby-talkers all the time- as you do when you have children of your own, you see many other children all the time- and thankfully mine doesn’t. If he tried, he’d be told to chuck it immediately.

My mum's generation didn't have social media to distract them constantly through the day 😄

The pressure of parenting so intensely.
social media making you realise how much you have to do so you don’t mess up your kids forever.

Media! Then the lack of help, that everyone is working all the time and much higher expectations of parenting than in the past.
I don't do social media and I limit my news consumption - really helps.

I think it’s mainly due to both parents working. I have a couple of weeks off this summer and it’s honestly so much easier for the entire family. One of the dc commented that we’d had fresh cooked food more than usual! I’ve had time to tidy properly, spend time with them, heard things that happened during their year that they hadn’t had time to say. It’s sad really.

I think there’s a lot more competitiveness about high expectations between parents these days. I brought mine up just hoping they’d be happy and well adjusted and find the right place in the world for themselves. I always expected them to do their best but never put pressure on them to feel failures if they didn’t achieve high marks. Neither are professional high achievers but seem to have made happy lives for themselves, now both in their 30’s. There’s a lot of oneupmanship around now relating to children

Agree with PP, lack of "village"/ real life support.
Online support & Dr. Google have become the default , ( I do see the irony that that is what we're doing right now !). great but in reality it's too much information from too many different sides and leads to anxiety. Plus the expectations and mum bashing online are wild. One side it's just a mum guilt machine but on the other it's a platform for this generation of parents to voice actual anxieties so it's more noticeable.
Comparing myself parenting to my parents parenting me ( same is true for ILs); they had big families, 5+ kids, lots of time with aunties and cousins. All living reasonably local. We were unlucky with grandparents not living long but those that did would have been retired by my mum and dad's age. As kids we went to a lot of free activities, playgroups etc that we don't have now. My mum and most of my friends mums were either stay at home or worked in the community ( eg. You'd see them every other day as a playground assistant or in a local shop). It was easier to find people you could trust and open up to irl, there are more people you would trust with your kids.

Yes, some of this will be economic, like essential services being closed or both parents having to work or people moving away from families for better job opportunities. But I also think something fundamentally changed in us with the invention of social media. It's not just parenting but the way we "people" is different. We socialise differently. My parents don't "grandparent" in the way that their parents did or even close to the way that they parented us.

And part of it is also what you say as well. Mums especially are learning to speak about their problems more, I'm only just starting to hear about some of those anxieties from my parents generation. In a lot of ways it was always hard they just had different ways of dealing with it.

I'm sure valium also "helped" back then too.

I could have written this. Fellow Gen Xer here. I too went to ballet on Saturdays & Brownies in the week. My brother was football/ cubs. We played a lot with each other & the other kids in the street- fabulous memories.

My mum was at home until I was 7 then worked part-time, which was very flexible in school holidays. All Summer we were either at home playing out, or down South at my aunt & cousins/ grandparents just dotting around doing normal things- beach/ park/ picking fruit. Holidays were UK seaside resorts or Ireland to see family. I don't remember mum taking us places at home or, indeed, dad at weekends- he was DIYing/ gardening/ fixing the car; mum was cooking/ baking/ sewing. They were both great parents
My friends were all the same.

My DC (21/18/13) have had a different life- lots more hands-on I think, but certainly not like I see the pressure these days. They've all done a sport- rugby or karate- had swimming lessons & in Scouting, but these were manageable & as soon as old enough did public transport or walked. They're all still into sport, and mountain bike too (DP is the influence there) but that was casual whenever it was fitted in, no schedules. DC1 was scouted for the city swim team at 9. We let him make the decision- he decided against it as he didn't want to use all his time. Sensible boy!

We also spent lots of time with friends' kids & they all have great memories & are still all friendly. It was cheap, easy & relatively stress free.

I was lucky to have my mum to help (25 mins away) & was able to work part-time. I would have been stressed out of my nut otherwise. I still work part-time, as DS3 has significant additional needs. This means we're far more skint that lots of folk around us at our age, but that's something we've accepted. We can't do the things others do- fancy holidays etc- but we've a cheap camper van & cut our cloth accordingly. I do think the expectations on young families now are ridiculous & unsustainable. I help out my nieces (who have young ones) as much as I can, as I see how hard it is.

Sending 💜 OP, it's hard.

I think social media has a lot to do with it.
There wasn’t social media when my youngest was little, I just use to meet with friends at toddler groups and realised that most people were in the same boat, I wasn’t constantly comparing my life to everyone else’s. Being able to google every issue instantly on our phones really doesn’t help either.
The cost of living is definitely tougher now, especially housing costs. When mine were little (early 2000s) most mums worked but mostly part time. It was quite easy to get on the property ladder in your 20s in late 90s / early 2000s.

There's no village for a lot of people.
Expectations are much higher and we see lots of judgemental posts on SM that make us feel bad.
Lots of different and conflicting advice, again mainly through SM, making it hard to know the right thing to do.
More mums than ever working full time and lots in stressful roles with high expectations to be a good employee. Huge focus on career progression for women rather than the focus being on parenting first and work being solely for an income.
More expectations from school for homework and school events.
More expectations and higher standards expected of children, particularly secondary school. That along with social media leading to an increase in children with mental health issues which in turn makes parenting much more overwhelming .

Parents today, myself included, micromanage their childrens social lives with various WhatsApp groups. When I was young, I was told to "be home by tea" and I would walk down the street, knocking on doors until someone was free to come out and play.

I think it’s both parents having to work often in order to buy a smaller house than you used to get if just one parent worked. Yes both parents worked in the past, but that often came with the perks of a nicer lifestyle … more space, restaurants to save on cooking, cleaner etc.

I don’t really feel any pressure from social media though - pretty easy to see though the posts

And leave the pram outside the shop with the baby still in it.

When I was growing up my dad worked, mum cleaned /cooked and we played out or were at school. Parents never entertained me, or helped with homework. I got cracked if I misbehaved so rarely did. My friends had similar experiences. Whe dad got in from work he and mum rested /watched tv/went to the pub.
it wasn’t a great childhood but if my parents had any stresses it wasn’t their kids. Dad’s work was 8-4, no expectations to work beyond that.

Yeah, and no seatbelts in the back. Just fold down the back seats and cram as many children in as you could.

I’d say that partially the world is a more anxious place. More serious consequences to mediocre parenting choices.

The expectations are way higher- we are sold images of perfect families on 2 week annual foreign holidays in perfectly clean homes in co-ordinating outfits 24/7, along with highlight reels showing that someone else's child has just got their Grade 5 in flute and another one has won a dance competition and a third was man of the match today at football, and people end up doubting themselves if their child hasn't even learned to peel their own bananas yet.

Then we're bombarded with advice on how to do it right with warnings we're going to ruin our children's lives if we don't. If you don't gentle parent, your children will have life long trauma, if you do gentle parent, your children will be entitled brats, here's another way to do it properly.

Back in the 80s, parenting involved telling your child to put shoes on before going outside and be back before it got dark.

I think it’s always been there somewhat. My mum absolutely struggled in the 80s with me and my siblings as kids. It broke her really. She said she even tried to get drunk but alcohol made her sick. She said it was because of lack of a support network, which was true for her as her and dad and no siblings on either side and my mums parents were dead and dads parents lived 2 hours away.
I’m currently parenting 2 preschoolers, and yeah it’s hard but in no way am I finding it as hard as mum did, and I have little support as well (mum is disabled so can’t help).
I think it’s probably worse nowadays due to the cost of everything, relative to household income

Also, as a side note, it completely makes sense that our mother s and grandmothers would "forget" how hard certain bits are, especially when it comes to babies. When they say we "just slept" it makes sense because we were at home for 18 years where we just slept through the night and for a lot of it we were probably hard work to get up in the morning. That 6 months in the beginning where we woke multiple times just isn't a big part of that bit of history.