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.

-My DM and MIL could both afford not to work when we were little, an both sent us to nursery for half a day. We are just time poor now because of working, with extra stress of having to take time off for the kids

-Parenting standards have gone up. My parents fed me a lot of ready meals and takeaways as a teenager, and we were allowed out more in primary school years to play on the street

-Phones. I hate being on call 24/7, inc being constantly updated by my nursery app.

-And yes less village as more people my age moved away for uni and never moved back home

-Women are working but still carry the mental load

Our lives were very frugal, compared to some of the things I read here.

People don't live near family any more. Grandparents still work. Both parents have to work. Also back in the day people didn't talk about their struggles.

I find attitudes towards working in the house wild these days. I was reading a guy the other day asking if it was expected to charge his something like 19 year old son digs (he didn't) and said the 19 year old just 'hoovered the odd time'. That was the sum total of a grown man's contribution to his household.

However, growing up, I know from my own and friends experiences that it was normally the girls who helped out. It was highly gendered still in the 80s and 90s whereas now kids of either sex seem less likely to have basic domestic skills.

This is true. We know now that women going back generations have more to say about their struggles than we could ever have imagined.

Because they all have to work full time and even that is not enough, they have no near family support and because they are absolutLy worn out. Personally speaking, of course .

Yes yes we all drink too much coffee and eat too many avocados etc etc

Its always been like that its just people didn't use to talk about it they took handfuls of diazepam and got on with it

You have no idea…

I think the fact that you think that employing a nanny is the answer, and that’s in most peoples’ reach shows that it is you that has no idea!

That's nice. Good for you. Most of us would have to be living in a card board box sort of frugal to afford a nanny.
Perhaps you could compare yours and her salary adjusted for inflation?

I had a period of a couple of weeks in the 80's when I was walking home and letting myself in at the age of 8. (Grandparents away, parents working).
Social services would probably freak if a family did that these days.

No idea what nursery costs are today. What I do know that for us and our three children, a nanny made sense. Not only in terms of actual pounds and pennies, but the flexibility it gave us. We couldn’t have done our jobs, which required regular travel and lots of unpaid overtime, without her.

Lord, are you me?! 😀Also a teacher. At the start of my career I would regularly ask teens misbehaving on buses/ the street to politely pipe down. Now- 30 years in- I would glare but wouldn't say anything. Mainly because it wouldn't make a difference, but also perhaps there would be an altercation.

I calmly asked a child to not kick my child in the face at a soft play about 5/6 years ago, & got a barrage of abuse from a random stranger who said I had 'No right' to even talk to another person's child. Wasn't even their child. Doubled down & saud they'd go 'Mental ' if I had deemed to speak to their child. I give up.

To send one child to nursery for 5 days a week costs £1800 per month (£85 per day). If we had three then it would be £5400 per month. Hope that helps.

Helps with what? Knowing that childcare is expensive? It was ever thus. Except I hear about 30 hours free childcare, which never existed when mine needed it. I expect its swings and roundabouts.

So what did you pay for a nanny who did overtime? Easy enough comparison to make. You must know the numbers.

I think a lot of it is that, if in a relationship, then both parents are most likely to be working. But all the stuff that SAHM (as was the norm) still needs doing.

I don't think PP is being arsey, just highlighting how times/costs have changed. E.g. around me nannies are about £55k/year, and for a mortgage £2k/mth is considered small. So that would be the entirety of a £130k-ish (which is a top 1% or thereabouts income) salary just on a house and a nanny. It was different previously - my parents were in a similar socio economic demographic to me and my husband, and they had a big detached 6 bed house in a desirable area, a nanny, three kids in private schools, new cars all the time etc etc. That is not the lifestyle a good, even a very good, salary buys anymore.

Which means, to the point of the thread, a lot of people are squeezing this stuff in around the rest of the childcare/housework etc. lots of jobs still require overtime, but people are doing it between 8-midnight, when the kids are in bed

Thanks for explaining this. I agree completely.
As you say, the cost of living is so expensive that any spare cash for outsourcing to nannies, cleaners etc that may have existed 30 years ago in the same jobs etc just doesn’t these days. So we have to do everything - high pressure work, laundry, cooking, pick ups and drop offs and so on. So there’s no spare money or time.

And it’s hard and we’re tired.

I'm in my early 50s, and I did a lot of activities as a child and teen - piano and cello lessons, local youth orchestra, martial arts classes at least twice a week. I think I had a tiger mum in some ways, but she was very hands off in terms of school (subject selections etc, it was all up to me). In high school, I asked for maths and french tutors, which my DPs facilitated. But if I hadn't requested them, it wouldn't have happened. We were all so much more independent. I remember asking for help for various things, and help being given, but not preemptively. We carry so much more 'burden' for our kids now, I think.

I'm a secondary teacher so I meet a wider cross section of teens than some people and absolutely - the independence is often not there any more. Students look to their parents and teachers for solutions in a way we never did (nor were we encouraged to, generally).

Having said that, just once in a while there is a child, like I was I suppose, and I think YES! We can have a proper conversation. I'm always extremely interested to meet the parents of these kids.

Cost of living is higher. General expectations of living standards are higher. Both parents are often working full time, so household chores are more difficult to juggle with parenting. Parents are expected to be more involved in every area and entertain their kids more. Many people don’t have a village nearby. Many grandparents don’t offer the same level of help they received when they were parenting (either can’t due to still working, or just decide not to).

This.

Back in the 1950s when I was a kid the emphasis from parents was on getting their children out of the house from under their feet. As several posters have pointed out kids were free to roam and their parents never knew where they were. However in those tight knit communities they could be farmed out to grandparents or even neighbours if mum had to go out shopping or away for a day.

There was comparatively little in the way of "activities" and few private cars so children were not ferried around like parcels. Kids socialized themselves to a far greater degree. They played in groups in the street, working out concepts of friendship, fairness, rules and so on between them. In short they were left to get on with life. They grew into stronger and mroe self reliant adults as a result.