When & Why did parenting become child centric?

[crawlingovertheline]

I’m curious to understand why there’s been such a shift in parenting over the past 50 years.

Children of the 70s/80s were (ok, this is generalising) definitely second to the parents needs. Safety didn’t seem a priority, attitudes toward nutrition are exponentially different to how they are now, we (again generalising) were kicked out at 18, on our own to find our way.
Now parents promise to be the best they can be for their kids, they (we) toil and make massive sacrifices to do everything we can for our children.

Why the shift though? Where did it start? Any clues?

Orange squash was a treat for us. We drank water or milk. This wasnt a cost thing, just what most people in our social circle / wider family did. We almost never drank anything other than at meal times either, until we started drinking tea in our teens. Orange juice even more special- served in a tiny glass, sometimes as a starter.

As well as women now choosing to have children, I think there is still this image of a SAHM being the ideal and therefore if you “choose” to have children and then “choose” to work (however much that choice is foisted upon you due to the need to pay the mortgage/rent), you, as a woman, automatically carry a sort of societal guilt with you which you are constantly having to make up for.
Plus there’s the combination of when you see your children is neatly packaged up into little of parcels of time - the gap between nursery pick up & bedtime; weekends; 25 days annual leave - and parents having more
leisure time due to the automation of so many domestic things so you want (and feel the need to be) present during that time. I think in the olden days when children were left to their own devices and mothers were consumed with the time consuming drudgery of running a house, you would have pockets of time when you’d coincide with your child but it wouldn’t be as prescribed and so you couldn’t plan it in advance and, for example, book in soft play. My grandparents (born in 1914 & 1921) had an allotment and when they had me & my brother for the day a few hours would be spent there and we were expected to make up our own games, help out and then, intermittently, they’d play a bit of hide & seek or do counting games and that sort of thing with us.
Like others, I do always question the golden age of SAHM. In my family, even going back to my grandmothers’ (1921 & 1923) generation, some women did go out to paid employment (teaching, secretarial work) but many more had ad hoc work paid cleaning or caring and so on. They also all did a lot of what would now be seen as community volunteering work.

There's a difference between being child centric and actually parenting your children intentionally.

I'm a child of the 80s and my parents had 3 kids despite not appearing to have any interest in any us. My dad god love him worked all hours of the day on the farm and was a totally hands off parent. It usually took him 2 attempts to call me by the right name and I don't think i had a single conversation with him my entire life.

My mum who was the "default parent" was an absolute terror and destroyed any semblance of self confidence I had. She was also incredibly over protective and didn't let me leave the house except for school or to play golf which i absolutely hated with a passion so when I got to 18 and went to uni i failed completely.

Looking back at it i think by the time I was a teenager she was struggling massively with the menopause and her mental health. She's an incredibly cold and unemotional person so we all think she's on the autistic spectrum somewhere.

I see her about once a month now for my daughter's sake and only because she rings me moaning she hasn't seen her.

So you'll forgive me if my parenting is "child centric" and I actually talk to my daughter, spend time with her and try to build up her self confidence and sense of self.

‘I’ll count to three’

We were terrified by 2 - would a child be scared of this now?!

’cut that out’
’don't give me cheek’
’I’m telling you once’

All these statements in a particular tone of voice made you obey.

Thinking about it, I told some boys to ‘cut that out’ in ‘my mother’s voice’ about a year ago. I myself was scared but angry. They were so surprised that they said sorry and behaved. How they behaved once they had got round the corner, I don’t know…