Would you rather be a parent now or then? - YouLookFab Forum

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Would you rather be a parent now or then?

deb

Veteran

This is hysterical but so true!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....635096.htm

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21 replies

Latest reply was from anne

shedev

Veteran

Funny article Deb.

Anonymous

Thank you - thank you , thank you. I so needed a good laugh out-loud today and this did it. I have this image of my mother in the 70's (and late 60's) with a cigarette in one hand, a cocktail in the other, driving a car at the same time (not really but go with me here) with two unbuckled kids in the back happily eating Wagonwheels. Somethings were far easier without all the knowledge we have now, weren't they?

Thistle

Veteran

DH and I were just wondering the other day how we survived to adulthood! We roamed the back of the station wagon, never wore helmets when we rode our bikes, and we traipsed all over the neighborhood. Now, DDs Britax car set is so big it eats up a seat and a half! My niece didn't get out of her booster seat until she was 12. Twelve!

Gaylene

Veteran

I think we just thought our kids were tough enough to survive the rigors of childhood without requiring our constant supervision and attention. Both my boys seemed healthy and happy so I didn't fret about the occasional tumble or minor misbehaviors. Parent was a noun, not a verb, in the 70s; the prevailing philosophy was that kids adjusted to your life, not the other way around. I think I'd have a hard time being a parent these days.

catgirl

Veteran

http://www.npr.org/2014/08/01/.....t=20140802

Day Vies

Veteran

I think I'd prefer then. I remember having lots of freedom that would be considered child abandonment these days. I'm with you Thistle, I rode my bike all over our subdivision and didn't come home until the sun was just about to go down (but the street lights weren't on yet ;-)). Everyone is policing everyone else to make sure that they're following mainstream ideas on parenting. I think it's sad that on some levels we are criminalizing a child's ability to safely explore and navigate their environment in the name of holding the parent accountable.

kerry

Veteran

Hilarious!

shedev

Veteran

a couple days ago in Cleveland, a mother was arrested for letting her son walk to the park a couple blocks from her house. The kid had a phone with him and the mother said she did check on him at regular intervals. The kid was ten.

Except for car seat technology, it was better then. Childhood obesity rates are up, so I'm not so sure kids are eating better.

Aziraphale

Veteran

Hahahaaaaaaaa

Thanks for the link, Deb! It brought back memories. I was born in 1972. My parents had all of that stuff -- the bouncy sling chair that doubled as a feeding chair, the jolly jumper that hung from a doorframe, the rotary phones, etc. We also had avocado green shag carpet and harvest gold kitchen appliances. By the standards of the time, my parents were actually very attentive, but my mom still enjoyed a lot more freedom than I remember having during the hectic early years of my children's lives! I spent long periods of time in the playpen. My mom couldn't understand why I didn't use one with my own kids.

Having said that, I've been fighting "helicopter parenting" tooth and nail since my oldest was a tot. I felt there was more overparenting insanity in California in the early 2000s than there is now in Vancouver. I'm not sure if parenting practices are easing up, or if this is related to where we live now. I know I've read that the hyper-parenting Gen X parents practice is a backlash against the lax parenting they themselves received in the 1970s, what with their baby boomer parents distracted by divorce and careers.

Would I rather be parenting today, though? Yes, I think so.

ETA I did recently check to see at what age a child can be left on his/her own. It turns out that the Canadian government does not in fact have any set rules, only recommendations. 10 is the suggested minimum age. It also recommends that a child be at least 12 before being left to mind siblings. This seems reasonable to me.

Anonymous

My mom and I have this discussion ALL the time. The differences are pretty big. I grew up in the 70's & 80's and my kids where born in 2008 and 2010. Aziraphale point about California is interesting. DH calls it competitive parenting, lol. Obviously it is not a California (more specifically Bay Area) phenomenon only but I do believe the same drive that makes someone pursue high level education, job attainment, to be the best of the best is seen in our parenting circles. The amount of research and effort that goes into potty training, how you communicate with you kid, food choices is astonishing. The pressure to make all the right choices is pretty high. Of course this is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black. We moved here for DH to live out is career dream. I could count on one hand the amount of refined sugar my oldest had in her first two years. Having a second kid took care of all that silliness. Bring on the cookies!

Echo

Veteran

Ha, Marin, isn't that the truth about a second child eliminating a lot of the over-zealous nonsense of parenting a first child? Not that cutting down on refined sugar and other healthy lifestyle efforts aren't worth it, just that it is much harder to be a purist about anything when one is juggling more than one child.

And I grew up in the 1970's and '80's, so I remember being allowed much more freedom than kids have now. Then again, as far as drinking, smoking, carseats and helmets go, when you know better, you do better. The kids who DIDN'T make it through that era aren't around to tell about it, and the lack of carseats was a big part of that.

But the freedom of our childhoods still exists in less urban areas. I live in a very small community, and kids routinely roam the town on their bikes all day and walk to the community pool with friends or siblings (no parents). My own kids walk to the creek and climb trees and play mostly unsupervised on long summer days.

There was a flyer that went home with kids at school three years ago warning of a potential predator seen stopping and talking with young children in town. Two hours after school let out, the police had been contacted and caught the suspect and a group of teenaged boys turned themselves in because they thought it might be them (they had stopped to "harass" one of their younger siblings walking on the sidewalk)! The bad news about a small town? Everyone is all up in your business. The good news about a small town? Everyone is all up in your business (and no stranger goes unnoticed).

Gaylene

Veteran

Then again, as far as drinking, smoking, carseats and helmets go, when
you know better, you do better. The kids who DIDN'T make it through that
era aren't around to tell about it, and the lack of carseats was a big
part of that.

Good point, Echo, although I do remember strapping my kids into car seats when they were toddlers back in the early 70s. I also made their baby food by pureeing things that my husband and I were eating, because I didn't like feeding them the stuff from jars. And neither my husband and I ever smoked, and rarely drank because we just couldn't afford it. The article is a fun read, but a bit over the top.

You are also right that some kids did get seriously injured and, occasionally, did die, but I can't remember that ever happening to anyone who I knew; then, as now, it would have been a pretty unusual occurrence. I also don't remember my boys being driven around very much, except for family vacations and such. They always walked to their friends' houses in the neighborhood or rode their bikes. Just like now, they had limits as to what we expected of them, but, mostly they played with their friends with only an occasional check out the window to see that everything was OK.

Once they were older, they also learned to look out for younger kids in the playground to "teach" them how to play on the equipment and to help if the younger kids fell down. They were never told to look out for each other, but they just did it.

I hope I don't offend anyone, but I sometimes wonder if knowing really does make for better parenting--or just creates anxious, stressed-out parents? It's sensible to take reasonable precautions to keep your kids safe, but I sometimes wonder if constant supervision doesn't make kids feel less able to look out for themselves and for others?

catgirl

Veteran

My gripes with parenting today are less about reasonable safety and more about use of time. When did it become a rule that kids had to be entertained and educated 24/7? We allow only one activity or sport at a time and there is a lot of downtime at home, camping or cabin where kids are on their own, free to be bored or invent ways to prevent boredom. No electronics or structured activities, just good old "get outside and find something to do." I have fantastic parents, but they did not feel it was their job to keep me happy and busy doing something constructive every minute. Sometimes family time is just all lying around reading, or running around the yard with the dog.

Eliza

Veteran

Agree with some others that the biggest loss is that of unstructured time to explore the neighborhood and activities in an unstructured way. I call it the "professionalization of childhood". Why might every experience with a ball past age 4 involve a coach and a drive in the car? So many formal lessons and so little play for many kids today. I raised mine mostly in the 90s and by the time they were through with high school it was clear that most parents had completely surrendered to limited family time in service of keeping to Broadway standards for high school musicals, state/national competitions in every area, etc. Not sure it was a good trade off, but swimming against the tide took a lot of energy.

Aziraphale

Veteran

"I hope I don't offend anyone, but I sometimes wonder if knowing really does make for better parenting--or just creates anxious, stressed-out parents? It's sensible to take reasonable precautions to keep your kids safe, but I sometimes wonder if constant supervision doesn't make kids feel less able to look out for themselves and for others?"

Gaylene, I'm a parent of school-aged kids and also a member of Gen X, and that comment does not offend me at all. I totally agree with you. I think a lot of parents my age micromanage their kids' time and sweat the small stuff too much. In a way, we were fortunate -- we were the first in our peer group to have a baby (at the ripe age of 31!), and neither of us had any experience at all with small children, which meant we were pretty much winging it. But having literally NO IDEA what to do turned out to be a blessing.

Here's an example: I was completely confused about when and how much a baby should sleep, so I read two parenting books on the topic. They were completely contradictory (Pick your baby up! Let your baby cry! She needs you! She must learn to self-soothe! Aaaaagh! My head asplode!), so I tossed them both out and just did what felt right. Turns out babies can be trained in much the same way you train a dog. Our kids both sleep really well. Then we watched with growing amusement as many of our (smart, well-educated) friends started having kids and routinely overdid the attachment parenting thing. As a result, I have a number of friends with school-aged kids who still wake them up four times a night. If I'd had my first child later, I would have looked to my friends for advice. I might have non-sleeping children too!

This would be funny, if it were not for the fact that these parents are, as you say, anxious and stressed-out. There are many reasons why we GenX parents are stressed -- busy careers with long hours, lack of affordable child care, skyrocketing housing costs, diminishing quality of public education, caring for aging parents, etc) -- but the fact that many parents haven't had a full night's sleep in seven years probably doesn't help.

I'm sure there must be a middle way, with parenting as with everything else. Child car seats = good thing; panicking if child eats an Oreo = overparenting silliness.

Laurinda

Veteran

I'm glad I grew up in the '60s & '70s.

Anonymous

Anybody interested in a good read about how parenting has changed 'All fun and no joy' by Jennifer Senior is worth the read. Of course I knew things were different in the past but it really helped spell out the implications on the parent (mainly the mom) of the new standards. It made some of the parenting information or pressure that I see around me kind of laughable. Really helped me put things into perspective and pick what was important to my family. I am past the chatting with moms at the toddler park but man, the competitiveness and expectations can be unreal. I would come home feeling really inadequate. At some point after the second kid I let a lot of those anxieties go but, man the pressure can be intense. Last week a friend with slightly older kids made the comment 'There's nothing educational in that' after I mentioned that I let the girls watch old Looney Tunes videos. It had been an extra challenging morning of 3 year old tears. No nothing educational but the girls where laughing at the end of 16 minutes and we moved on.

Aziraphale

Veteran

Marin, I read that Jennifer Senior article last year, and I think I forwarded it to ten people!

viva

Veteran

I'm so glad I was a kid then, for all the reasons noted above. I grew up in the 70s and I spent most of my summertime waking hours after age 7 or 8 out of the house and on my own in my neighborhood. I walked 20 minutes to the bus stop alone. It was just life and it was great.

BUT....I am also so glad my DDs (19, 22) are young women now. In my generation, no one really talked about sexuality of any kind. After my mother bought me my first box of tampons she was done. There were the good girls and the fast girls, and frankly I was petrified of the whole thing for a long time. We didn't find out two guys in my class were gay until our 25th reunion, and I have often thought about how difficult high school must have been for them. I'm glad DDs are young women at a time when they can talk to me very openly about their sex lives and not feel weird, they can ask my advice if they want to, they have gay friends, they embrace their gay cousin, and they can just be themselves fully.

Every generation has its advantages and its drawbacks.

Helena

Veteran

Hilarious!!! I am not too nostalgic for the "good old days" though ... every era has its pros and cons. For example, my mom often says she never felt she could talk to anyone about her parenting struggles, whereas mothers today (in my experience) are super-supportive of one another ... and I barfed way too many times from cigarette smoke in the car to be too weepy-eyed over the eighties!! That said, lightening up a little wouldn't kill us these days ... pretty sure my kids aren't going to get diabetes because I pack them one juice box in their school lunch ha!!

anne

Veteran

Fun read, but most it didn't resonate that much with me on a personal level. In a lot of ways my childhood and my children's are similar.

In terms of freedom the big difference is with my parents childhood in the 50's - a huge amount of freedom to roam, build boats and sail them on the river, hitchhike to (high) school!! I never really roamed, though at 10 I did walk around to piano lessons and to practice at a friend's house about 1/2 mile away in a country town. By high school (back in the metro area) I rode my bike to get around, and sometimes stopped in at my friend's house (we rode to school together) but I didn't just take off. I think by 15 I did jog alone though.

My children's freedom is hampered in our current location by having to cross a four lane major road to get anywhere! But when we lived in a regional town I let the older ones walk short distances to friends or school.

My Mum was quite into the healthy food trends of the 70's and 80s = low salt, low fat, low sugar, high fibre, not overdoing protein and also influenced by travel and international students into cooking indian, chinese and middle east foods. The food emphases of this age may have hanged slightly but I'd say I'm no more (maybe slightly less) occupied with them than her. They didn't smoke and drank only occasionally.

I don't think I have any more equipment than my parents have apart from the baby capsules and I was put in a baby seat in the 70's. (I do however remember being in the boot of a station wagon or the tray of a ute at times!)

My kids don't do more extra curricular stuff than I did (I would have liked to do more, actually) and certainly seem to have lots of time to do imaginative play.

They watch more TV than I did, as we didn't have one for most of my childhood, but we try to restrict it, and screen time in general and like I did they enjoy spending time playing board games and having books read to them.

On the sleep thing that Arizaphale mentioned, my mum walked or drove us all around to get us to sleep and suggested to me that it would be a good idea if I got my children to sleep on their own. I did so, and so did everyone in my mothers group by 6 months.

As for the level of childrearing interest, my parents certainly read books on it. I found them fascinating reading myself as a child and I'd say they had at least as many as I do. They had Hugh Jolly, Penelope Leach and Florence Powdermaker as well as few others I can't remember.

So in a lot of ways mentioned in that article, I feel not that difference from them. In broader societal level, I'd say that one of the biggest change in Australia since those days is that housing isn't very affordable any more, making it very difficult to survive on one income. We have some of the most expensive housing in the world now, and I think the pressure this puts on young families must be immense.
My mother (in the earliest component of the babyboomers) say hers was the last generation to feel they didn't have to have a career (though many did have one, of course) and I certainly enjoyed her presence at home.

Oh the stuff about the phone is spot on. We didn't even have one for over a year at one point!