Which Generation of Parents had it the Hardest?
An interesting discussion piece on the CBC website today. I know we represent a cross-section of parenting periods and periods of observing parents. The article is worth a read and reflection.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/parenting-stress-generations-1.7311729
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/parenting-stress-generations-1.7311729
Comments
Advertising, social media, online dangers, peer pressure etc are huge just now.
We had it the easiest I think (1980s). All mod cons but none of the pressure. 🙂
I was going to say that, but I thought the OP was more about everyday child rearing.
I was going to say that, but I thought the OP was more about everyday child rearing.
Parents in the 50’s and 60’s tended to ‘stay together for the sake of the children’ and so it was rare not to have both male and female parents living with the children. Many now have to struggle in ‘share the children’ relationships.
All adults were allowed to chastise all children, and corporal punishment was the norm, and so child abuse was rife and ignored - parents just said ‘watch out for strange men’ and let children roam freely. Now it would be seen as irresponsible and so children need to be chaperoned and tracked, not only physically but online.
Learning was ‘facts by rote’ at school, with homework only at senior school. Now parents are doing homework with children from the start.
I’m tending to think that parenting is harder now.
And the rise of the internet means that children aren't limited to finding a physical community with the peers who live on their street - they can find communities in whatever niche they prefer online.
Does that make it harder? I think it makes it more complex, which is harder from some points of view.
Which one of us has tried to raise kids in a war zone?
Which one of us has tried to raise kids in an area that has had famine?
Which one of us has tried to raise kids in a time of economic collapse?
Can we only discuss things we've had personal experience of?
Parents in the 50’s and 60’s tended to ‘stay together for the sake of the children’ and so it was rare not to have both male and female parents living with the children.
A generation earlier, my grandfather went to war when my father was 3 and returned when he was 8. Obviously, my grandmother, aunt and father had missed him terribly, made the most of when he was home on leave and were hugely relieved that he got through the war unscathed. However, when he returned, it was a simple fact that they had managed perfectly well without him.
I think WWII meant that my grandparents had more challenges - my grandfather was a almost a stranger to his children by 1945 and I don't think they were ever able to make up for those missing years.
The plus side was that my grandfather was determined not to miss out on his grandchildren and was a brilliant grandfather.
I don't think either my parents, or I had the sort of challenge faced by my grandparents. My grandmother proved herself an extremely capable single parent during the war years, and my grandfather had to fit back in.
Two things. Whatever we have personal experience about is only antidotal and cannot be applies across any generation. We have no idea what previous generations have experienced, much less what future generations will experience.
There are current parents that are trying to raise kids in war zones. There are also parents that are trying to keep their kids fed in areas of famine. My grandparents certainly tried to race my parents in a time of economic collapse, and I experienced a few vestiges of that fear. My kids have never experienced that, and I certainly hope my grandkids will not have to worry about such issues.
And, yes, I read the article.
We can, to an extent, measure the inverse. Some contemporary children are raised by their grandparents because their parents aren't available for one reason or another.
The step father hauled my grandmother and her sisters back to Arkansas and farmed them out as domestic help to relatives and neighbors. The two boys my great grandmother bore ran away as soon as they could fend for themselves. Could childhood be much more stressful??
This wasn't uncommon. I have nothing to complain about as a daughter or as a mother.
My grandfather was one of 12. They lived in a 'two-up, two-down back-to-back'. He wore an older sister's cast off clothing until he started school at which point he was issued with clothes 'on the parish' which marked him out as a 'pauper'.
His father drank heavily and spent most of his weekly wage at the pub at the corner of the street. He had still-born brothers and sisters, a brother who died at 16 and a sister at 32. One of his sisters had severe cerebral palsy. His mother used to wheel her across the city in a bath-chair to a hospital once a week where they would strap her into a leather harness in an attempt to stretch her straight.
I've recently been to Madagascar. There are families there living in wicker huts with no water, no sanitation, not even a door - and with fellas brewing illegal 90% moonshine rum at the side of the road which makes people go blind or insane. The gendarmes take no notice and prefer to 'fine' travellers at roadblocks on trumped up pretexts.
Some 75% of the population live in extreme poverty.
Now tell us that we've got it hard as patents.
But all four of my grandparents were college-educated. My mother came from a long line of clergy on both her mother’s and her father’s side, with a few physicians and college professors thrown in.
Compared to many others of their generation, they did not have difficult lives; they had a number of advantages.
And that’s just one of the challenges in a “competition” like this one. Not every one in the same generation has the same difficulties or challenges or advantages. Some have it much worse than the average, and some have it much better. There’s just too much variety in every generation, and too many individual circumstances across generations, to make meaningful generalized comparisons.
My Dad's parents were about 15 years older and died a few months apart early in the year I was born. They lived a terraced house in a rough area which was demolished just before WW2. My dad had about 6 or 7 siblings but only 4 of them survived to adulthood. My grandfather spent all WW1 on the Western front. Unlike my mom's parents, they had a hard life.
My maternal grandmother's childhood was very different to that of my grandfather. They fell on relatively hard times, but from a position of great privilege compared to my grandfather's family.
So yes, these kind of comparisons are meaningless even within the same generation.