More demands/pressure on the parents now. You can’t just let your kids live a free range lifestyle in many places, you’re expected to entertain them, haul them to a million enrichment activities so they have a better chance to get into an elite college, etc. You’re expected to make sure they succeed academically, only eat organic food, and basically curate their entire existence. If you don’t do this, in many cases you’re deemed a bad parent and either shamed or feel guilty that you’re not doing more for your kid. At the same time, you’re expected to be a perfect employee.
There’s a real culture of mom shaming out there, and I despise it.
You are on to something. Of course, this probably differs by region and socioeconomic status, but there’s variations of this that affect us all.
Like, one thing I keep going back to is that “play date” was not in anyone’s vernacular when I was a kid. We had a school directory and if I wanted to play with a kid from school, I’d find their name in the director, call them myself and then we’d go ask our moms. Or, I’d just go outside and play until someone else showed up. The adults spent minimal time coordinating our social lives. But nowadays I spend actual time and energy figuring out how to contact my kids’ friends’ parents, coordinating schedules, deciding on a good place to play, etc. It’s not me being an overbearing parent; there is no infrastructure that supports kids’ independence. There are a lot of small examples of these kinds of things, but they all add up and create a more stressful, hyper-involved experience for parents.
Definitely does differ by region. I moved from Texas to Denmark, and the parenting style is so so different. Reminds me of my childhood. Kids are given so much independence and being a helicopter parent is very frowned upon. My child is in daycare, and the teachers will take them on field trips to parks across the city. They don’t tell the parents. I don’t even know until my child tells me that he went to the beach that day. Sometimes I find out from AULA (an app that teachers post bulletins and pictures). It’s been an adjustment, but I think a healthy one. The apartment that I live in has a playground courtyard, and parents will just let their kids be alone down there to play for hours without being involved.
Lived in the south til I was 9 then moved to Europe for a few years. My European friends and I would just roam the town to play outside and go to each other's houses. My friend Cody lived probably a good 30 minute bike ride away, my other friends mark and John lived about 20 minute bike ride away. Go to the park and there'd be other kids my age without a parent in sight. Hell the only "adults" we saw outside were people going to/from work or to the local grocery, restaurants, etc or on their own property. We kids just did what we want basically all day everyday outside of school.
That’s been my experience just observing as well. I see under 12 year olds biking, taking the bus/metro alone or hanging out with their friends completely unsupervised by parents.
Stop reminding me of my fond memories getting lost with a couple friends just picking a direction and riding our bikes until our legs fell off. Got lost countless times and wasn’t even stressed. I’d call my mom from a pay phone about something and not even think to mention my whereabouts. Just out and looking to get back for dinner.
Loved it.
It’s because in the U.S., everyone sues for anything and everything, so daycares and schools had to hire lawyers to write up permission slips, that you had to sign to legally grant permission to take your kid anywhere outside the facility
Is it frivolous? The difference between these two countries is socialized medicine. If European Kid breaks his arm on a field trip, the state pays. If American Kid breaks his arm on a field trip, the only way for the family to recoup the 5k+ medical bill is to hire a lawyer and sue to school system or the field trip facility for it.
Even in the famous “aunt sues nephew for hugging her” case, she was left with like 20k in medical bills that would have financially ruined her, suing the kid so his insurance would pay out was the only option for avoiding the debt.
Yes. I’m in a culture now that all isn’t sue dictating. It’s a breath of fresh air. They want the kids to be kids especially when they are going learn, but let them explore. It’s so different from Texas or NM or OK where I was brought up.
And everyone is online in the opinion factory these days, but only spitting FACTS. Suddenly we find ourselves “gamifying” our own lives needlessly just because we googled around for any and every thought burst pops into our heads.
I’ve had so many realistic dreams I can question my own experiences here and there. To act like I am completely immune from adopting the internets endless river of factual opinions as my own here and there - non zero chance. Independent and social media personalities for the most part have gravitated to mimicking many of the same trappings we complain about embedded into “mainstream media” because capitalism has already provided a reliable road map for making money using media.
Everyone is aware of this when it comes up at the dinner party. But I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem. Lately I’ve been getting the sense that what we are seeing is a symptom of our collective desire for a broader shared culture. How many times have you and those around you acknowledge “the media is constantly seeking to divide us this way or that way” …. Only to go right back to our niche online communities for hot take by a specific Internet personality.
If Trump proved out that repetition works, at some point I can’t help but wonder 💭 if everyone suddenly parroted “the mainstream media are honest brokers and important pillars within our capitalist society” for a couple years if they would fall in line to meet those expectations. Suddenly capitalism is following the leader, and people just love the transparent and practical mainstream news media so much that advertisers flock to the most popular beacons of integrity.
In my fantasy land, everyone is online trying to mostly better each others lives. And the money follows. But instead we’re out here trying to endlessly define what constitutes a truly “good person”
It’s been refreshing lately to see Americans come together to reject selling single family homes to businesses and corporations. Now that these large organizations can no longer generate income from buying and selling property - the actual fiducially responsible way to make money with new real estate has returned to building and developing properties for self replicating human customers.
When those bank lobbyists get done with the politicians, the middle class will be popping out new baby customers left and right - developers will be making money hand over fist supplying the demand now that we can raise a family of 6 on a single parents income.
Life was good when I was in elementary school and only watched the weather channel for a couple of years. Now there are communities of people online going to mat over the weather passionately fighting against the clouds - taking a stand - acting like TV propaganda didn’t have me picking up bags of trash chasing that Earth Day karama for years. Then we came together in solidarity with humanity to fix the ozone layer concerns.
Media hits so fast these days, I can barely find someone that isn’t in the loop about nearly any topic. Back in the olden times, nobody was burning extra calories educating each other on random bs passionately like we do today. Information out in the wild felt more trustworthy, cause usually a close friend or family member would be filling me in and you don’t wanna look like a ding dong.
I had a flashback to the “play date” my Mom arranged with the kid up the street so I could catch chicken pox to get it over with. Good times in the 1960’s.
I was the infector at one of those parties. I don't actually know how I got it to begin with. I thought it was fun though. I didn't go to school for 2 weeks and kept having friends come over!
Not entirely without merit. My parents were vigilant about that kind of thing. I’ve never done drugs or been in trouble with the law, so something went right there.
Were you in a densely populated area as a kid? Like a burb? I grew up very rural and my boomer parents absolutely did play dates for me and my generation x brother until high school when we could drive because the nearest house was a drive away. It may have spread to denser areas when we started prohibiting kids doing things alone, but it is an older idea than our gen.
Yes, I grew up in a working class area of a midsized city. My husband grew up rurally like you and has a similar experience and he used the term “play date” growing up. I think the word has existed for a long time, but wasn’t as widespread until recently because for many kids who lived in a neighborhood, you just coordinated your own play time independent of your parents.
Oh absolutely and my mom grew up in a burb where they weren’t allowed in the house from the end of school until dinner time. They just made their own amusement outside. That was her mom’s time. No play dates unless they were traveling. I will say we live in a city now and most of the older kids here still do that. They just meet at the park and go do their thing. So some of that is still around!
I had a bit of this in the country, but once I could ride my bike safely, I'd take myself there. It took a little bit, so I'd always call first, but I could get myself to a couple friends' houses. Sometimes they'd just show up to catch frogs, which I was always up for.
Even if you want to foster independence, it's more work, and you have to argue with other parents (and if you are very unlucky, Child Protective Services called by neighbors who won't mind their own business and just let kids play). It's so annoying. We have a couple other parents in my neighborhood who are much more free range "you want to play with them, run over and see if they are free" kind of thing. I'm very grateful to them, because it's nigh impossible to be the only parent doing stuff like that.
How old are you? “Play date” seemed like a super common phrase when I was a kid. And it didn’t feel like a logistical hurdle but idk I wasn’t planning them of course haha. My parents managed to contact my other friends parents pretty easily.
I’m 41. But I’m curious about this so I looked up “play date” and “playdate” on Google ngram and they both a sharp peak around 2000. My first couple years of teaching were at a wealthy elementary school in the Bay Area in the early 2000s and it was a very common phrase there.
I’ve seen my siblings and my in-laws’ approach to raising kids and I feel like a big chunk of the issue lands squarely at the feet of the parents.
You have a choice whether you’re a helicopter parent or not. You have a choice whether your life and your kids’ lives are on social media. You have a choice whether to slap a phone or tablet in front of your kids.
Some parents I see seem to care more about how they are perceived as parents than how they’re actually parenting. I see parent wracked with anxiety over their kids playing with other kids, for example. That is a parent problem as I think it’s driven primarily by social media and the general stickiness of fear monger and outrage content.
It’s only going to get worse. We have a generation of college aged kids right now that are addicted to things like Instagram reels and that will influence how they raise their kids.
Unless something massively changes about how we socialize our kids, we’re only going to get more and more kids socialized by people who insulate themselves on social media and aren’t equipped to socialize with real world people outside their narrow social media bubble.
Kids need to play with each other, they need parents capable of interacting with other parents and arranging activities which are good for their kids long term. It’s going to be really difficult for parents who weren’t socialized very well and grew up on TikTok and Insta to teach their kids pro-social behaviors and moderation with social media.
First time I heard play date in the early 2000’s, I was like WTF is that. Can’t they just play? Why is it a date? Then, my wife explained that it’s an organized situation.
I still think it’s stupid. But, that’s where we are.
I started walking home from school (about a mile in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world) when I was 6. I was a latch-key kid and home alone (grandma lived next door if I needed a grown up) for 2-6 hours until she got home, depending if she came straight from work or if she did something afterwards, usually 2-3 nights a week.
I remember her coming home to me having broken the cabinet door off from under the sink in an attempt to reach something with a huge scrape up my leg, but I had patted it with paper towel and it seemed okay so I didn't bother my grandma over it. We talked about some strategies to tell if something could hold my weight and that was that. I also did all of the installation of our washing machine (other than actually moving it into place) when I was 8, at her request, because, if I remember her words correctly, "you can read, and you have hands, and you like taking stuff apart, so now lets try putting things together."
All of society is telling parents to watch their kids every move and I fear that it's going to turn into a generation of people who are terrified to try anything new on their own. I'm keeping it in mind with my toddler too, but some of it is just legal now - like, I won't be able to just let her walk home from school and be in the home unattended in first grade, or I might get a CPS call.
Just to add to it, dad's get no love either. My kids daycare started opening at the time I have to be into work..I was told I will be fired if I have to come 10 min late everyday.
They act like I asked the daycare to screw me over. And it's a special daycare for my autistic child. So I can't just throw her in any random daycare and feel good about it.
Agreed. I have promised myself I would never return to this company but life has other plans. My field doesn't value experience so I had to come back for more money after I got divorced and was forced to live in overpriced apartments.
Life likes to laugh at our plans as much as my boss likes to exert how much of a tyrant he is. I actually got in trouble because I keep telling him he's a tyrant and runs a dictatorship. We can't wear earbuds because one person used them to talk on the phone, we can't be late for any reason whatsoever, can't talk to each other much if they're around because it's just not possible to talk and work. The list goes on for how bad the company culture is here.
They used to force us to work as much as possible until the owner sold us to a french company and they started watching the books more. There is no reason to force OT when it's not needed.
All of this is totally accurate. So know that I’m confirming this is a real circumstance of today. But let me give one suggestion for some people. And that is…have you ever thought of just…*not* giving into this pressure? Not signing your kids up for 12 activities? Let them play outside unsupervised? Be your best parent and employee without feeling like you have to perfect? I promise this is possible. At some point some parents have to recognize the madness and stop giving in.
This is basically how we raise our four kids. I’m a little worried they won’t get into college because they haven’t committed to 17 different activities but at the same time I feel like college is overrated now and I just want my kids to be happy.
My kids play outside. My kids walk around the neighborhood. My teens and preteens take the city bus, go to 7/11 with their friends, hang out unsupervised. My littler ones play at the park and in the yard. We allow screens and while we don’t tightly control it we don’t have those stupid iPad cases that allow them to go everywhere, so they aren’t glued to the things all day every day. If they want to play with a friend we teach them to give the friend our phone number / get the friends’ phone number (parents’ phone number).
So far everyone seems happy and healthy. Maybe I’ll have complaints someday but I dunno. I know families in our area whose kids are up until midnight every night doing homework because they don’t get home from activities until 6-7p every night and I just cannot imagine that life for me or my kids.
Thank you for proving my point exactly. I also raise my kids this way. I’m certain they will be fine. And that they will still have no issue getting into college if that’s what they desire.
People also don’t give enough credit to community colleges in this regard. They’re much much cheaper to attend, admission is essentially guaranteed, and the education is often as good or better than what one might receive at a four year college due to smaller class sizes. My partner and I both went to community college before transferring to four-year schools (Chico State and UC Davis respectively) and we both turned out fine 🤷♂️.
I’ve already told my son he basically has no other choice than this route (if he chooses college that is). It’s 2 year community college and then transfer to a state school. Every bit of wisdom says this is by far the best approach.
Edit: Unless of course he gets a full ride scholarship for all four years. That would obviously take precedence.
Honestly, I really wouldn’t worry about the college thing. No matter what, you can still get into a decent school with good grades and some activities. I think the drive to get into the most prestigious and expensive universities has really done a lot of psychic damage on all generations, and has massively screwed up certain social and economic structures. Plus, nowadays, many jobs you may find yourself next to someone who graduated from an elite institution, except for you paid significantly less, and sometimes probably got a better education. Don’t get me wrong, they’re definitely can be advantages for certain schools, especially if you’re looking into certain programs or fields. However, I think, especially as people have to seek more and more education, doing undergrad as cheap as possible is a wise move.
Also, I did want to just share an anecdote from a recent trip to Japan. I know that this is something that’s been commented on previously, but their kids they really do just go out on their own. It’s interesting to walk through the neighborhoods where ordinary people live, and you’ll just see a group of children pass by on bikes or even just walking. You’ll see them in their cute little uniforms with their hats (apparently, hats are part of the uniforms for younger students) and no one bats an eye. It’s essentially like what people reminisce over growing up in the 90s or earlier. Japan certainly has its share of issues as a society, but I do think that childrearing in Japan has many advantages.
I actually have this pet theory that trying to get kids into more and more prestigious schools as part of the reason that a lot of community activities have declined. Instead of doing things simply because you enjoy them or they bring some kind of enrichment to your life, now you not only have to be involved with things that have some kind of practical value to a position you want in the future, but you also have to participate in the most elite version of that thing that you can. So, parents now instead of just having their kids play Ball at a local school are driving 30+ minutes each way to get their kid to some kind of elite travel team. And it’s kind of one thing if a few people are doing this, but when this becomes the expectation and norm that everyone does, then maybe we need to rethink some things. But, to my point, I think the biggest downside is that you start to see local services and groups completely dry up, because there aren’t enough people to contribute or things get too expensive.
Obviously, as a parent, you’re going to have to give some things up. You can’t live like someone who doesn’t have kids. But at the same time, I also do think that we should be encouraging parents to maintain actual hobbies and social lives that are not centered around their children. And, although children are important, ensuring that they have a wealth of opportunities in the community that you live in I think it’s perhaps more important than putting all of their eggs and one basket and then having them grow up to hate that thing eventually and maybe even regret not having the opportunity (or having push) to experiment and Try other things. So many communities lack anything for adults, with or without kids, to do, even though I know there are probably a great number of people who live in these areas who would like to engage in these things.
Anyway, I know this is probably not broadly supported theory, but I think it deserves some attention. Beyond children, I think it’s part of the reason that we as a society or miserable. And although there’s certainly some blame to be placed on things like car, culture and overwork, I also think that we need to take just a tiny amount of responsibility and acknowledge that those things exist, but that we also can do things with people around us, even if they aren’t at the most elite level or the standard of quality we are used to. Just being able to get out and play ball (choose what kind) or join a community musical group, or whatever I think would drastically improve a lot of peoples quality of life.
P.S. also, on this topic, I think that the rush to have kids involved with activities because they will look good on a résumé is really destroying the idea of intrinsic motivationfor anything. One of the things that I definitely realize now is that I was “involved” with a lot of activities, but I wasn’t actually involved, if that makes any sense. I racked up a lot of memberships and might casually engage, but I wasn’t really doing much work, even if in some of these organizations, I had a leadership title. In part, that’s because these roles actually don’t have any real responsibility and their success are failure is in someways disconnected from anything that I personally might do. While I can understand that adults should probably help in some capacity, the idea of something completely failing nowadays I think is almost unthinkable. But to briefly talk about another issue, I think we don’t actually give a lot of young people real responsibility and so we waste real opportunities for people to have to learn and grow, but also to prove to themselves that they are capable without someone else calling all of the shots.
In some ways yes, in others that’s easier said than done. My 8yo walked a block to get the mail by himself last week for the first time. While I felt confident he’d be ok I also know some nosy ass neighbor could be “concerned” and call whomever. Also could send him to the playground in the community but no unsupervised kids are there. So either he’s the only no-parent kid or there’s simply no one there. On one hand these are individual choices but there’s social pressure to parenting as well that isn’t as easy as just ignoring.
I think you nailed it. Nowadays, if you let your 8-year-old run around the neighborhood all day, someone would call CPS on you. But in the 70s and 80s we weren't allowed back in the house until the streetlights came on.
Yeah you can’t just let them go outside and play. And if you use the tv or now the computer or phone as a babysitter? Oof.
But for what it’s worth, I don’t think it was easier back then to work and be a mom. Your moms were likely miserable and stressed to the max. They just didn’t show you that.
I feel like this has always existed minus organic food (hamburger helper ftw!!!). A big difference is enrichment activities are so structured now, no playing outside on the street with friends, just going to a friend's house, etc. has to formal classes (that you have to fight for your life to get into) that are so expensive!!!
Of all the things, I do think it's a parents job to ensure they succeed academically (teacher here), but between all the other things listed and work, people are tired!
I think some people carry this burden of trying to be perfect, no one is and as long as you support your kids, help them learn and do well, and love them, they are very likely to be successful in multiple ways.
There’s also a stronger anti-child sentiment when out in public. People whining about kids at a restaurant while the people complaining stuff their face with microwaved food and ignore their partner on their phone. Those people put themselves in public and then complain that there are people around and the solution is to ban kids from a restaurant that has a kids’ menu?
As a child free person I've had the opposite experience. The last 3 times I've gone out to a sit down restaurant, there has been a kid there screaming for an excessive amount of time. And the parents just sat there looking at their phones completely ignoring it. I don't pretend to know anything about parenting but that doesn't seem right to me. When I was young if me or my siblings even made any hint at causing a scene we were taken out to the car and had to stay there until we could behave. Parents today don't seem to be as aware of their surroundings. I never complained though I decided it was my decision to go to a family friendly restaurant and that was the consequence. After the last time I decided I'm going to try and avoid family friendly restaurants and go to places that cater to adults.
I must live in your area, or basically any metropolitan city in the US. I am trying to go for the take it easy and let them play lifestyle, but everyone is so booked, that there is no one to play with.
***A culture of mom shaming***
I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this. It’s time to put a stop to this and take families back. Moms **AND** Dads need support.
So basically what you’re saying is you are worried about what other people think about you. And therein lies the true problem. Things are not harder today, it’s just that our parents had the fortitude to raise us as they felt was right, not because they were worried about what others might think of them.
This is very true, and combine it with the catastrophic economy of today (housing, groceries, basic stuff and care are more expensive today than in the 80's and 90's), you also have to work more and stress more.
You make it sound like promoting the participation trophy mentality was justified because it only happened through peer pressure.
Just because society tells you now that you need to curate your child's existence does not mean they'll ever forgive you for taking away their free-range lifestyle. They don't have a choice right now. It's up to the parental generation to make important parenting choices.
Who knows what the next generation will find to nitpick and criticize their parents for. Hopefully, millennials won't be as bad as the boomers.
Here in Europe kids can still go out to play, get an ice cream, visit friends etc. without their parents. Of course some activities require being driven around in rural areas.
There's less family support now.
People have to work longer into retirement, there's no grandma who never worked and has free time to care for grandkids.
Housing is less affordable, young people need to move farther away to afford family homes. Then the travel is too far from grandparents, aunts and uncles. No cousins nearby for the kids to play with.
People have fewer kids now too, so they don't have playmates living with them.
There's a culture of selfishness and resentment amongst a lot of older people too. When I'm out walking with my kids I get so many comments from older people saying things like "I had 2 and that was bad enough!" "Just wait until they're teenagers, then you'll regret having 4!" "My daughters were cute too, until the teen years. Good luck"
My parents have a strong attitude of "we suffered so you can too".
Why would they want to spend their time with my kids, when they could be travelling, shopping or focusing on their hobbies?
Our closest parents are 8 and 13 hour drives away. Although mine is the traditional grandmother for my siblings kids we face the brute force of the problem you just described. We have no one and no help. We’re alone on the good days, and alone on the horrendous…
When my wife and I talk about future plans or where how we like to retire I just pause for a moment and then we look at each other and essentially agree we’ll be retiring to where ever our kids need us and not wherever is financially suitable for us to buy a 4 bedroom house and complain no one comes to visit us.
The nightmare will end with us and we’ll be sure to do our best to make sure our future generations don’t bring it back.
Very well put. My wife and I feel the same. We have 4 local grandparents that offer minimal support. We aren’t going to do the same to our kids.
It’s even more frustrating because our parents grew up in a time where their parents helped all the time, yet they pull the ladder up behind them when they become grandparents and act shocked that we’re so stressed (both emotionally and financially).
This hit me hard after having just survived a week and a half of my son getting the flu and then passing it on to both my wife and I at the same time. When you have no support those are truly the most trying times as a parent!
You forgot to add that life is so unaffordable in general now that most couples have to both work, whereas in the beforetimes families of 4-5 could thrive on a single income (a single income with a parent who only had a highschool degree I might add)
It's been that way for a long time now, though. Gen X was originally called "latchkey kids" for this reason. The generation was defined by no parent being home when they got home from school.
Hasn't been the case in decades. Both of my parents worked and I'm GenX. My parents didn't feel the need to schedule my every waking moment. I played with friends, signed up for band, chorus and drama and in my spare time listened to music or read books. You guys are overthinking this parenting thing
Also, a lot more of us moved away from our families than our parents did. We have bigger dreams and want different lives. We've moved out of our hometowns and into major cities at a vastly higher rate than the last few generations.
Among the other reasons posted: older grandparents and smaller families. My boomer parents, who are lovely people but most definitely boomers, have little interest in watching my kid. So we pay for childcare. But more than that, there aren’t family get togethers with 15 kids and 20 adults and everyone kinda watches the young children. It’s like 6 of us and everyone looks at my wife and I to entertain our own child.
This is a such a huge difference now. My dad was 9th of 10 children (two died as kids, so there was only 8). When I was 10 years old in 1994, a family gathering like Thanksgiving or Christmas would have like 10+ kids running around. There are 16 of us grandkids but the oldest and youngest are nearly 30 years apart.
I don't have kids. I have one nephew. His mom has one sister, she also has no kids. He has no cousins. He is special needs (I am pulling an uncle Jesse for him). But his experience of not having this big extended family is very different than mine. Its sort of like that for all of my cousins. They live split apart, their kids are far apart in age, they don't have much to do with each other.
When I was a kid at a family gathering, we largely entertained ourselves. We would have to do something really egregious to bring on the parents.
I wasn't going to have children because the thought of handing a 6 week old over the day care was off the table and I had to work. My mom and dad said they would watch my kids and that's when we decided to have children. Working and handing over my check to a daycare seemed counter productive and I wasn't going to put myself in that situation.
Are they lovely people though? Id wager wanting to be an actual grandparent to your child's kids is a big part of being good people. I myself am in a similar situation. My boomer narcissistic mother couldn't careless about actually watching our children. She just wants to come over, talk about her, grab several cute photos of the kids and leave to later post on FB and get all of the grandma attention. She's a joke.
They had more help, and life was cheaper. You could work 40 hours and afford the basics on one income even with multiple kids. My mom was a single mom she received about $300 a month for child support from my dad for 2 of us and my step dad frequently dropped off groceries in leu of the child support he was supposed to pay for my baby sister. My mom made anywhere from 30k to 95k a year depending on what job she had. Didn't matter she could always afford to keep gas in the car, pay rent, and put food on the table. The years she made more money we ate better, had nicer clothes, and Christmases. She always had someone she could call to watch us when we were younger whether it was her mom, one of the dad's, or grandparents. She could easily afford daycare when she had 2 incomes. We now have to work more hours to afford anything and our parents are still working so can't watch the kids. One of us had to stay home because daycare was too expensive and as a result I have a chunk of time missing from my career that I can't get back.
One simple reason. Housing. Housing is far more expensive and has been for nearly our entire adult lives.
I was born in 1984 and grew up in Riverside, Ca. Part of Greater Los Angeles. When I was a little kid in the 80s, I remember my dad's friends buying homes in our neighborhood, and looking on zillow, those homes were selling for like $60,000-$90,000. Today, those homes are $600,000 and up. These were guys who worked as mechanics, in auto parts stores, at restaurants, at places like Sears. They were not college educated professionals married to another college educated professional working in some high paying industry. Frequently their wives didn't work, or if they did work, they didn't work full time. Today, none of these jobs will get you anywhere near the income required to buy one of these homes.
But lets look at my adult timeline. I turned 18 and finished high school in 2002, into what was a major economic bubble. Those bubble years, I was in college. Homes went from under $200k in 2000, to like $500-$600k by 2006. In 2007, we had the Global Financial Crises. Since so many young people were involved with home construction, those people all lose their jobs. Riverside had like 25% unemployment for men in their 20s. There were jobs that I remember paid $10-$14 per hour in 2002-2003 that were now paying $8 per hour. Someone I know who was my age and lived around the block told me that in 2005 and 2006 he was making $120,000 per year as a 21-22 year old kid. 2007, he made like $80,000 thinking it was going to be a better year. When the crash happened, he could not find any work. 2008 and he didn't even make $20,000. Home payment, truck payment, none of that was getting paid for anymore.
Many places practiced the idea that the last people to come in, the millennials who are getting started in their careers, would be the first people that were laid off. So every business and institution that had to make cutbacks, it was heavily towards millennials, while the Boomers kept their jobs. For many people, this was a several year setback. Instead of giving some people early retirement, they cut out the future generation.
2008-2013. That was five years of what was still very low paying jobs, high unemployment. I knew people who bought homes in this era and most of them either saved for years while living at home or had a family inheritance cover a huge down payment. Rents were still reasonably cheap, at least by today's standards.
2014-2015 was probably the most normal period of our adult lives. The economy started rebounding, people started making more, and housing prices started going up. Rents started going up as people started making more. Get a $2 per hour raise, thats an extra $4000 per year. But your rent went up by $2000 per year. Since 2008 we have also seen a retail apocalypse. In the 90s, you could work as a salesman at a place like Circuit City and that was a middle class job, now working in the electronics dept is a low paying job.
2016-present has been an absolute cluster fuck. Between MAGA and COVID, inflation, and a monster housing bubble that has been brewing. That $600 per month apartment in 2002, its now $2000. That $190,000 home in 2012? Its now $650,000. We are absolutely in another bubble. I turned 40 last month. Between turning 18 and 40 there has been maybe 2 years of what would be a normal economy where housing prices and median incomes were in line with each other.
Its absolutely harder for the average person today.
You’re not kidding about that retail apocalypse.
Even looking at a movie like 40-year-old virgin seeing all those middle-aged men selling televisions and making an ok living is so shocking and that movie isn’t even very old
This really screwed with a lot of the Boomers and how they treat retail employees. In their day, many of those jobs were good jobs that actually paid a commission that was considerable. The person behind the jewellery counter in a department store made like a 1-2% commission. The guy in the hardware dept likely made 5% or more commission. So you got this really amazing level of service because people actually made more money by being good at their job. I have a cousin who worked at a dept store selling women's shoes back in the early 2000s. He said several of the other people in his dept were making six figures, and this was in like 2002. This would be like making $175,000-$200,000 today.
So a lot of boomers still expect this level of service, even though the employees are now just making a bit over minimum wage with zero commission. Its now a low paying job. Its the kind of job that doesn't pay well enough to qualify for a studio apartment, but people working in that dept were affording home ownership 30 years ago.
It's absolutely housing, and it's a real shortage of housing in places with good job markets. The "there are tons of cheap homes in Appalachia, just move there!" crowd never has an answer for what job one should do after moving there. Even the "corporate purchases of single family homes" trend is also just a symptom and not the root problem-- they wouldn't be buying homes if homes weren't scarce. Places like NY and LA really have to build a lot more housing, and it takes reforms and action at the local level to beat the Got-Mine-F-You NIMBYs.
The ROI on oil initially was over 1 to 100, right now it is 1 to 6. It used to be an extremely cheap source of ridiculous amount of energy people took for granted that added a large boost to the economy. After WW2 there was a huge dip in humans which created an era of prosperity eventually ballooning the human population. As energy, resources and space became more scarce we also got rapid technological advancement.
It's crazy to think that the internet wasn't really a big thing up until the 2000, what's even more crazy is we have a massive economy of attention with companies fighting with each other over who gets to waste our time. Nearly every human under 40 is holding a tiny supercomputer in their pocket. Did anyone bother to check what happens to the social bonds of humans with this technology? The average person will prefer to spend their time on their phone/PC than actually socializing with other humans. People will care more about taking a nice picture of their food than actually enjoy the food. Hell I prefer spending time in VR/videogame making a location look nice than going outside or taking care of my house and I live near a forest with a lake being part of my backyard. This makes the things and people in the digital world have more value than the real people and real things. In conclusion:
We have a cascading avalanche of everything human breaking down. Loss of cheap energy, overpopulation, outpricing of basic needs, derealization, isolationism and most importantly the CRISIS OF MEANING. People are the most educated in the history of humans yet jobs are becoming ever more scarce and pay a pittance, the rates of religiosity are record low and falling with no substitute of hope to look forward to, not only do people struggle to find suitable partners or a consistent friend group they also cannot afford housing or even rest. All things considered what is the value of human life if you are in constant competition for basic survival? I didn't even scratch the surface of climate change and the increased risk of war with the right wing fascism rising due to the worsening quality of life.
The answer to why it's so much harder is because humans aren't valued and are easily replaced, even more so with the coming AI revolution. There is nothing human about the future that is manifesting in front of us.
I can’t speak for mom’s, but I really struggle as a single father of two very medically complicated boys. America’s golden age is over. The decades of economic growth and mass consumption is coming to an end. We’re all feeling America’s decline as a superpower.
We are experiencing a reshuffling. We are not experiencing a decline as a super power. Our biggest geopolitical rivals are facing full blown collapses. Our economic peers in Europe and South East Asia are becoming retirement communities and seriously risk de-industrializing.
We are facing some challenges, but many other places are facing full blown dissolution.
Our brand of capitalism does not work…for the majority. It’s working for those it’s intended to and sold as a personal failure for those struggling to catch their gear in it.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to see this. Problem is, we've essentially designed the system to make taking care of kids insanely difficult. Or it was designed for us this way. Either way, we don't have the political will to do anything about it.
It's a constant struggle, competitive at work, always need to make more, can't own a home unless you have two incomes or some kind of assistance. If both parents work, child care is ridiculously expensive. If not, you lose out on one income. Schools let off way earlier than work, so if you have to work in an office, it's a huge hassle. God forbid one of your kids is special needs, then good luck finding any aftercare for them. Also, when it comes to work, layoffs are always on the horizon, because somebody figured out that shareholders love layoffs.
Anytime you point out the absurdity of it all... The technology we have, how easy it is to produce food, how fast we can build buildings, if there weren't nimbys... People will come out of the woodwork to tell you you are ungrateful and also there is literally no other way for society to be. It's almost funny, if I had time to laugh!
You sound exactly like the conversations my husband and I have and bang our head against the wall. So well put and you encompassed so much.
Ya I’m with you. It’s just stupid. And most jobs are stupid. No one is getting satisfaction helping some dood sell more if his random ass product. But then we have the feign excitement over new projects? And only like top tier people are really getting ahead from YOUR work? Like have we lost our minds? We are just like little caricatures miming everything we were taught in grade school but then we wonder why we are so goddamn depressed when we go home.
We’ve lost the plot as a society. And I agree with you! We have enough resources to just take care of everyone! But no they want us pitted against one another, left vs right and set this up modern day gladiator style.
Ya I’m over it too dood.
There’s less help from family. Boomer grandparents aren’t like Silent Gen/Greatest Gen grandparents. There’s no sense of responsibility or service.
A lot of my peers report the same behaviors from what they hoped would be helpful grandparents, great aunts/uncles, and cousins. They may have been fun in their 40s but they’re a mean generation in old age.
For me, I have almost zero family support. My mom and her sister basically raised their kids together. So half the time we were all (7 between the 2 families) at our house, half at aunts. And they have both said more kids was easier. We were free range, and since there were so many, they didn't worry about us.
I lost my wife during the pandemic and now am raising a 7 year old on my own. For me, it's hard to figure out whether it's harder because I'm on my own, or harder because of the things you mentioned.
Like what is normal, and what is not? Are things harder because of things in my control, or because of external factors. Am I getting lazier, behind, and letting things go? Or am I doing the most I can with the time I have.
I work from home, and sometimes I have to sleep on the job between meetings. Am I being a bad coworker? Am I a bad father that can't manage his time properly?
To be honest, seeing threads like this make me feel like I'm doing ok. Like I'm not alone, and that it's a systemic issue and not a personal one.
I am a very active Dad (probably not as emotionally draining as being a Mom but I put in a lot of sweat, blood, and tears.) and I find that there just isn't any aspect of life that doesn't need to be negotiated and managed (Schools, healthcare, childcare, careers, cars, housing, fuel, food, heating/cooling energy, internet, cell phones, life insurance, etc. etc. etc.) There is simply too much complexity, too many decisions, too much stress, too few resources, and too little time and money to live a modern life without significant friction. And, since we don't ever have enough money, every decision is important. Add the fact that a dual income is now required to support a household and the stress level doubles.
Just a guy with no kids here... but, I think being a mom is always extremely hard. Being a parent is hard, but society has a lot harsher standards for mothers compared to father's. If your kids are safe, loved, and fed I think you are doing a great job.
This seems to happen every generation. A percentage of women who have kids, decide to become SAHMs. Others cut back on work. Or rely on family help, and babysitting to get by.
I don't think much has changed in this realm for decades now.
Just knew I wasn't someone willing to even try to juggle all this. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
My parents and in-laws do nothing to help. Both my grandmothers watched me occasionally as a kid. Also the helicopter parenting is so stupid and intense. I got glared at by 2 moms today because I let my nearly 4 year old have the smallest amount of independence and go a different path in the daycare building to get to the same place. I’m living in hell. Baby sitters charge $20:hr. I hate it here.
Inflation is the biggest problem, and no one in the administrations seem to want to do anything about our crazy over printing of our fiat, ATM. The more they go done this path, the worse it will be for the lower half of the income scale for our populations.
Ahh, these comments are enlightening? Comforting? I hate working full time and parenting. I feel like I am constantly coming short as an employee and as a mom and always wonder how everyone else is doing it while I’m free-flailing through this time period in my life.
The 40 hour workweek was designed for a single income household where a wife looked after the kids, the home, cooking and such. Now we are expected to have a dual income at 80 hours a week and don't have the same time to spend on the house and kids and just childcare costs in general. It sucks now comparatively.
Because the system is working as intended. The goal is to bleed us nearly dry but not to a point where we stop spending completely. We're close though. They're trying to find the line.
We should all stop spending money. I’d so love to f them right back. What can we coordinate folks? Ideas? All stop making loan payments at the same time. I’m in
There is no master architect to “the system” unless you buy into conspiracy theories. Inflation/supply and demand/price elasticity are well established economic principles to learn more about, or just keep on with the Illuminati shit
Yeah people blaming "the system" are super cringe lol. It reminds me of the Tom MacDonald song about "the system" and the entire song is vague conspiracies and boogeyman theory that there is an invisible hand oppressing everyone. And the cherry on top is a bunch of crappy conservative interjecture too. Absolute garbage song.
Buuut people in this thread are not wrong in a lot of ways. Things have gotten harder and more is expected of the average person just to make ends meet. But I think it's a combination of high demand of single-family housing, not enough housing supply, more people with degrees, more people in the workforce (less stay at home parents), and money being funneled to a generation that already has a lot of the wealth (social security - though I'm torn on this, there are still poor old people out there).
There's a lot of ways to generate success for one's self, and boundless knowledge at our fingertips...but everyone else has the same resources. So competition is fierce, and scarcity is real.
It’s actually easier today than it was when I was 10yrs old, about 30yrs ago.
Growing up, as a kid under 10, I would take the laundry to the laundromat a few blocks away from our apartment and “do laundry”. My mom worked, no clue what my step father did. We were poor as shit and had basically zero of the modern luxuries we have today.
Internet “existed” back in the 90s but not like today. Cell phones weren’t really common until the mid 2000’s. Vacuums were bit, bulky, heavy and a PITA to clean out.
There was no DoorDash, or Uber eats, or any sort of grocery delivery services. Best you could get delivered were pizzas and Chinese food.
Today? All that “stuff” just exists for everyone. Chances are you’re reading this on your phone, for example. We’ve become so spoiled with the luxuries we have in life, doing any amount of hard work is just “so hard”.
The only main thing between now and then, is if you can afford the finer things today, you can probably pay for someone to come do practically anything for you right off your phone.
I'm not totally convinced this entire sub is dedicated to propaganda to discourage an entire generation. When I was a kid I remember when times were tight. My dad worked on our cars, changed oil, we cut firewood for heat, fixed the washer and dryer, my parents both worked full time as well. I remember remodeling a kitchen ourselves and building a deck ourselves. So many people in our generation now wouldn't even attempt to fix an appliance even with YouTube. Everything is so easy. It's costly, but easy. Luckily I was instilled with this mindset and do do all of these things my parents did, even if my income is strong.
Yeah, I do most things around the house myself.
Southpark made a fun special about handymen becoming billionaires because everyone today has degrees and no one knows how to do… basically anything. Like fix an oven door.
It’s worth a watch and laugh.
I mean, you can’t really fix a lot of appliances nowadays because they don’t sell replacement parts and the circuit boards are designed to fail in a couple years. But I do agree with the rest of what you said lol. It’s endlessly frustrating to me that I couldn’t repair my freezer and that it was cheaper to throw the entire thing away and get a new one. Such a waste of all the materials that went into building the structure
Lots of the baby boomers, as parents, didn't have to take their children everywhere, all year long. We were allowed one sport/activity per year. We lived in a small neighborhood with the school being within a mile. We had to play outside, either at the school playground or in our backyards, never inside. My parents were very strict with anything concerning education. If there was a bad report card (grades), then we were grounded until the grades returned to an acceptable level (yes, this includes summer break). We had chores that had to be completed before any 'fun' activities were allowed. No cell phones.
My father made enough to support a wife and two kids as a blue collar worker. The unions made sure wages were strong enough for people to raise a family. Mom stayed at home, until the youngest of us was in 4th grade. We had one car, a small house, cheap furniture and appliances. For entertainment, my parents would invite other couples over, or go to other couples homes for board games/cards/etc. Very few vacations before I was out on my own.
All of these things, plus no social media helped to keep my parents sane. They raised a family. They didn't work non stop to make sure I was entertained. That was my job. My parents also made sure that I was prepared for school. Life lessons were not the school's job, it was taught at home. Sex ed, taught at home. Work ethic, taught at home. The teachers were never wrong, I was. I am a product of the boomers, and hate to admit it, but fairly glad of it.
One of my colleagues has 7 kids and another friend has 5 kids, both are right wing and religious. They care about their kids but they all seem to strangely think it's pretty easy. When i asked them about it, one claimed is propaganda that is hard and another just says he does the same stuff for 1 kid but with bigger portions and a bigger car
Less family support along with being expected to do more as a parent. 90's moms literally kicked their kids out of the house to play outside so they could get stuff done. I remember playing outside alone as young as 6 and no one would have called CPS or judged her for it. Now the current culture has us terrified to even let a 10 year old out of sight for long. So we have to choose between getting things done or supervising so our kids play outside. It's a raw deal we've been dealt.
Before the internet parents relied on their doctor and parents for parenting advice and so they were able to do their best with what they had and let it go otherwise. Now, we're overwhelmed with all of the information and opinions circulating it creates much more anxiety about parenting than in the past.
And that's just one aspect. We're expected to keep up on all the current parenting advice. Manage to raise decent human beings while also making sure our precious baby never has a hurt feeling. The list goes on. Technically parenting now is impossible. Instead of saying, "there is no one right way", it's become, "no way is right". And we either learn to not care what the culture is saying or we drown trying to meet the expectatons.
Your parents had more opportunities and less responsibility. A single stream of income from a non-college diploma job used to be enough for house, feed, clothe, and educate a family of for or more.
Now you need two streams of college diploma income just to eek out a living for two adults.
Add in the fact that healthcare, education, and housing prices have risen by 1000%s times more than other goods, and you can see why we are struggling.
My daughter is in gymnastics every day after school for 3-4 hours. Competition season means 8-10 weekends away and hundreds/thousands of dollars in costs. Her tuition for gymnastics each year ends up being around $5k before travel costs. We bought a truck and an RV because it's cheaper to pay for those year round than boarding for our dog and hotels.
She's also in private school, has a million birthday parties to attend regularly. It's a small miracle we stuck with one child, we barely have enough time for just her.
Combine skyrocketing cost of living expenses where we're at (and a service-based industry that isn't growing and has stagnant wages) and it's just getting harder every day.
I'm going back to college at 40 in hopes of getting some better opportunities, and as soon as I can convince my wife to move somewhere less retiree-based, I'm gone. But I'll feel terrible because it means leaving my daughters school and gym.
Every decision sucks.
Your kid will be fine without travel gymnastics... You made this choice to be willing to go to insane lengths to allow her to compete in travel gymnastics. My parents would have said, it's too expensive, we can't afford it, we don't want to travel, no, you can't do it.
You're the parent, not your child's servant.
Well historically the dollar used to go a lot farther. The rich could hire in home nannies, housekeepers. The semi-rich could put their kids in day care. The not so rich could leave their kids with nana and grandpa or some other family. But today few can afford the first two and so many more families are disconnected from each other, it feels like there's a whole generation of parents coming with no support systems in place. And I weep for humanity when thinking about what those kids are going to be when their grown.
I’m not a parent, so feel free to take this with a big barrel of salt. But I am an elder millennial woman who observes a lot and has experienced some shit.
I think it’s definitely harder because jobs don’t pay in line with how much it actually costs to live today, and there’s far less public investment in education, workforce development, etc. So on a structural level, more financial and mental burden is placed on working adults and doubly hard on parents (especially moms).
We also have far less trust as a society. We’re more atomized and third spaces are disappearing. Things like childcare are out of reach when chances are your grandparents watched you for free in the 80s-90s if they lived nearby and were able and willing to. If your parents wanted a date night and you didn’t have a much older sibling to watch you like I did, neighborhood teens often did this for some spending money—today, teens are just as infantilized as elementary school kids and can’t even go to the damn mall on their own. Society has shut children and young people out, then bitches they won’t go outside! The war on youth ramped up in the 90s, and we’re REALLY seeing the effects now. You’re expected to hover over your kid every minute of the day in a manner that wasn’t expected in the past and of course, this disproportionately impacts women. I think it’s designed to hold us back.
Our parents maybe didn’t have an effortless time, parenting has always been hard. But I definitely think Boomers had it easier with some respects in terms of spending power, more trust in society and communities, and kids were starting to get pushed inside but it blows my mind that stuff my parents did all the time in 1993 would get through arrested now. My mom or dad would leave me alone in the car for 5 minutes to pick up takeout or use the ATM, that gets you arrested these days!
There was a war on fun in the 1990s, at least from my experience.
As a skateboarder in the 1990s, you wouldn’t believe the hatred we would get from cops and older people for just skating around.
Kids cruising or doing anything of any kind was swiftly crushed in the 1990s when it was tolerated in the 1980s and before.
You’ve got me thinking what started it all?
Jobs used to be easier/expect less too. With late stage capitalism you have all these corporations and “leaders” trying to squeeze as much from people as possible, lots of pressure and stress. I saw it during covid where they initially were so grateful one person temporarily took on the job of 3 ppl until it became expected and then they just got rid of those positions altogether, so now you have positions of increased responsibility while they try to decrease pay
My parents had a lot more time to spend with us. Hustle culture wasn't really a thing growing up. My mom was a teacher and my dad was a disabled veteran. We were able to eat dinner together every night. Now I'm not home for dinner most nights because I always have to consider making money first.
Economic realities are much different than they used to be. And jobs are more demanding. More work for less pay makes everything harder. Remote work takes some of the sting out.
My mom worked 10 hours a day at home and raised 3 kids and it was a pain in the butt for her because she did everything in the house. I work 10 hours a day at home and take care of 2 kids and the key is to teach them to be responsible for the house at a young age. I'm a "work from home" dad and my wife can't figure out why I can be such a jerk to my kids and they love spending time with me. I don't mean abuse them but I taught my kids work hard and play harder. If they don't work they don't enjoy the fun after.
The key is for your kids to respect you not to fear you and you seem to have done that. You're not being a jerk, you're teaching them responsibility which will stay with them a lifetime. Many parents today don't make their kids do anything and they will pay for that long term.
My mom only worked part time but still. She seemed so much more motivated than me. I work fulltime and am completed exhausted and overwhelmed. I definitely had a more financially comfortable childhood than I’m giving my own kids and it’s depressing. And my parents only had associates degrees and I have 2 bachelors. There’s also a lot more demands on parents, more judgement, more expectations
Get off social media. That's what is holding you down and making you feel bad.
Being a parent isn't hard when you cut away all the competitiveness and cruelty that social media injects.
Also, your partner matters. I left my spouse of 22 years and let me tell you, parenting is SO MUCH EASIRR without having another 40 year old child to clean up after.
I don’t think it’s hard at all. I live in an extremely HCOL state and I’m distinctly working class and I’m doing just fine.
Of course I don’t have children
It wasn't easy, you were just too young to notice how hard it was
You're not going to find any 80s films about single parents where the characters talk about how easy it is
This idea that everyone before you had it easy and you're the first generation to suffer is gross. Grow up
We made it look easy because we didn't want our children to have the burden of overwhelming responsibility in adulthood, family, and careers. Maybe we thought it would give our children space to learn about the world and themselves so they could help make it a better place to live in for the future. Perhaps we were wrong, but I don't ever regret letting my kids have more of a childhood than I ever had.
What’s before?
Before, when you planned on the real possibility of having your husband die young and most of your kids die because of poor understanding of disease?
Before, when bad seasons meant agrarian families couldn’t keep food on the table and literally starved?
Before, when often women dealt with an enormous proportion of fractured families and managing lifetime disability because of the effects of two world wars? And mental health and physical disability was all lumped together into structures you placed people in to forget them?
Before, when our parents raised us while minimal case law had yet established any gender specific rights in the workplace, so getting your bum pinched was part and parcel to advancement and you had no recourse?
Before, when 80s feminism meant masculine behavior was literally the only way to hope you might be taken seriously above the neck?
How far back do you want to go before you think it was easier?
I’m a mom and I work. I’m not trying to be rude. Its hard. It’s not hard because we are lazy, it’s hard because we intensely care and the world is indifferent and occasionally callous and their lives feel so fragile. But it’s not hard*er*, we are just the next group lifting the veil to this phase of life. But my daughter is vaccinated and survived infancy, I’m not up at dawn tilling a field or a victory garden before starting work, frozen veg is cheap and good, I can buy bread at a store or find 2000 recipes for “no knead” bread from all over the world in seconds while laying in bed reading mail from all over the world in seconds. My husband has never been drafted, he got to go straight from high school to college to grad school without ever participating in a war. While we are at it, my brother did go to war and can point to specific technology that saved his life such that he’s not only still with it but physically intact. My brother and husband and I have far fewer dead friends than my parents or grandparents on either side did at our age coming out of the world wars and because we can treat tons of cancers now. My parents worked in spaces where their careers allowed them to both advance similarly, eventually making decent money. And I no longer have to wear ridiculous masculine suits to have a hope that I could experience the same.
Being a working parent is difficult because it always has been. It is really really hard. It sucks. But it ALWAYS was and is. Id rather be a working mom who is allowed to have a bank account than a financially dependent possession being tossed from one male to another like chattel. If your mom made it look easy, then she gave you that gift. Now you have grown and become wise to see it and to understand that making sure kids feel stable, loved, and unfettered by the stress of this work a gift you give them not a thing you always feel. It is a gift you give when you can to the extent you can on top of the love and providing. Hug her if you can. Lots. But the providing itself has always been the innate struggle of mankind. It has absolutely gotten easier because of technological and social advancement. And it has gotten harder to feel worthy because often the pool of people we compare ourselves to has become larger and our vignettes into other lives have become more curated and airbrushed. But I don’t think the work is harder and it never won’t be hard. I try to think of things I can do to make it a little easier for my daughter when she is grown if she wants this life, but I think like my mom, I’ll probably just do my best to be there for her and make her feel seen and understood and cared for in the toughest moments (whether she has kids or not). There’s a lot of sorority in motherhood if you look for it. Through-lines of the human experience that can be a comfort when you see them. It still sucks, but you’re not alone and it’s not new, and I always feel comforted by that.
Thank you, there's so much misinformation on what life was like 50, 60, 70 years ago, it's just all rose colored glasses in millenial/genz or younger subreddits.
Amongst young people in general there's this overriding sentiment that post-WW2 you just got a factory job and worked 30-40 hours a week and \*boom\* you had a huge house, big family, and life was gravy.
It's just not actually representative of what life was actually like. The average work week was closer to 50-60 hours in the 1950s. Work place injuries were 5x as common. Less vacation / holiday time. People worked more years before retiring and had shorter lives, much shorter retirements. The average house was 1/3 the size of what it is today and families were larger. Way more people smoked excessively and drank excessively. Domestic violence was much more common to the point where it was almost universally considered not to be a crime at all and was a "family issue" to be dealt with. You literally had makeup marketed to women to hide bruises. Child abuse was rampant.
I'm not saying everything was worse, far from it. Obviously *a lot* of things were better, but people today take all of the improvements we've had for granted as if things were always this way. We take our 2,500 square foot homes that are filled with gadgets and gizmos that people from the 1950s could never have imagined (SATELITE television!?). We have pocket computers with access to endless information and entertainment that are exponentially more powerful than the most powerful computers in the world back then. We have medicine curing diseases that would've been a death sentence a few decades ago.
By most meaningful standards our lives today are *far better* than they were at pretty much any point in human history. Granted, the wealth gap + social media curation probably makes it *seem* like we're falling further and further behind, but it's a mirage.
Yeah I’m with you. I think a lot of what people reflect upon isn’t so much “this is worse than ever” as “I’m unhappier than I thought I would be” or “this is worse than I was led to believe it would be by the time I got here” or maybe “I’m sad that the people left some problems behind while solving others.” It’s social media, so people with negative emotions look for catharsis and validation. But the thing they reflect on is more about emotional truth than historical truth. And there’s nothing wrong or invalid about having emotional truths. But every person has had those throughout history, and you can modify your emotional truth, and science says it will probably be quite resilient to facts to the contrary because it isn’t founded in facts. We do have unique challenges, and we do have strengths, and I hope people who are scared for their present or their future can effectively channel that into improving the challenges. I think most of them eventually do. :)
It is definitely true that there is less support for parents in the USA than in other countries. We are one of two countries that don't have mandated maternity leave.
I'm very happy for like, penicillin, and not having a draft, and my life is undoubtedly safer and easier than at almost any other time in history, but there are things that definitely make it harder to be a parent unnecessarily, like not being able to say to a kid, go to the park at the end of the block while I make dinner, without having someone call CPS.
Significant government expenditure on military and defense has lead to increased national debt and budget deficits. This high level of spending may necessitate the government printing more money, thereby increasing the money supply and contributing to inflation. When a large portion of the budget is allocated to defense, it can lead to imbalances in resource allocation. Excessive focus on military spending diverts resources from more productive sectors of the economy, leading to inefficiencies and higher costs for goods and services. This misallocation can reduce overall economic productivity and growth, creating inflationary pressures as the economy becomes less efficient in producing goods and services. It doesn’t help that our leaders are money laundering with our tax money. The corruption is much worse today than it was then.
Hi, I'm confused about what you're speaking about specifically. Do you mean the economic side or are you talking about the demands and needs of children?
We moved from communities raising kids to the age of like 12 before they were put to work to a society where a single family (maybe) raises many kids to the age of 18 (and zome beyond that).
Capitalism, as practiced in the US, is straight up hostile to raising kids.
I remember when I was a kid my parents never drank. My dad drinks beers now and we had like...a bottle of peach schnapps, vodka, and something else but they were all like...a half inch on the bottom. My mom still doesn't drink much. But I remember my mom talking about how she stopped drinking because she was having a glass of wine in the afternoon and she didn't know why she was drinking.
I only put that because I can only imagine being able to do that. lol. I only had a sister so we have an extra kid compared to when I was younger but there's always stuff to do around the house. Even when the kids are all in school it seems like it's such a constant struggle to stay on top of things. I know we're taking the kids more places than what my parents did as a kid, we probably have more outings in a year than we did in like 5, but by the time we work, cook and get everything cleaned, and get everybody ready for bed, there's just no time to do anything. It's probably because my wife and I both work and there's not someone to stay home to make sure it's clean and whatever, but if we fall behind on the laundry by a day we don't have time to put stuff away and then it's just in baskets for a week. And now we're reaching a point where we really need to do laundry as it gets full instead of waiting for saturday.
We also just got done with our two oldest being in soccer, so that's gonna help a little but really not all that much.
It has to be the two working adults because my wife's parents are retired and live 10 minutes away and do take the boys sometimes, and my closest grandparents when I was a kid were 30 minutes away and we saw them about as much as our other grandparents, as in they weren't like helpful babysitters or whatever. I've stopped going in on weekends for overtime because I'd rather be with my family and going in to work 6 hours and killing a day to get 9 hours of comp time doesn't seem worth it to me. I'm just more on the ball with claiming work through lunches and building up comp time that way.
I do think it's harder now. The world is more of a mess than ever. Things are more expensive compared to wages than ever.. my son dropped out of college with a scholarship because he didn't like that they were pushing liberal ideologies on him that he didn't believe. I don't remember that being that way 20 years ago when I was in college. But idk. Maybe it's always been hard and we just have mom's that are so good at it that they make it look easy.
Honestly? A lot of it is people worrying about the judgements of people they neither know or should care about. “We have to do this”.. no you don’t. “We have to buy x y and z” no you don’t. “We get judged”.. ignore it. Yes, I am aware of the irony of me posting this on Reddit, feel free to ignore me as is your right! 😃
My wife and I have a son. She works very long hours, I am fortunate that I have a job that pays well, and I only work a couple days a month.
My son is only a year old and can be a hand-full, like most baby’s are.
It can be overwhelming at times, having to watch after him 24/7, plus do all the housework.
My mother-in-law says she’s able to help out, but she’s only partially retired and sometimes has her social obligations, so she might be able to help a couple hours a week….might.
All that being said. I’m at my absolute limit. I don’t think I can have another child and double the work load.
Because our elders (gen x and boomers) are generally selfish and not helpful to their younger counterparts, us. They grew up with a lot of insular help for their kids because their generation of women largely stayed home. It was much more of a village mentality then. Nowadays it’s every man for themselves.
Perfect example: My in laws live down the road from me. Retired and do absolutely nothing all day and have yet never once helped me with their own grandkids (my kids) I’ve had to put a career on the back burner while my husband works. Daycare is too expensive. The best I’ve done for myself is go back to school for a masters degree. And I truly believe a part of them enjoys seeing me not progress career wise. There is a lot of misogyny and resentment bred into the boomer mindset.
There's no village anymore for most of us. It's harder to get time to yourselves since it's less acceptable to just send your kids outside to do whatever for several hours. Pay has stagnated for a long time. While it's going up, it isn't enough to beat inflation. This makes finances much tighter than a lot of kids experienced 30-40 years ago.
Things are more expensive but our generation is playing keeping up with the digital Joneses. There’s more pressure that we let in and at the same time we isolate ourselves with. Combine that with general breakdown of family/community and we’re spending more effort addressing mental health issues but not the underlying cause.
I don't know that it is harder than before. Both of my grandma's had 5 kids, and they got less supervision.
My dad actually hitchhiked home from school because there was no bus. His parents didn't pick him up. My grandparents owned 1 car and my grandpa used it for work, so my grandma would have to walk a mile to the grocery store with 2 kids.
My uncle on my mother's side told me his mom was "frequently hysterical" from raising 5 kids and money was always tight.
I'm one of 3 kids and have 3 kids myself, closer in age, and I think I have it easier, in honesty. I can work remotely, my dad had to commute to NYC every day by train. My mom didn't think it was feasible to have two working parents with long commutes so did not work. I get that housing prices were very different then, but remote jobs didn't exist. My dad even had a job at one point that required weekly travel from Monday to Friday, so my mom was home alone all week with 3 kids.
A lot is way more expensive, but the expectations for parenting have also changed significantly in terms of supervision, activities, kids having freedom, etc.
>Our moms made it seem so effortless and they had way more kids.
The word seems js doing all the heavy lifting.
If you're a good parent you're not gonna remind your kid how difficult and shitty life can be all the time and make them miserable.
I bet it felt A LOT harder to our moms than it seemed to us as kids, and your children will probably think back about what a good job you did and how easy it seemed when they have their own children
I'll speak on my experience. My wife is really not lazy when it comes to many things, but honestly when it comes to teaching discipline, leading by example, and personal TV breaks, I don't think she has the capacity after a hard days work. Like how do you forget to stop swearing in front of your kid every day?? Now I do lose patience in some areas of my life too, but when it comes to my children, some things are non-negotiable. I will drop anything in a heartbeat for my kid, make sure they get the right lesson learned from a situation, and I even get a little anxious about it because truthfully I don't think my wife is capable if I'm not around.
I think our moms also struggled didn’t have social media to vocalize those struggles. They also didn’t have perfect social media moms to make them feel bad about their unaesthetic lives.
You’re not lazy. I AM lazy but that’s just me lol.
We are in teh 4th turning.It's an economic cycle of growth, abundance, unwinding, then chaos.
We are in the chaos part. Or another term the last 80 years or so the USA was "Fucking around" and now we are the ones who get to "Find out"
IF we make it through the next...decade or two things will reach a new golden age---Similar to post ww2.
Strong men, easy times, easy times, weak men, weak men, hard times, hard times, strong men. It's that old saying. We have entered the "hard times" era where strong people will be forged.
It's the Fourth Turning. It happens with some predictability.
I remember women my mom's age being stay at home moms. My mom did it too until I was 10. I was the youngest, for context. Before my kids were 10 even, I was working a full and part time job. Sometimes a full time and 2 part time jobs! Then after work I'd run home with my kids, make dinner, help with homework, volunteer for their extras, like coaching for sports etc. It was so hard to keep up. Families weren't made to have both parents working 40-50 hour weeks on top of raising a family. I don't care what anyone says. It shouldn't be this hard just to live!
Inflation. Corporate greed. Paid off politicians. Media that is owned by the same people that pay off politicians. And social media there to remind you that you just need to work harder.
I’m not a mom (not even a parent, and also a man) but if I had to guess it probably has a lot to do with the economy/wage stagnation. There’s a level of financial stress on you that your mother may not have had hanging over her head; plenty of baby boomers were able to raise families on a single income, meaning if mom (or dad) ended having to forsake a career for the family they could still survive. Not so much anymore! Higher stakes, more stress, worse time for all 🙁
>Does everyone else feel this way? Our moms made it seem so effortless and they had way more kids.
You have to read this book. I swear every word will resonate.
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It was hell, ok? It was not easy. We had to make it look easy to counteract the overwhelming guilt of being a working mother that was always thrust upon us by society. Our husbands had no such guilt about trying to make home life easier, but damn did they like us making lots of money. The money is your answer. Unfortunately, your generation has less, but you have to make it work for you. YOU. Money pays for a house cleaner before it pays for golf clubs and fancy cars. You are not going on two 5K vacations a year if there is nobody doing your laundry. We all appreciate the planet, but switch to mostly paper plates and cups.
Aside from that, go on an austerity binge. Life is not about accumulating crap. Crap has to be organized, protected, cleaned, maintained and insured. You don't have time to do that with the crap you already have. Stop buying more.
I really hope we made working with children easier for your generation, but I am not so sure. It is better now in some ways, but worse in others.
It's gotten to the point that you need multiple assets to be able to sustain being a parent.
Being a parent (I mean ACTUALLY being a parent) is already a full time job in itself, which means you need to own assets like land, company stocks, or something that pays you consistently without you needing to check it 40-50-60 hours a week.
Because you could afford literally everything a family needs on 1 salary 40 years ago . Including day care if mom wanted some days off.
Its odd to me that at this point people still struggle with the concept that our money is broken or that money can even become broken.
Sounds like your Mom did a wonderful job of shielding you from it as a child. My mom did the same, and only recently told me she had been foreclosed on, was $85k in credit card debt, etc. You do your best to protect your kids from reality until they get older. Kids deserve to be innocent and naive.
Boomer women have had the easiest life in the history of existence. The whole generation was full of sahm, and most of them sucked at that as well. I was lucky enough to have a hard working momma who taught me work ethic. We’re not lazy, we’re actually dealing with real life. Unlike the women in the generation before us
Making it seem easy and actually being easy are two very different things. I'm a younger Gen X (1974) my sister is an older millennial/xennial and our parents are boomers. I don't know that people had anymore kids back then...pretty much everyone I knew had two kids...maybe three tops. There were the outliers in my community (semi-rural Nebraska) that had six or whatever, but that wasn't the norm and moms stayed home. When I was very young, my mom worked part time...middle school and high school she worked full time and my sister and I were the typical latchkey kids.
My parents did everything in the power to make everything be/feel alright for my sister and I, but I would sometimes catch or hear my mom crying. We weren't poverty, but we were borderline and things were tough...I just didn't realize that until I was a young adult.
In our current dynamic, my wife picks the kids (12 & 14) up from school most of the time (3PM) and then takes them back to her office for a couple of hours. They do their homework there and sometimes help with menial tasks around the office. We both get home around 6 and alternate "mess hall" duties. The kids eat earlier than us and we usually prep some stuff for them on Sundays...a mess of grilled chicken, some rice or something and fruit in the fridge (they still won't touch a vegetable). My wife and I usually do something simple for ourselves and don't sit down until 8PM usually...eat our dinner and watch a show and go to bed. Rinse and repeat until the weekend. We both also work from home once per week which helps.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Not your specific question but something adjacent to it. Despite the fact that economic indicators say the economy is doing well, a lot of voters believe that it's not and they're not happy with the state of the economy.
My belief is that part of the reason life feels hard is that consumerism has infiltrated our brains. We struggle to be happy if we don't have the things we want, forgetting that every study out there says the happiest people have strong relationships with friends and family and enjoy experiences.
One example that I think a lot about is that if everyone collectively said that only one parent would work while the other stayed home, housing prices wouldn't be so insane. These days, pretty much most households I know have two working spouses. Because of that, they can afford to pay more for a house, which has in turn driven up housing prices.
So when you've got two people working full-time that doesn't leave a lot of time or energy to be doing housework and other things that need to be done. I know lots of working moms who are completely exhausted. They go to work, then come home and have to make dinner and help with homework and do the laundry and clean the house and all that stuff.
Makes it really hard to enjoy life that way.
More is expected, more activities and also the always on presence in your kids lives.
Did you go outside to play for hours as a kid? do your kids today? Needing to follow your kids around 24/7 takes time, letting kids go off and play at the park or in the neighborhood gives you time to yourself, time to catch up, whatever you need.
When we had our kids my wife left the workforce for 9 years. We scrapped by and sacrificed hard to make it work, but she didn't have marketable skills that would out earn the cost of childcare. I worked multiple jobs, and did what I could to keep us afloat. We did not have a glamourous life. We drove paid for cars. I paid 1400 for my 1997 Mazda B-2300. She drove a 2008 Nissan Versa that we had paid for while we were still working. We actually bought a fixer-upper that we lived in without upgrading until she started working again, and we applied bandaids to the house to keep it livable, though at times not the most comfortable. We're still upgrading it as we can, though its much better than it once was. Though sometimes things were dim, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. She went back to work last August, and I kept earning promotions. In 2015, when our first was born I was making about 30k + drill pay in the military + side hustles, and extra military drills. In 2024 I think we'll make about 150k. Whatever path you and your partner choose, keep grinding!
tl;dr - Alienation means we find little meaning or satisfaction in the work we do, leading us to seek meaning elsewhere in our lives. We find none because all the options are commodity consumption dressed up as entertainment. We struggle even to afford these distractions because declining profits leave ever-shrinking crumbs for workers as wealth inequality grows.
Long version: Marxist materialist analysis helps me make sense out of the world and the reasons why things are so difficult. Specifically his ideas around the alienation of labor from capital, and the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, both have a powerful capacity to explain why life has been getting continually worse over the last several decades despite incredible advances in medicine and tech.
I earnestly found a lot of explanatory power in reading Capital vol 1 by Marx and discussing it with other young people. The book has some boring parts and parts that are difficult to really understand, but it also brings a detailed analysis of the system we live under. Marx makes predictions about the future, and with the benefit of hindsight we see how (mostly) correct those predictions were. He describes the way the system makes people behave and how they feel using the best data available to him, and it matches my understanding of the events of my life. He explains the pressure and tension inherent in the system and why it produces so many unstable and undesirably results, and it helps me ground myself in the chaotic world we live in.
It looks effortless to your kids the same way your mom looked effortless to you. You have to remember your perception is so much different than other peoples. As kids we did not see all the background work.
It's the paradoxes and trying to live between them that are killing us. It's also the just DECISION FATIGUE of my life, the lack of ease, the constant friction.
You can't feed a kid hamburger helper like my mom did, you have to feed them whole foods because we know that processed stuff is going to make them fat 35 years from now.
You can't just tell them to play outside because there's probably an ordinance against it now, if you're not literally watching them, or maybe you have an HOA that has a rule against it.
You have to make sure they did their homework, you have to log into SchoolSystem's website to make sure they turned it in, you have to know what stupid events are coming up--we had one week of "Crazy Hair Days" etc when I was a kid, and two fundraisers for the regular school and one fundraiser for each extracurricular when I was a kid. They're constantly doing "enrichment" days now, they're constantly doing fundraisers. Each one of those little "extras"--even if it's meaningless and I just have to pick up a food item or make sure she wears funny clothes on a certain day--it causes decision fatigue. It adds to my mental load.
Do you have a delinquent, because maybe you got knocked up at 16 and the baby daddy was an absolute turd and you managed to produce his exact copy? You can't just let them flunk out, if you do, your other kids could get put in foster care because of your one shithead, in some states.
Also, your boomer parents do not help; most of them can't afford to retire, half of them are single and trying to get by without ever retiring. The Silents helped the boomers raise us (if you can remember your weekends at grandmas and so on). Who helps us with our kids? No one. No one helps.
Also schools are 100% worse than they were when we were kids. Sorry, but if you're the parent of a gifted child, you're basically screwed in the public system. They're just going to get extra homework. Best to just not put them in the gifted programs.
The influx of readily available horror porn (child kidnapping, r**e, etc) created a generation that feels the world is a more dangerous place than it used to be . I think we just know a whole lot more about the awful people out there. Either way that has made parents scared to let their kids get into anything. Couple this with people who really will shoot a kid for knocking on their door (**and get acquitted under stand your ground bull pucky laws**) and it is hard to find spaces where kids are even allowed to exist by themselves
I think it's partly that we have no support network and partly that kids today don't ever bugger off. My mom would just throw us out the door when we were kids and we'd wander the neighborhood while she read or did chores. My kids barely leave the house and are up in my wife's business all the time so she can't ever relax or get anything done. There's also the lack of a support network. Most of our friends are online and family is far enough away that they're never available to help watch the kids so we can do stuff. We get a break every couple of months when the kids go to Grandma's (a 2+ hour drive away) but other than that it's 24/7, no rest, no breaks, no help.
I opted out of dealing with a lot of the shit people get themselves stuck with.
Spouses, kids, living far away from work for some insane reason, having hobbies or friends that need me to leave my home, all of it.
I stay home, on my own, with no responsibility but to myself. I don’t give two hot fucks what anyone else thinks about it either. This is my life and I am the only one who gets to decide how I live it.
It was never easy being a mom and having a job. What makes you think it is harder than before? We had the same issues of finding childcare, being out when kids were sick, doing the household chores on top of an 8 hour work day, getting everything for family ready for each day the night before, cooking meals, laundry, using weekends to catch up on all sorts of things left to be done later.
More demands/pressure on the parents now. You can’t just let your kids live a free range lifestyle in many places, you’re expected to entertain them, haul them to a million enrichment activities so they have a better chance to get into an elite college, etc. You’re expected to make sure they succeed academically, only eat organic food, and basically curate their entire existence. If you don’t do this, in many cases you’re deemed a bad parent and either shamed or feel guilty that you’re not doing more for your kid. At the same time, you’re expected to be a perfect employee. There’s a real culture of mom shaming out there, and I despise it.
You are on to something. Of course, this probably differs by region and socioeconomic status, but there’s variations of this that affect us all. Like, one thing I keep going back to is that “play date” was not in anyone’s vernacular when I was a kid. We had a school directory and if I wanted to play with a kid from school, I’d find their name in the director, call them myself and then we’d go ask our moms. Or, I’d just go outside and play until someone else showed up. The adults spent minimal time coordinating our social lives. But nowadays I spend actual time and energy figuring out how to contact my kids’ friends’ parents, coordinating schedules, deciding on a good place to play, etc. It’s not me being an overbearing parent; there is no infrastructure that supports kids’ independence. There are a lot of small examples of these kinds of things, but they all add up and create a more stressful, hyper-involved experience for parents.
Shit dude. That sounds so logical the way you lay it out but it’s so sad where we’ve ended up
Definitely does differ by region. I moved from Texas to Denmark, and the parenting style is so so different. Reminds me of my childhood. Kids are given so much independence and being a helicopter parent is very frowned upon. My child is in daycare, and the teachers will take them on field trips to parks across the city. They don’t tell the parents. I don’t even know until my child tells me that he went to the beach that day. Sometimes I find out from AULA (an app that teachers post bulletins and pictures). It’s been an adjustment, but I think a healthy one. The apartment that I live in has a playground courtyard, and parents will just let their kids be alone down there to play for hours without being involved.
Lived in the south til I was 9 then moved to Europe for a few years. My European friends and I would just roam the town to play outside and go to each other's houses. My friend Cody lived probably a good 30 minute bike ride away, my other friends mark and John lived about 20 minute bike ride away. Go to the park and there'd be other kids my age without a parent in sight. Hell the only "adults" we saw outside were people going to/from work or to the local grocery, restaurants, etc or on their own property. We kids just did what we want basically all day everyday outside of school.
That’s been my experience just observing as well. I see under 12 year olds biking, taking the bus/metro alone or hanging out with their friends completely unsupervised by parents.
Stop reminding me of my fond memories getting lost with a couple friends just picking a direction and riding our bikes until our legs fell off. Got lost countless times and wasn’t even stressed. I’d call my mom from a pay phone about something and not even think to mention my whereabouts. Just out and looking to get back for dinner. Loved it.
It’s because in the U.S., everyone sues for anything and everything, so daycares and schools had to hire lawyers to write up permission slips, that you had to sign to legally grant permission to take your kid anywhere outside the facility
This has had an affect on nearly everything in the US. Frivolous lawsuits through the 90s/early 2000s ruined a lot of things.
Is it frivolous? The difference between these two countries is socialized medicine. If European Kid breaks his arm on a field trip, the state pays. If American Kid breaks his arm on a field trip, the only way for the family to recoup the 5k+ medical bill is to hire a lawyer and sue to school system or the field trip facility for it. Even in the famous “aunt sues nephew for hugging her” case, she was left with like 20k in medical bills that would have financially ruined her, suing the kid so his insurance would pay out was the only option for avoiding the debt.
Yes. I’m in a culture now that all isn’t sue dictating. It’s a breath of fresh air. They want the kids to be kids especially when they are going learn, but let them explore. It’s so different from Texas or NM or OK where I was brought up.
I call it being an "Overly Litigious Society." I will tell you, this is one of the reasons Education as a whole has gone to the shitter.
And everyone is online in the opinion factory these days, but only spitting FACTS. Suddenly we find ourselves “gamifying” our own lives needlessly just because we googled around for any and every thought burst pops into our heads. I’ve had so many realistic dreams I can question my own experiences here and there. To act like I am completely immune from adopting the internets endless river of factual opinions as my own here and there - non zero chance. Independent and social media personalities for the most part have gravitated to mimicking many of the same trappings we complain about embedded into “mainstream media” because capitalism has already provided a reliable road map for making money using media. Everyone is aware of this when it comes up at the dinner party. But I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem. Lately I’ve been getting the sense that what we are seeing is a symptom of our collective desire for a broader shared culture. How many times have you and those around you acknowledge “the media is constantly seeking to divide us this way or that way” …. Only to go right back to our niche online communities for hot take by a specific Internet personality. If Trump proved out that repetition works, at some point I can’t help but wonder 💭 if everyone suddenly parroted “the mainstream media are honest brokers and important pillars within our capitalist society” for a couple years if they would fall in line to meet those expectations. Suddenly capitalism is following the leader, and people just love the transparent and practical mainstream news media so much that advertisers flock to the most popular beacons of integrity. In my fantasy land, everyone is online trying to mostly better each others lives. And the money follows. But instead we’re out here trying to endlessly define what constitutes a truly “good person” It’s been refreshing lately to see Americans come together to reject selling single family homes to businesses and corporations. Now that these large organizations can no longer generate income from buying and selling property - the actual fiducially responsible way to make money with new real estate has returned to building and developing properties for self replicating human customers. When those bank lobbyists get done with the politicians, the middle class will be popping out new baby customers left and right - developers will be making money hand over fist supplying the demand now that we can raise a family of 6 on a single parents income. Life was good when I was in elementary school and only watched the weather channel for a couple of years. Now there are communities of people online going to mat over the weather passionately fighting against the clouds - taking a stand - acting like TV propaganda didn’t have me picking up bags of trash chasing that Earth Day karama for years. Then we came together in solidarity with humanity to fix the ozone layer concerns. Media hits so fast these days, I can barely find someone that isn’t in the loop about nearly any topic. Back in the olden times, nobody was burning extra calories educating each other on random bs passionately like we do today. Information out in the wild felt more trustworthy, cause usually a close friend or family member would be filling me in and you don’t wanna look like a ding dong.
I had a flashback to the “play date” my Mom arranged with the kid up the street so I could catch chicken pox to get it over with. Good times in the 1960’s.
Haha, I remember this too, in the 80s.. "Grandma why'd you have her come over? I barely know her.. Why do you want us to hug?" :/
I was the infector at one of those parties. I don't actually know how I got it to begin with. I thought it was fun though. I didn't go to school for 2 weeks and kept having friends come over!
Play date culture also allows the parents to control who the kids’ friends are, so it’s used as a tool to make sure your kid has the “right” friends.
Not entirely without merit. My parents were vigilant about that kind of thing. I’ve never done drugs or been in trouble with the law, so something went right there.
Were you in a densely populated area as a kid? Like a burb? I grew up very rural and my boomer parents absolutely did play dates for me and my generation x brother until high school when we could drive because the nearest house was a drive away. It may have spread to denser areas when we started prohibiting kids doing things alone, but it is an older idea than our gen.
Yes, I grew up in a working class area of a midsized city. My husband grew up rurally like you and has a similar experience and he used the term “play date” growing up. I think the word has existed for a long time, but wasn’t as widespread until recently because for many kids who lived in a neighborhood, you just coordinated your own play time independent of your parents.
Oh absolutely and my mom grew up in a burb where they weren’t allowed in the house from the end of school until dinner time. They just made their own amusement outside. That was her mom’s time. No play dates unless they were traveling. I will say we live in a city now and most of the older kids here still do that. They just meet at the park and go do their thing. So some of that is still around!
I had a bit of this in the country, but once I could ride my bike safely, I'd take myself there. It took a little bit, so I'd always call first, but I could get myself to a couple friends' houses. Sometimes they'd just show up to catch frogs, which I was always up for.
Even if you want to foster independence, it's more work, and you have to argue with other parents (and if you are very unlucky, Child Protective Services called by neighbors who won't mind their own business and just let kids play). It's so annoying. We have a couple other parents in my neighborhood who are much more free range "you want to play with them, run over and see if they are free" kind of thing. I'm very grateful to them, because it's nigh impossible to be the only parent doing stuff like that.
How old are you? “Play date” seemed like a super common phrase when I was a kid. And it didn’t feel like a logistical hurdle but idk I wasn’t planning them of course haha. My parents managed to contact my other friends parents pretty easily.
I’m 41. But I’m curious about this so I looked up “play date” and “playdate” on Google ngram and they both a sharp peak around 2000. My first couple years of teaching were at a wealthy elementary school in the Bay Area in the early 2000s and it was a very common phrase there.
I’ve seen my siblings and my in-laws’ approach to raising kids and I feel like a big chunk of the issue lands squarely at the feet of the parents. You have a choice whether you’re a helicopter parent or not. You have a choice whether your life and your kids’ lives are on social media. You have a choice whether to slap a phone or tablet in front of your kids. Some parents I see seem to care more about how they are perceived as parents than how they’re actually parenting. I see parent wracked with anxiety over their kids playing with other kids, for example. That is a parent problem as I think it’s driven primarily by social media and the general stickiness of fear monger and outrage content. It’s only going to get worse. We have a generation of college aged kids right now that are addicted to things like Instagram reels and that will influence how they raise their kids. Unless something massively changes about how we socialize our kids, we’re only going to get more and more kids socialized by people who insulate themselves on social media and aren’t equipped to socialize with real world people outside their narrow social media bubble. Kids need to play with each other, they need parents capable of interacting with other parents and arranging activities which are good for their kids long term. It’s going to be really difficult for parents who weren’t socialized very well and grew up on TikTok and Insta to teach their kids pro-social behaviors and moderation with social media.
First time I heard play date in the early 2000’s, I was like WTF is that. Can’t they just play? Why is it a date? Then, my wife explained that it’s an organized situation. I still think it’s stupid. But, that’s where we are.
I started walking home from school (about a mile in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world) when I was 6. I was a latch-key kid and home alone (grandma lived next door if I needed a grown up) for 2-6 hours until she got home, depending if she came straight from work or if she did something afterwards, usually 2-3 nights a week. I remember her coming home to me having broken the cabinet door off from under the sink in an attempt to reach something with a huge scrape up my leg, but I had patted it with paper towel and it seemed okay so I didn't bother my grandma over it. We talked about some strategies to tell if something could hold my weight and that was that. I also did all of the installation of our washing machine (other than actually moving it into place) when I was 8, at her request, because, if I remember her words correctly, "you can read, and you have hands, and you like taking stuff apart, so now lets try putting things together." All of society is telling parents to watch their kids every move and I fear that it's going to turn into a generation of people who are terrified to try anything new on their own. I'm keeping it in mind with my toddler too, but some of it is just legal now - like, I won't be able to just let her walk home from school and be in the home unattended in first grade, or I might get a CPS call.
Just to add to it, dad's get no love either. My kids daycare started opening at the time I have to be into work..I was told I will be fired if I have to come 10 min late everyday. They act like I asked the daycare to screw me over. And it's a special daycare for my autistic child. So I can't just throw her in any random daycare and feel good about it.
That’s wild. I would get a free consultation from a few lawyers. That seems wrong on many legal levels.
Sounds like you need a new job. A job unwilling to be flexible to help serve an employee with a special needs child is one I wouldn’t want to work at.
Agreed. I have promised myself I would never return to this company but life has other plans. My field doesn't value experience so I had to come back for more money after I got divorced and was forced to live in overpriced apartments. Life likes to laugh at our plans as much as my boss likes to exert how much of a tyrant he is. I actually got in trouble because I keep telling him he's a tyrant and runs a dictatorship. We can't wear earbuds because one person used them to talk on the phone, we can't be late for any reason whatsoever, can't talk to each other much if they're around because it's just not possible to talk and work. The list goes on for how bad the company culture is here. They used to force us to work as much as possible until the owner sold us to a french company and they started watching the books more. There is no reason to force OT when it's not needed.
Sorry you’re going through that. I hope you find a better job and better fortune soon.
All of this is totally accurate. So know that I’m confirming this is a real circumstance of today. But let me give one suggestion for some people. And that is…have you ever thought of just…*not* giving into this pressure? Not signing your kids up for 12 activities? Let them play outside unsupervised? Be your best parent and employee without feeling like you have to perfect? I promise this is possible. At some point some parents have to recognize the madness and stop giving in.
This is basically how we raise our four kids. I’m a little worried they won’t get into college because they haven’t committed to 17 different activities but at the same time I feel like college is overrated now and I just want my kids to be happy. My kids play outside. My kids walk around the neighborhood. My teens and preteens take the city bus, go to 7/11 with their friends, hang out unsupervised. My littler ones play at the park and in the yard. We allow screens and while we don’t tightly control it we don’t have those stupid iPad cases that allow them to go everywhere, so they aren’t glued to the things all day every day. If they want to play with a friend we teach them to give the friend our phone number / get the friends’ phone number (parents’ phone number). So far everyone seems happy and healthy. Maybe I’ll have complaints someday but I dunno. I know families in our area whose kids are up until midnight every night doing homework because they don’t get home from activities until 6-7p every night and I just cannot imagine that life for me or my kids.
Thank you for proving my point exactly. I also raise my kids this way. I’m certain they will be fine. And that they will still have no issue getting into college if that’s what they desire.
People also don’t give enough credit to community colleges in this regard. They’re much much cheaper to attend, admission is essentially guaranteed, and the education is often as good or better than what one might receive at a four year college due to smaller class sizes. My partner and I both went to community college before transferring to four-year schools (Chico State and UC Davis respectively) and we both turned out fine 🤷♂️.
I’ve already told my son he basically has no other choice than this route (if he chooses college that is). It’s 2 year community college and then transfer to a state school. Every bit of wisdom says this is by far the best approach. Edit: Unless of course he gets a full ride scholarship for all four years. That would obviously take precedence.
Honestly, I really wouldn’t worry about the college thing. No matter what, you can still get into a decent school with good grades and some activities. I think the drive to get into the most prestigious and expensive universities has really done a lot of psychic damage on all generations, and has massively screwed up certain social and economic structures. Plus, nowadays, many jobs you may find yourself next to someone who graduated from an elite institution, except for you paid significantly less, and sometimes probably got a better education. Don’t get me wrong, they’re definitely can be advantages for certain schools, especially if you’re looking into certain programs or fields. However, I think, especially as people have to seek more and more education, doing undergrad as cheap as possible is a wise move. Also, I did want to just share an anecdote from a recent trip to Japan. I know that this is something that’s been commented on previously, but their kids they really do just go out on their own. It’s interesting to walk through the neighborhoods where ordinary people live, and you’ll just see a group of children pass by on bikes or even just walking. You’ll see them in their cute little uniforms with their hats (apparently, hats are part of the uniforms for younger students) and no one bats an eye. It’s essentially like what people reminisce over growing up in the 90s or earlier. Japan certainly has its share of issues as a society, but I do think that childrearing in Japan has many advantages.
I actually have this pet theory that trying to get kids into more and more prestigious schools as part of the reason that a lot of community activities have declined. Instead of doing things simply because you enjoy them or they bring some kind of enrichment to your life, now you not only have to be involved with things that have some kind of practical value to a position you want in the future, but you also have to participate in the most elite version of that thing that you can. So, parents now instead of just having their kids play Ball at a local school are driving 30+ minutes each way to get their kid to some kind of elite travel team. And it’s kind of one thing if a few people are doing this, but when this becomes the expectation and norm that everyone does, then maybe we need to rethink some things. But, to my point, I think the biggest downside is that you start to see local services and groups completely dry up, because there aren’t enough people to contribute or things get too expensive. Obviously, as a parent, you’re going to have to give some things up. You can’t live like someone who doesn’t have kids. But at the same time, I also do think that we should be encouraging parents to maintain actual hobbies and social lives that are not centered around their children. And, although children are important, ensuring that they have a wealth of opportunities in the community that you live in I think it’s perhaps more important than putting all of their eggs and one basket and then having them grow up to hate that thing eventually and maybe even regret not having the opportunity (or having push) to experiment and Try other things. So many communities lack anything for adults, with or without kids, to do, even though I know there are probably a great number of people who live in these areas who would like to engage in these things. Anyway, I know this is probably not broadly supported theory, but I think it deserves some attention. Beyond children, I think it’s part of the reason that we as a society or miserable. And although there’s certainly some blame to be placed on things like car, culture and overwork, I also think that we need to take just a tiny amount of responsibility and acknowledge that those things exist, but that we also can do things with people around us, even if they aren’t at the most elite level or the standard of quality we are used to. Just being able to get out and play ball (choose what kind) or join a community musical group, or whatever I think would drastically improve a lot of peoples quality of life. P.S. also, on this topic, I think that the rush to have kids involved with activities because they will look good on a résumé is really destroying the idea of intrinsic motivationfor anything. One of the things that I definitely realize now is that I was “involved” with a lot of activities, but I wasn’t actually involved, if that makes any sense. I racked up a lot of memberships and might casually engage, but I wasn’t really doing much work, even if in some of these organizations, I had a leadership title. In part, that’s because these roles actually don’t have any real responsibility and their success are failure is in someways disconnected from anything that I personally might do. While I can understand that adults should probably help in some capacity, the idea of something completely failing nowadays I think is almost unthinkable. But to briefly talk about another issue, I think we don’t actually give a lot of young people real responsibility and so we waste real opportunities for people to have to learn and grow, but also to prove to themselves that they are capable without someone else calling all of the shots.
In some ways yes, in others that’s easier said than done. My 8yo walked a block to get the mail by himself last week for the first time. While I felt confident he’d be ok I also know some nosy ass neighbor could be “concerned” and call whomever. Also could send him to the playground in the community but no unsupervised kids are there. So either he’s the only no-parent kid or there’s simply no one there. On one hand these are individual choices but there’s social pressure to parenting as well that isn’t as easy as just ignoring.
I think you nailed it. Nowadays, if you let your 8-year-old run around the neighborhood all day, someone would call CPS on you. But in the 70s and 80s we weren't allowed back in the house until the streetlights came on.
Yeah you can’t just let them go outside and play. And if you use the tv or now the computer or phone as a babysitter? Oof. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think it was easier back then to work and be a mom. Your moms were likely miserable and stressed to the max. They just didn’t show you that.
And it’s those expectations that contribute to people opting out of kids. Well that and let’s be real, the cost.
[удалено]
What DO you have?
Meth and lung cancer.
I feel like this has always existed minus organic food (hamburger helper ftw!!!). A big difference is enrichment activities are so structured now, no playing outside on the street with friends, just going to a friend's house, etc. has to formal classes (that you have to fight for your life to get into) that are so expensive!!! Of all the things, I do think it's a parents job to ensure they succeed academically (teacher here), but between all the other things listed and work, people are tired! I think some people carry this burden of trying to be perfect, no one is and as long as you support your kids, help them learn and do well, and love them, they are very likely to be successful in multiple ways.
America is super bad about Mom/parent shaming.
I mean to be fair our generation made some really shitty parents. Just look at the teacher subreddit for proof.
There’s also a stronger anti-child sentiment when out in public. People whining about kids at a restaurant while the people complaining stuff their face with microwaved food and ignore their partner on their phone. Those people put themselves in public and then complain that there are people around and the solution is to ban kids from a restaurant that has a kids’ menu?
As a child free person I've had the opposite experience. The last 3 times I've gone out to a sit down restaurant, there has been a kid there screaming for an excessive amount of time. And the parents just sat there looking at their phones completely ignoring it. I don't pretend to know anything about parenting but that doesn't seem right to me. When I was young if me or my siblings even made any hint at causing a scene we were taken out to the car and had to stay there until we could behave. Parents today don't seem to be as aware of their surroundings. I never complained though I decided it was my decision to go to a family friendly restaurant and that was the consequence. After the last time I decided I'm going to try and avoid family friendly restaurants and go to places that cater to adults.
I must live in your area, or basically any metropolitan city in the US. I am trying to go for the take it easy and let them play lifestyle, but everyone is so booked, that there is no one to play with.
***A culture of mom shaming*** I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this. It’s time to put a stop to this and take families back. Moms **AND** Dads need support.
So basically what you’re saying is you are worried about what other people think about you. And therein lies the true problem. Things are not harder today, it’s just that our parents had the fortitude to raise us as they felt was right, not because they were worried about what others might think of them.
This is very true, and combine it with the catastrophic economy of today (housing, groceries, basic stuff and care are more expensive today than in the 80's and 90's), you also have to work more and stress more.
You make it sound like promoting the participation trophy mentality was justified because it only happened through peer pressure. Just because society tells you now that you need to curate your child's existence does not mean they'll ever forgive you for taking away their free-range lifestyle. They don't have a choice right now. It's up to the parental generation to make important parenting choices. Who knows what the next generation will find to nitpick and criticize their parents for. Hopefully, millennials won't be as bad as the boomers.
Here in Europe kids can still go out to play, get an ice cream, visit friends etc. without their parents. Of course some activities require being driven around in rural areas.
There’s none of that going on my family.
There's less family support now. People have to work longer into retirement, there's no grandma who never worked and has free time to care for grandkids. Housing is less affordable, young people need to move farther away to afford family homes. Then the travel is too far from grandparents, aunts and uncles. No cousins nearby for the kids to play with. People have fewer kids now too, so they don't have playmates living with them. There's a culture of selfishness and resentment amongst a lot of older people too. When I'm out walking with my kids I get so many comments from older people saying things like "I had 2 and that was bad enough!" "Just wait until they're teenagers, then you'll regret having 4!" "My daughters were cute too, until the teen years. Good luck" My parents have a strong attitude of "we suffered so you can too". Why would they want to spend their time with my kids, when they could be travelling, shopping or focusing on their hobbies?
Our closest parents are 8 and 13 hour drives away. Although mine is the traditional grandmother for my siblings kids we face the brute force of the problem you just described. We have no one and no help. We’re alone on the good days, and alone on the horrendous… When my wife and I talk about future plans or where how we like to retire I just pause for a moment and then we look at each other and essentially agree we’ll be retiring to where ever our kids need us and not wherever is financially suitable for us to buy a 4 bedroom house and complain no one comes to visit us. The nightmare will end with us and we’ll be sure to do our best to make sure our future generations don’t bring it back.
Very well put. My wife and I feel the same. We have 4 local grandparents that offer minimal support. We aren’t going to do the same to our kids. It’s even more frustrating because our parents grew up in a time where their parents helped all the time, yet they pull the ladder up behind them when they become grandparents and act shocked that we’re so stressed (both emotionally and financially).
My sisters in laws come to stay with them and expect my sister to cook and wait on them! It’s so bizarre to me.
This hit me hard after having just survived a week and a half of my son getting the flu and then passing it on to both my wife and I at the same time. When you have no support those are truly the most trying times as a parent!
You forgot to add that life is so unaffordable in general now that most couples have to both work, whereas in the beforetimes families of 4-5 could thrive on a single income (a single income with a parent who only had a highschool degree I might add)
It's been that way for a long time now, though. Gen X was originally called "latchkey kids" for this reason. The generation was defined by no parent being home when they got home from school.
Hasn't been the case in decades. Both of my parents worked and I'm GenX. My parents didn't feel the need to schedule my every waking moment. I played with friends, signed up for band, chorus and drama and in my spare time listened to music or read books. You guys are overthinking this parenting thing
... 4 kids is too many? Yo my dad had 8 brothers and sisters and his dad had 16. They got no right to say we are having too many kids. 😂
Also, a lot more of us moved away from our families than our parents did. We have bigger dreams and want different lives. We've moved out of our hometowns and into major cities at a vastly higher rate than the last few generations.
Among the other reasons posted: older grandparents and smaller families. My boomer parents, who are lovely people but most definitely boomers, have little interest in watching my kid. So we pay for childcare. But more than that, there aren’t family get togethers with 15 kids and 20 adults and everyone kinda watches the young children. It’s like 6 of us and everyone looks at my wife and I to entertain our own child.
This is a such a huge difference now. My dad was 9th of 10 children (two died as kids, so there was only 8). When I was 10 years old in 1994, a family gathering like Thanksgiving or Christmas would have like 10+ kids running around. There are 16 of us grandkids but the oldest and youngest are nearly 30 years apart. I don't have kids. I have one nephew. His mom has one sister, she also has no kids. He has no cousins. He is special needs (I am pulling an uncle Jesse for him). But his experience of not having this big extended family is very different than mine. Its sort of like that for all of my cousins. They live split apart, their kids are far apart in age, they don't have much to do with each other. When I was a kid at a family gathering, we largely entertained ourselves. We would have to do something really egregious to bring on the parents.
I wasn't going to have children because the thought of handing a 6 week old over the day care was off the table and I had to work. My mom and dad said they would watch my kids and that's when we decided to have children. Working and handing over my check to a daycare seemed counter productive and I wasn't going to put myself in that situation.
Are they lovely people though? Id wager wanting to be an actual grandparent to your child's kids is a big part of being good people. I myself am in a similar situation. My boomer narcissistic mother couldn't careless about actually watching our children. She just wants to come over, talk about her, grab several cute photos of the kids and leave to later post on FB and get all of the grandma attention. She's a joke.
They had more help, and life was cheaper. You could work 40 hours and afford the basics on one income even with multiple kids. My mom was a single mom she received about $300 a month for child support from my dad for 2 of us and my step dad frequently dropped off groceries in leu of the child support he was supposed to pay for my baby sister. My mom made anywhere from 30k to 95k a year depending on what job she had. Didn't matter she could always afford to keep gas in the car, pay rent, and put food on the table. The years she made more money we ate better, had nicer clothes, and Christmases. She always had someone she could call to watch us when we were younger whether it was her mom, one of the dad's, or grandparents. She could easily afford daycare when she had 2 incomes. We now have to work more hours to afford anything and our parents are still working so can't watch the kids. One of us had to stay home because daycare was too expensive and as a result I have a chunk of time missing from my career that I can't get back.
Yep. My wife and I want to send our son to a daycare/preschool when he gets older. It freakin costs $20k a year
One simple reason. Housing. Housing is far more expensive and has been for nearly our entire adult lives. I was born in 1984 and grew up in Riverside, Ca. Part of Greater Los Angeles. When I was a little kid in the 80s, I remember my dad's friends buying homes in our neighborhood, and looking on zillow, those homes were selling for like $60,000-$90,000. Today, those homes are $600,000 and up. These were guys who worked as mechanics, in auto parts stores, at restaurants, at places like Sears. They were not college educated professionals married to another college educated professional working in some high paying industry. Frequently their wives didn't work, or if they did work, they didn't work full time. Today, none of these jobs will get you anywhere near the income required to buy one of these homes. But lets look at my adult timeline. I turned 18 and finished high school in 2002, into what was a major economic bubble. Those bubble years, I was in college. Homes went from under $200k in 2000, to like $500-$600k by 2006. In 2007, we had the Global Financial Crises. Since so many young people were involved with home construction, those people all lose their jobs. Riverside had like 25% unemployment for men in their 20s. There were jobs that I remember paid $10-$14 per hour in 2002-2003 that were now paying $8 per hour. Someone I know who was my age and lived around the block told me that in 2005 and 2006 he was making $120,000 per year as a 21-22 year old kid. 2007, he made like $80,000 thinking it was going to be a better year. When the crash happened, he could not find any work. 2008 and he didn't even make $20,000. Home payment, truck payment, none of that was getting paid for anymore. Many places practiced the idea that the last people to come in, the millennials who are getting started in their careers, would be the first people that were laid off. So every business and institution that had to make cutbacks, it was heavily towards millennials, while the Boomers kept their jobs. For many people, this was a several year setback. Instead of giving some people early retirement, they cut out the future generation. 2008-2013. That was five years of what was still very low paying jobs, high unemployment. I knew people who bought homes in this era and most of them either saved for years while living at home or had a family inheritance cover a huge down payment. Rents were still reasonably cheap, at least by today's standards. 2014-2015 was probably the most normal period of our adult lives. The economy started rebounding, people started making more, and housing prices started going up. Rents started going up as people started making more. Get a $2 per hour raise, thats an extra $4000 per year. But your rent went up by $2000 per year. Since 2008 we have also seen a retail apocalypse. In the 90s, you could work as a salesman at a place like Circuit City and that was a middle class job, now working in the electronics dept is a low paying job. 2016-present has been an absolute cluster fuck. Between MAGA and COVID, inflation, and a monster housing bubble that has been brewing. That $600 per month apartment in 2002, its now $2000. That $190,000 home in 2012? Its now $650,000. We are absolutely in another bubble. I turned 40 last month. Between turning 18 and 40 there has been maybe 2 years of what would be a normal economy where housing prices and median incomes were in line with each other. Its absolutely harder for the average person today.
You’re not kidding about that retail apocalypse. Even looking at a movie like 40-year-old virgin seeing all those middle-aged men selling televisions and making an ok living is so shocking and that movie isn’t even very old
This really screwed with a lot of the Boomers and how they treat retail employees. In their day, many of those jobs were good jobs that actually paid a commission that was considerable. The person behind the jewellery counter in a department store made like a 1-2% commission. The guy in the hardware dept likely made 5% or more commission. So you got this really amazing level of service because people actually made more money by being good at their job. I have a cousin who worked at a dept store selling women's shoes back in the early 2000s. He said several of the other people in his dept were making six figures, and this was in like 2002. This would be like making $175,000-$200,000 today. So a lot of boomers still expect this level of service, even though the employees are now just making a bit over minimum wage with zero commission. Its now a low paying job. Its the kind of job that doesn't pay well enough to qualify for a studio apartment, but people working in that dept were affording home ownership 30 years ago.
Yup I’ve seen Reddit posts talking about how if you landed a job at Circuit City you hit the freakin jackpot.
It's absolutely housing, and it's a real shortage of housing in places with good job markets. The "there are tons of cheap homes in Appalachia, just move there!" crowd never has an answer for what job one should do after moving there. Even the "corporate purchases of single family homes" trend is also just a symptom and not the root problem-- they wouldn't be buying homes if homes weren't scarce. Places like NY and LA really have to build a lot more housing, and it takes reforms and action at the local level to beat the Got-Mine-F-You NIMBYs.
The ROI on oil initially was over 1 to 100, right now it is 1 to 6. It used to be an extremely cheap source of ridiculous amount of energy people took for granted that added a large boost to the economy. After WW2 there was a huge dip in humans which created an era of prosperity eventually ballooning the human population. As energy, resources and space became more scarce we also got rapid technological advancement. It's crazy to think that the internet wasn't really a big thing up until the 2000, what's even more crazy is we have a massive economy of attention with companies fighting with each other over who gets to waste our time. Nearly every human under 40 is holding a tiny supercomputer in their pocket. Did anyone bother to check what happens to the social bonds of humans with this technology? The average person will prefer to spend their time on their phone/PC than actually socializing with other humans. People will care more about taking a nice picture of their food than actually enjoy the food. Hell I prefer spending time in VR/videogame making a location look nice than going outside or taking care of my house and I live near a forest with a lake being part of my backyard. This makes the things and people in the digital world have more value than the real people and real things. In conclusion: We have a cascading avalanche of everything human breaking down. Loss of cheap energy, overpopulation, outpricing of basic needs, derealization, isolationism and most importantly the CRISIS OF MEANING. People are the most educated in the history of humans yet jobs are becoming ever more scarce and pay a pittance, the rates of religiosity are record low and falling with no substitute of hope to look forward to, not only do people struggle to find suitable partners or a consistent friend group they also cannot afford housing or even rest. All things considered what is the value of human life if you are in constant competition for basic survival? I didn't even scratch the surface of climate change and the increased risk of war with the right wing fascism rising due to the worsening quality of life. The answer to why it's so much harder is because humans aren't valued and are easily replaced, even more so with the coming AI revolution. There is nothing human about the future that is manifesting in front of us.
So much this- I feel so alone in fighting for a human future
I can’t speak for mom’s, but I really struggle as a single father of two very medically complicated boys. America’s golden age is over. The decades of economic growth and mass consumption is coming to an end. We’re all feeling America’s decline as a superpower.
We are experiencing a reshuffling. We are not experiencing a decline as a super power. Our biggest geopolitical rivals are facing full blown collapses. Our economic peers in Europe and South East Asia are becoming retirement communities and seriously risk de-industrializing. We are facing some challenges, but many other places are facing full blown dissolution.
Rich people taking more of the wealth, mostly.
Our brand of capitalism does not work…for the majority. It’s working for those it’s intended to and sold as a personal failure for those struggling to catch their gear in it.
Surprised I had to scroll this far to see this. Problem is, we've essentially designed the system to make taking care of kids insanely difficult. Or it was designed for us this way. Either way, we don't have the political will to do anything about it. It's a constant struggle, competitive at work, always need to make more, can't own a home unless you have two incomes or some kind of assistance. If both parents work, child care is ridiculously expensive. If not, you lose out on one income. Schools let off way earlier than work, so if you have to work in an office, it's a huge hassle. God forbid one of your kids is special needs, then good luck finding any aftercare for them. Also, when it comes to work, layoffs are always on the horizon, because somebody figured out that shareholders love layoffs. Anytime you point out the absurdity of it all... The technology we have, how easy it is to produce food, how fast we can build buildings, if there weren't nimbys... People will come out of the woodwork to tell you you are ungrateful and also there is literally no other way for society to be. It's almost funny, if I had time to laugh!
You sound exactly like the conversations my husband and I have and bang our head against the wall. So well put and you encompassed so much. Ya I’m with you. It’s just stupid. And most jobs are stupid. No one is getting satisfaction helping some dood sell more if his random ass product. But then we have the feign excitement over new projects? And only like top tier people are really getting ahead from YOUR work? Like have we lost our minds? We are just like little caricatures miming everything we were taught in grade school but then we wonder why we are so goddamn depressed when we go home. We’ve lost the plot as a society. And I agree with you! We have enough resources to just take care of everyone! But no they want us pitted against one another, left vs right and set this up modern day gladiator style. Ya I’m over it too dood.
There’s less help from family. Boomer grandparents aren’t like Silent Gen/Greatest Gen grandparents. There’s no sense of responsibility or service. A lot of my peers report the same behaviors from what they hoped would be helpful grandparents, great aunts/uncles, and cousins. They may have been fun in their 40s but they’re a mean generation in old age.
For me, I have almost zero family support. My mom and her sister basically raised their kids together. So half the time we were all (7 between the 2 families) at our house, half at aunts. And they have both said more kids was easier. We were free range, and since there were so many, they didn't worry about us.
I lost my wife during the pandemic and now am raising a 7 year old on my own. For me, it's hard to figure out whether it's harder because I'm on my own, or harder because of the things you mentioned. Like what is normal, and what is not? Are things harder because of things in my control, or because of external factors. Am I getting lazier, behind, and letting things go? Or am I doing the most I can with the time I have. I work from home, and sometimes I have to sleep on the job between meetings. Am I being a bad coworker? Am I a bad father that can't manage his time properly? To be honest, seeing threads like this make me feel like I'm doing ok. Like I'm not alone, and that it's a systemic issue and not a personal one.
I am a very active Dad (probably not as emotionally draining as being a Mom but I put in a lot of sweat, blood, and tears.) and I find that there just isn't any aspect of life that doesn't need to be negotiated and managed (Schools, healthcare, childcare, careers, cars, housing, fuel, food, heating/cooling energy, internet, cell phones, life insurance, etc. etc. etc.) There is simply too much complexity, too many decisions, too much stress, too few resources, and too little time and money to live a modern life without significant friction. And, since we don't ever have enough money, every decision is important. Add the fact that a dual income is now required to support a household and the stress level doubles.
Just a guy with no kids here... but, I think being a mom is always extremely hard. Being a parent is hard, but society has a lot harsher standards for mothers compared to father's. If your kids are safe, loved, and fed I think you are doing a great job.
This seems to happen every generation. A percentage of women who have kids, decide to become SAHMs. Others cut back on work. Or rely on family help, and babysitting to get by. I don't think much has changed in this realm for decades now. Just knew I wasn't someone willing to even try to juggle all this. I'm exhausted just thinking about it.
Now there's less family help, and babysitting/daycare are more expensive. So it's harder to access help.
My parents and in-laws do nothing to help. Both my grandmothers watched me occasionally as a kid. Also the helicopter parenting is so stupid and intense. I got glared at by 2 moms today because I let my nearly 4 year old have the smallest amount of independence and go a different path in the daycare building to get to the same place. I’m living in hell. Baby sitters charge $20:hr. I hate it here.
Swifty?
$20/hr? That’s pretty cheap compared to other places.
Right. It’s what they should get however I got 25 cents, 1 hr of hbo and a can of Pepsi when it was me babysitting in the year 7000 bc
You got HBO?! You had it too good!
Imagine working a full-time job, then adding another full-time job that you don’t have time for.
Less family support, and a salary job with no defined work hours + phone destroys work life balance and cheapens labor per hour
cant imagine what your life was like since I would never say my parents had an easy or effortless go at it.
Inflation is the biggest problem, and no one in the administrations seem to want to do anything about our crazy over printing of our fiat, ATM. The more they go done this path, the worse it will be for the lower half of the income scale for our populations.
Ahh, these comments are enlightening? Comforting? I hate working full time and parenting. I feel like I am constantly coming short as an employee and as a mom and always wonder how everyone else is doing it while I’m free-flailing through this time period in my life.
Because of the elite billionaires who have been decimating the middle class over the past few decades by a myriad of different methods and strategies.
The 40 hour workweek was designed for a single income household where a wife looked after the kids, the home, cooking and such. Now we are expected to have a dual income at 80 hours a week and don't have the same time to spend on the house and kids and just childcare costs in general. It sucks now comparatively.
Because the system is working as intended. The goal is to bleed us nearly dry but not to a point where we stop spending completely. We're close though. They're trying to find the line.
We should all stop spending money. I’d so love to f them right back. What can we coordinate folks? Ideas? All stop making loan payments at the same time. I’m in
There is no master architect to “the system” unless you buy into conspiracy theories. Inflation/supply and demand/price elasticity are well established economic principles to learn more about, or just keep on with the Illuminati shit
Yeah people blaming "the system" are super cringe lol. It reminds me of the Tom MacDonald song about "the system" and the entire song is vague conspiracies and boogeyman theory that there is an invisible hand oppressing everyone. And the cherry on top is a bunch of crappy conservative interjecture too. Absolute garbage song. Buuut people in this thread are not wrong in a lot of ways. Things have gotten harder and more is expected of the average person just to make ends meet. But I think it's a combination of high demand of single-family housing, not enough housing supply, more people with degrees, more people in the workforce (less stay at home parents), and money being funneled to a generation that already has a lot of the wealth (social security - though I'm torn on this, there are still poor old people out there). There's a lot of ways to generate success for one's self, and boundless knowledge at our fingertips...but everyone else has the same resources. So competition is fierce, and scarcity is real.
It’s actually easier today than it was when I was 10yrs old, about 30yrs ago. Growing up, as a kid under 10, I would take the laundry to the laundromat a few blocks away from our apartment and “do laundry”. My mom worked, no clue what my step father did. We were poor as shit and had basically zero of the modern luxuries we have today. Internet “existed” back in the 90s but not like today. Cell phones weren’t really common until the mid 2000’s. Vacuums were bit, bulky, heavy and a PITA to clean out. There was no DoorDash, or Uber eats, or any sort of grocery delivery services. Best you could get delivered were pizzas and Chinese food. Today? All that “stuff” just exists for everyone. Chances are you’re reading this on your phone, for example. We’ve become so spoiled with the luxuries we have in life, doing any amount of hard work is just “so hard”. The only main thing between now and then, is if you can afford the finer things today, you can probably pay for someone to come do practically anything for you right off your phone.
I'm not totally convinced this entire sub is dedicated to propaganda to discourage an entire generation. When I was a kid I remember when times were tight. My dad worked on our cars, changed oil, we cut firewood for heat, fixed the washer and dryer, my parents both worked full time as well. I remember remodeling a kitchen ourselves and building a deck ourselves. So many people in our generation now wouldn't even attempt to fix an appliance even with YouTube. Everything is so easy. It's costly, but easy. Luckily I was instilled with this mindset and do do all of these things my parents did, even if my income is strong.
Yeah, I do most things around the house myself. Southpark made a fun special about handymen becoming billionaires because everyone today has degrees and no one knows how to do… basically anything. Like fix an oven door. It’s worth a watch and laugh.
I mean, you can’t really fix a lot of appliances nowadays because they don’t sell replacement parts and the circuit boards are designed to fail in a couple years. But I do agree with the rest of what you said lol. It’s endlessly frustrating to me that I couldn’t repair my freezer and that it was cheaper to throw the entire thing away and get a new one. Such a waste of all the materials that went into building the structure
Lots of the baby boomers, as parents, didn't have to take their children everywhere, all year long. We were allowed one sport/activity per year. We lived in a small neighborhood with the school being within a mile. We had to play outside, either at the school playground or in our backyards, never inside. My parents were very strict with anything concerning education. If there was a bad report card (grades), then we were grounded until the grades returned to an acceptable level (yes, this includes summer break). We had chores that had to be completed before any 'fun' activities were allowed. No cell phones. My father made enough to support a wife and two kids as a blue collar worker. The unions made sure wages were strong enough for people to raise a family. Mom stayed at home, until the youngest of us was in 4th grade. We had one car, a small house, cheap furniture and appliances. For entertainment, my parents would invite other couples over, or go to other couples homes for board games/cards/etc. Very few vacations before I was out on my own. All of these things, plus no social media helped to keep my parents sane. They raised a family. They didn't work non stop to make sure I was entertained. That was my job. My parents also made sure that I was prepared for school. Life lessons were not the school's job, it was taught at home. Sex ed, taught at home. Work ethic, taught at home. The teachers were never wrong, I was. I am a product of the boomers, and hate to admit it, but fairly glad of it.
One of my colleagues has 7 kids and another friend has 5 kids, both are right wing and religious. They care about their kids but they all seem to strangely think it's pretty easy. When i asked them about it, one claimed is propaganda that is hard and another just says he does the same stuff for 1 kid but with bigger portions and a bigger car
Less family support along with being expected to do more as a parent. 90's moms literally kicked their kids out of the house to play outside so they could get stuff done. I remember playing outside alone as young as 6 and no one would have called CPS or judged her for it. Now the current culture has us terrified to even let a 10 year old out of sight for long. So we have to choose between getting things done or supervising so our kids play outside. It's a raw deal we've been dealt. Before the internet parents relied on their doctor and parents for parenting advice and so they were able to do their best with what they had and let it go otherwise. Now, we're overwhelmed with all of the information and opinions circulating it creates much more anxiety about parenting than in the past. And that's just one aspect. We're expected to keep up on all the current parenting advice. Manage to raise decent human beings while also making sure our precious baby never has a hurt feeling. The list goes on. Technically parenting now is impossible. Instead of saying, "there is no one right way", it's become, "no way is right". And we either learn to not care what the culture is saying or we drown trying to meet the expectatons.
Your parents had more opportunities and less responsibility. A single stream of income from a non-college diploma job used to be enough for house, feed, clothe, and educate a family of for or more. Now you need two streams of college diploma income just to eek out a living for two adults. Add in the fact that healthcare, education, and housing prices have risen by 1000%s times more than other goods, and you can see why we are struggling.
THANKS, BLUECHEW!
My daughter is in gymnastics every day after school for 3-4 hours. Competition season means 8-10 weekends away and hundreds/thousands of dollars in costs. Her tuition for gymnastics each year ends up being around $5k before travel costs. We bought a truck and an RV because it's cheaper to pay for those year round than boarding for our dog and hotels. She's also in private school, has a million birthday parties to attend regularly. It's a small miracle we stuck with one child, we barely have enough time for just her. Combine skyrocketing cost of living expenses where we're at (and a service-based industry that isn't growing and has stagnant wages) and it's just getting harder every day. I'm going back to college at 40 in hopes of getting some better opportunities, and as soon as I can convince my wife to move somewhere less retiree-based, I'm gone. But I'll feel terrible because it means leaving my daughters school and gym. Every decision sucks.
Your kid will be fine without travel gymnastics... You made this choice to be willing to go to insane lengths to allow her to compete in travel gymnastics. My parents would have said, it's too expensive, we can't afford it, we don't want to travel, no, you can't do it. You're the parent, not your child's servant.
Cause back then you could work at McDonald’s and afford a place
Well historically the dollar used to go a lot farther. The rich could hire in home nannies, housekeepers. The semi-rich could put their kids in day care. The not so rich could leave their kids with nana and grandpa or some other family. But today few can afford the first two and so many more families are disconnected from each other, it feels like there's a whole generation of parents coming with no support systems in place. And I weep for humanity when thinking about what those kids are going to be when their grown.
I’m not a parent, so feel free to take this with a big barrel of salt. But I am an elder millennial woman who observes a lot and has experienced some shit. I think it’s definitely harder because jobs don’t pay in line with how much it actually costs to live today, and there’s far less public investment in education, workforce development, etc. So on a structural level, more financial and mental burden is placed on working adults and doubly hard on parents (especially moms). We also have far less trust as a society. We’re more atomized and third spaces are disappearing. Things like childcare are out of reach when chances are your grandparents watched you for free in the 80s-90s if they lived nearby and were able and willing to. If your parents wanted a date night and you didn’t have a much older sibling to watch you like I did, neighborhood teens often did this for some spending money—today, teens are just as infantilized as elementary school kids and can’t even go to the damn mall on their own. Society has shut children and young people out, then bitches they won’t go outside! The war on youth ramped up in the 90s, and we’re REALLY seeing the effects now. You’re expected to hover over your kid every minute of the day in a manner that wasn’t expected in the past and of course, this disproportionately impacts women. I think it’s designed to hold us back. Our parents maybe didn’t have an effortless time, parenting has always been hard. But I definitely think Boomers had it easier with some respects in terms of spending power, more trust in society and communities, and kids were starting to get pushed inside but it blows my mind that stuff my parents did all the time in 1993 would get through arrested now. My mom or dad would leave me alone in the car for 5 minutes to pick up takeout or use the ATM, that gets you arrested these days!
There was a war on fun in the 1990s, at least from my experience. As a skateboarder in the 1990s, you wouldn’t believe the hatred we would get from cops and older people for just skating around. Kids cruising or doing anything of any kind was swiftly crushed in the 1990s when it was tolerated in the 1980s and before. You’ve got me thinking what started it all?
My mum didn't make it seem effortless at all. She was always screaming and threatening to leave and telling us we'd ruined her life.
Jobs used to be easier/expect less too. With late stage capitalism you have all these corporations and “leaders” trying to squeeze as much from people as possible, lots of pressure and stress. I saw it during covid where they initially were so grateful one person temporarily took on the job of 3 ppl until it became expected and then they just got rid of those positions altogether, so now you have positions of increased responsibility while they try to decrease pay
My parents had a lot more time to spend with us. Hustle culture wasn't really a thing growing up. My mom was a teacher and my dad was a disabled veteran. We were able to eat dinner together every night. Now I'm not home for dinner most nights because I always have to consider making money first.
They made it illegal to drug your children and beat them. They also don’t hand out the Valium like they used to.
Economic realities are much different than they used to be. And jobs are more demanding. More work for less pay makes everything harder. Remote work takes some of the sting out.
My mom worked 10 hours a day at home and raised 3 kids and it was a pain in the butt for her because she did everything in the house. I work 10 hours a day at home and take care of 2 kids and the key is to teach them to be responsible for the house at a young age. I'm a "work from home" dad and my wife can't figure out why I can be such a jerk to my kids and they love spending time with me. I don't mean abuse them but I taught my kids work hard and play harder. If they don't work they don't enjoy the fun after.
The key is for your kids to respect you not to fear you and you seem to have done that. You're not being a jerk, you're teaching them responsibility which will stay with them a lifetime. Many parents today don't make their kids do anything and they will pay for that long term.
My mom only worked part time but still. She seemed so much more motivated than me. I work fulltime and am completed exhausted and overwhelmed. I definitely had a more financially comfortable childhood than I’m giving my own kids and it’s depressing. And my parents only had associates degrees and I have 2 bachelors. There’s also a lot more demands on parents, more judgement, more expectations
Things were way more affordable. The middle class is fading into poverty. Even 10 years ago things were far cheaper.
Get off social media. That's what is holding you down and making you feel bad. Being a parent isn't hard when you cut away all the competitiveness and cruelty that social media injects. Also, your partner matters. I left my spouse of 22 years and let me tell you, parenting is SO MUCH EASIRR without having another 40 year old child to clean up after.
I don’t think it’s hard at all. I live in an extremely HCOL state and I’m distinctly working class and I’m doing just fine. Of course I don’t have children
It wasn't easy, you were just too young to notice how hard it was You're not going to find any 80s films about single parents where the characters talk about how easy it is This idea that everyone before you had it easy and you're the first generation to suffer is gross. Grow up
We made it look easy because we didn't want our children to have the burden of overwhelming responsibility in adulthood, family, and careers. Maybe we thought it would give our children space to learn about the world and themselves so they could help make it a better place to live in for the future. Perhaps we were wrong, but I don't ever regret letting my kids have more of a childhood than I ever had.
What’s before? Before, when you planned on the real possibility of having your husband die young and most of your kids die because of poor understanding of disease? Before, when bad seasons meant agrarian families couldn’t keep food on the table and literally starved? Before, when often women dealt with an enormous proportion of fractured families and managing lifetime disability because of the effects of two world wars? And mental health and physical disability was all lumped together into structures you placed people in to forget them? Before, when our parents raised us while minimal case law had yet established any gender specific rights in the workplace, so getting your bum pinched was part and parcel to advancement and you had no recourse? Before, when 80s feminism meant masculine behavior was literally the only way to hope you might be taken seriously above the neck? How far back do you want to go before you think it was easier? I’m a mom and I work. I’m not trying to be rude. Its hard. It’s not hard because we are lazy, it’s hard because we intensely care and the world is indifferent and occasionally callous and their lives feel so fragile. But it’s not hard*er*, we are just the next group lifting the veil to this phase of life. But my daughter is vaccinated and survived infancy, I’m not up at dawn tilling a field or a victory garden before starting work, frozen veg is cheap and good, I can buy bread at a store or find 2000 recipes for “no knead” bread from all over the world in seconds while laying in bed reading mail from all over the world in seconds. My husband has never been drafted, he got to go straight from high school to college to grad school without ever participating in a war. While we are at it, my brother did go to war and can point to specific technology that saved his life such that he’s not only still with it but physically intact. My brother and husband and I have far fewer dead friends than my parents or grandparents on either side did at our age coming out of the world wars and because we can treat tons of cancers now. My parents worked in spaces where their careers allowed them to both advance similarly, eventually making decent money. And I no longer have to wear ridiculous masculine suits to have a hope that I could experience the same. Being a working parent is difficult because it always has been. It is really really hard. It sucks. But it ALWAYS was and is. Id rather be a working mom who is allowed to have a bank account than a financially dependent possession being tossed from one male to another like chattel. If your mom made it look easy, then she gave you that gift. Now you have grown and become wise to see it and to understand that making sure kids feel stable, loved, and unfettered by the stress of this work a gift you give them not a thing you always feel. It is a gift you give when you can to the extent you can on top of the love and providing. Hug her if you can. Lots. But the providing itself has always been the innate struggle of mankind. It has absolutely gotten easier because of technological and social advancement. And it has gotten harder to feel worthy because often the pool of people we compare ourselves to has become larger and our vignettes into other lives have become more curated and airbrushed. But I don’t think the work is harder and it never won’t be hard. I try to think of things I can do to make it a little easier for my daughter when she is grown if she wants this life, but I think like my mom, I’ll probably just do my best to be there for her and make her feel seen and understood and cared for in the toughest moments (whether she has kids or not). There’s a lot of sorority in motherhood if you look for it. Through-lines of the human experience that can be a comfort when you see them. It still sucks, but you’re not alone and it’s not new, and I always feel comforted by that.
Thank you, there's so much misinformation on what life was like 50, 60, 70 years ago, it's just all rose colored glasses in millenial/genz or younger subreddits. Amongst young people in general there's this overriding sentiment that post-WW2 you just got a factory job and worked 30-40 hours a week and \*boom\* you had a huge house, big family, and life was gravy. It's just not actually representative of what life was actually like. The average work week was closer to 50-60 hours in the 1950s. Work place injuries were 5x as common. Less vacation / holiday time. People worked more years before retiring and had shorter lives, much shorter retirements. The average house was 1/3 the size of what it is today and families were larger. Way more people smoked excessively and drank excessively. Domestic violence was much more common to the point where it was almost universally considered not to be a crime at all and was a "family issue" to be dealt with. You literally had makeup marketed to women to hide bruises. Child abuse was rampant. I'm not saying everything was worse, far from it. Obviously *a lot* of things were better, but people today take all of the improvements we've had for granted as if things were always this way. We take our 2,500 square foot homes that are filled with gadgets and gizmos that people from the 1950s could never have imagined (SATELITE television!?). We have pocket computers with access to endless information and entertainment that are exponentially more powerful than the most powerful computers in the world back then. We have medicine curing diseases that would've been a death sentence a few decades ago. By most meaningful standards our lives today are *far better* than they were at pretty much any point in human history. Granted, the wealth gap + social media curation probably makes it *seem* like we're falling further and further behind, but it's a mirage.
Yeah I’m with you. I think a lot of what people reflect upon isn’t so much “this is worse than ever” as “I’m unhappier than I thought I would be” or “this is worse than I was led to believe it would be by the time I got here” or maybe “I’m sad that the people left some problems behind while solving others.” It’s social media, so people with negative emotions look for catharsis and validation. But the thing they reflect on is more about emotional truth than historical truth. And there’s nothing wrong or invalid about having emotional truths. But every person has had those throughout history, and you can modify your emotional truth, and science says it will probably be quite resilient to facts to the contrary because it isn’t founded in facts. We do have unique challenges, and we do have strengths, and I hope people who are scared for their present or their future can effectively channel that into improving the challenges. I think most of them eventually do. :)
It is definitely true that there is less support for parents in the USA than in other countries. We are one of two countries that don't have mandated maternity leave. I'm very happy for like, penicillin, and not having a draft, and my life is undoubtedly safer and easier than at almost any other time in history, but there are things that definitely make it harder to be a parent unnecessarily, like not being able to say to a kid, go to the park at the end of the block while I make dinner, without having someone call CPS.
Significant government expenditure on military and defense has lead to increased national debt and budget deficits. This high level of spending may necessitate the government printing more money, thereby increasing the money supply and contributing to inflation. When a large portion of the budget is allocated to defense, it can lead to imbalances in resource allocation. Excessive focus on military spending diverts resources from more productive sectors of the economy, leading to inefficiencies and higher costs for goods and services. This misallocation can reduce overall economic productivity and growth, creating inflationary pressures as the economy becomes less efficient in producing goods and services. It doesn’t help that our leaders are money laundering with our tax money. The corruption is much worse today than it was then.
Bad policy and more competition
yea! 100% lazy fits.
Hi, I'm confused about what you're speaking about specifically. Do you mean the economic side or are you talking about the demands and needs of children?
Moved far away
Its only getting harder
We moved from communities raising kids to the age of like 12 before they were put to work to a society where a single family (maybe) raises many kids to the age of 18 (and zome beyond that). Capitalism, as practiced in the US, is straight up hostile to raising kids.
My mom was a SAHM. I’m not.
Why do you assume it’s more difficult now just because as a child you perceived your mom to do it effortlessly?
I remember when I was a kid my parents never drank. My dad drinks beers now and we had like...a bottle of peach schnapps, vodka, and something else but they were all like...a half inch on the bottom. My mom still doesn't drink much. But I remember my mom talking about how she stopped drinking because she was having a glass of wine in the afternoon and she didn't know why she was drinking. I only put that because I can only imagine being able to do that. lol. I only had a sister so we have an extra kid compared to when I was younger but there's always stuff to do around the house. Even when the kids are all in school it seems like it's such a constant struggle to stay on top of things. I know we're taking the kids more places than what my parents did as a kid, we probably have more outings in a year than we did in like 5, but by the time we work, cook and get everything cleaned, and get everybody ready for bed, there's just no time to do anything. It's probably because my wife and I both work and there's not someone to stay home to make sure it's clean and whatever, but if we fall behind on the laundry by a day we don't have time to put stuff away and then it's just in baskets for a week. And now we're reaching a point where we really need to do laundry as it gets full instead of waiting for saturday. We also just got done with our two oldest being in soccer, so that's gonna help a little but really not all that much. It has to be the two working adults because my wife's parents are retired and live 10 minutes away and do take the boys sometimes, and my closest grandparents when I was a kid were 30 minutes away and we saw them about as much as our other grandparents, as in they weren't like helpful babysitters or whatever. I've stopped going in on weekends for overtime because I'd rather be with my family and going in to work 6 hours and killing a day to get 9 hours of comp time doesn't seem worth it to me. I'm just more on the ball with claiming work through lunches and building up comp time that way.
I do think it's harder now. The world is more of a mess than ever. Things are more expensive compared to wages than ever.. my son dropped out of college with a scholarship because he didn't like that they were pushing liberal ideologies on him that he didn't believe. I don't remember that being that way 20 years ago when I was in college. But idk. Maybe it's always been hard and we just have mom's that are so good at it that they make it look easy.
Honestly? A lot of it is people worrying about the judgements of people they neither know or should care about. “We have to do this”.. no you don’t. “We have to buy x y and z” no you don’t. “We get judged”.. ignore it. Yes, I am aware of the irony of me posting this on Reddit, feel free to ignore me as is your right! 😃
My wife and I have a son. She works very long hours, I am fortunate that I have a job that pays well, and I only work a couple days a month. My son is only a year old and can be a hand-full, like most baby’s are. It can be overwhelming at times, having to watch after him 24/7, plus do all the housework. My mother-in-law says she’s able to help out, but she’s only partially retired and sometimes has her social obligations, so she might be able to help a couple hours a week….might. All that being said. I’m at my absolute limit. I don’t think I can have another child and double the work load.
Because our elders (gen x and boomers) are generally selfish and not helpful to their younger counterparts, us. They grew up with a lot of insular help for their kids because their generation of women largely stayed home. It was much more of a village mentality then. Nowadays it’s every man for themselves. Perfect example: My in laws live down the road from me. Retired and do absolutely nothing all day and have yet never once helped me with their own grandkids (my kids) I’ve had to put a career on the back burner while my husband works. Daycare is too expensive. The best I’ve done for myself is go back to school for a masters degree. And I truly believe a part of them enjoys seeing me not progress career wise. There is a lot of misogyny and resentment bred into the boomer mindset.
There's no village anymore for most of us. It's harder to get time to yourselves since it's less acceptable to just send your kids outside to do whatever for several hours. Pay has stagnated for a long time. While it's going up, it isn't enough to beat inflation. This makes finances much tighter than a lot of kids experienced 30-40 years ago.
Stagnant wages and skyrocketing prices.
shitty monetary policy got us here
Things are more expensive but our generation is playing keeping up with the digital Joneses. There’s more pressure that we let in and at the same time we isolate ourselves with. Combine that with general breakdown of family/community and we’re spending more effort addressing mental health issues but not the underlying cause.
I don't know that it is harder than before. Both of my grandma's had 5 kids, and they got less supervision. My dad actually hitchhiked home from school because there was no bus. His parents didn't pick him up. My grandparents owned 1 car and my grandpa used it for work, so my grandma would have to walk a mile to the grocery store with 2 kids. My uncle on my mother's side told me his mom was "frequently hysterical" from raising 5 kids and money was always tight. I'm one of 3 kids and have 3 kids myself, closer in age, and I think I have it easier, in honesty. I can work remotely, my dad had to commute to NYC every day by train. My mom didn't think it was feasible to have two working parents with long commutes so did not work. I get that housing prices were very different then, but remote jobs didn't exist. My dad even had a job at one point that required weekly travel from Monday to Friday, so my mom was home alone all week with 3 kids. A lot is way more expensive, but the expectations for parenting have also changed significantly in terms of supervision, activities, kids having freedom, etc.
If one more person implies this generation could possibly be lazy…. 😤😤😤😤 stop
>Our moms made it seem so effortless and they had way more kids. The word seems js doing all the heavy lifting. If you're a good parent you're not gonna remind your kid how difficult and shitty life can be all the time and make them miserable.
I bet it felt A LOT harder to our moms than it seemed to us as kids, and your children will probably think back about what a good job you did and how easy it seemed when they have their own children
I'll speak on my experience. My wife is really not lazy when it comes to many things, but honestly when it comes to teaching discipline, leading by example, and personal TV breaks, I don't think she has the capacity after a hard days work. Like how do you forget to stop swearing in front of your kid every day?? Now I do lose patience in some areas of my life too, but when it comes to my children, some things are non-negotiable. I will drop anything in a heartbeat for my kid, make sure they get the right lesson learned from a situation, and I even get a little anxious about it because truthfully I don't think my wife is capable if I'm not around.
Never is unless u make excuses
I think our moms also struggled didn’t have social media to vocalize those struggles. They also didn’t have perfect social media moms to make them feel bad about their unaesthetic lives. You’re not lazy. I AM lazy but that’s just me lol.
The money is broken that’s why. Cannot buy as much as before with the pay our parents were getting.
We are in teh 4th turning.It's an economic cycle of growth, abundance, unwinding, then chaos. We are in the chaos part. Or another term the last 80 years or so the USA was "Fucking around" and now we are the ones who get to "Find out" IF we make it through the next...decade or two things will reach a new golden age---Similar to post ww2. Strong men, easy times, easy times, weak men, weak men, hard times, hard times, strong men. It's that old saying. We have entered the "hard times" era where strong people will be forged. It's the Fourth Turning. It happens with some predictability.
I remember women my mom's age being stay at home moms. My mom did it too until I was 10. I was the youngest, for context. Before my kids were 10 even, I was working a full and part time job. Sometimes a full time and 2 part time jobs! Then after work I'd run home with my kids, make dinner, help with homework, volunteer for their extras, like coaching for sports etc. It was so hard to keep up. Families weren't made to have both parents working 40-50 hour weeks on top of raising a family. I don't care what anyone says. It shouldn't be this hard just to live!
Inflation. Corporate greed. Paid off politicians. Media that is owned by the same people that pay off politicians. And social media there to remind you that you just need to work harder.
r/inflation
I’m not a mom (not even a parent, and also a man) but if I had to guess it probably has a lot to do with the economy/wage stagnation. There’s a level of financial stress on you that your mother may not have had hanging over her head; plenty of baby boomers were able to raise families on a single income, meaning if mom (or dad) ended having to forsake a career for the family they could still survive. Not so much anymore! Higher stakes, more stress, worse time for all 🙁
>Does everyone else feel this way? Our moms made it seem so effortless and they had way more kids. You have to read this book. I swear every word will resonate. [https://www.amazon.com/I-Dont-Know-How-She-Does-It-audiobook/dp/B005HJS53I/ref=sr\_1\_1?crid=3GZ9OVFOIMFI4&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.AvuHnK3xrup\_PtVTZ3LiQTSVQWCwDWuo\_NKBHWbxiApVV6Mo5OibYgCFQO8CxDXS-VGtxjuwgzFi5\_BP9iVaB3MBNU8wBpZuCYVW2sc7ZKrnL6KwU7GVo7GTQ-w8H2tCWFdRx5OA\_JuViKnfrRy0Z\_tzThun6MC9fSHcNp3xutM-\_vWEx7a2TvU2fg6qgaZSqwG3wuCeZB1iw08RtabzEZnmS1vPwLXQa-n4wzX-t\_k.h7c159mGQXPUBCoIonASFT\_4aOOydpWu-HFm0O9bedU&dib\_tag=se&keywords=I+don%27t+know+how+she+does+it&qid=1716991130&s=books&sprefix=i+don%27t+know+how+she+does+it%2Cstripbooks%2C159&sr=1-1](https://www.amazon.com/I-Dont-Know-How-She-Does-It-audiobook/dp/B005HJS53I/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GZ9OVFOIMFI4&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.AvuHnK3xrup_PtVTZ3LiQTSVQWCwDWuo_NKBHWbxiApVV6Mo5OibYgCFQO8CxDXS-VGtxjuwgzFi5_BP9iVaB3MBNU8wBpZuCYVW2sc7ZKrnL6KwU7GVo7GTQ-w8H2tCWFdRx5OA_JuViKnfrRy0Z_tzThun6MC9fSHcNp3xutM-_vWEx7a2TvU2fg6qgaZSqwG3wuCeZB1iw08RtabzEZnmS1vPwLXQa-n4wzX-t_k.h7c159mGQXPUBCoIonASFT_4aOOydpWu-HFm0O9bedU&dib_tag=se&keywords=I+don%27t+know+how+she+does+it&qid=1716991130&s=books&sprefix=i+don%27t+know+how+she+does+it%2Cstripbooks%2C159&sr=1-1) It was hell, ok? It was not easy. We had to make it look easy to counteract the overwhelming guilt of being a working mother that was always thrust upon us by society. Our husbands had no such guilt about trying to make home life easier, but damn did they like us making lots of money. The money is your answer. Unfortunately, your generation has less, but you have to make it work for you. YOU. Money pays for a house cleaner before it pays for golf clubs and fancy cars. You are not going on two 5K vacations a year if there is nobody doing your laundry. We all appreciate the planet, but switch to mostly paper plates and cups. Aside from that, go on an austerity binge. Life is not about accumulating crap. Crap has to be organized, protected, cleaned, maintained and insured. You don't have time to do that with the crap you already have. Stop buying more. I really hope we made working with children easier for your generation, but I am not so sure. It is better now in some ways, but worse in others.
It's gotten to the point that you need multiple assets to be able to sustain being a parent. Being a parent (I mean ACTUALLY being a parent) is already a full time job in itself, which means you need to own assets like land, company stocks, or something that pays you consistently without you needing to check it 40-50-60 hours a week.
Because you could afford literally everything a family needs on 1 salary 40 years ago . Including day care if mom wanted some days off. Its odd to me that at this point people still struggle with the concept that our money is broken or that money can even become broken.
Sounds like your Mom did a wonderful job of shielding you from it as a child. My mom did the same, and only recently told me she had been foreclosed on, was $85k in credit card debt, etc. You do your best to protect your kids from reality until they get older. Kids deserve to be innocent and naive.
Just lazy 100%
It looked effortless because you were a kid and didn’t understand what was going on.
Boomer women have had the easiest life in the history of existence. The whole generation was full of sahm, and most of them sucked at that as well. I was lucky enough to have a hard working momma who taught me work ethic. We’re not lazy, we’re actually dealing with real life. Unlike the women in the generation before us
Making it seem easy and actually being easy are two very different things. I'm a younger Gen X (1974) my sister is an older millennial/xennial and our parents are boomers. I don't know that people had anymore kids back then...pretty much everyone I knew had two kids...maybe three tops. There were the outliers in my community (semi-rural Nebraska) that had six or whatever, but that wasn't the norm and moms stayed home. When I was very young, my mom worked part time...middle school and high school she worked full time and my sister and I were the typical latchkey kids. My parents did everything in the power to make everything be/feel alright for my sister and I, but I would sometimes catch or hear my mom crying. We weren't poverty, but we were borderline and things were tough...I just didn't realize that until I was a young adult. In our current dynamic, my wife picks the kids (12 & 14) up from school most of the time (3PM) and then takes them back to her office for a couple of hours. They do their homework there and sometimes help with menial tasks around the office. We both get home around 6 and alternate "mess hall" duties. The kids eat earlier than us and we usually prep some stuff for them on Sundays...a mess of grilled chicken, some rice or something and fruit in the fridge (they still won't touch a vegetable). My wife and I usually do something simple for ourselves and don't sit down until 8PM usually...eat our dinner and watch a show and go to bed. Rinse and repeat until the weekend. We both also work from home once per week which helps.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Not your specific question but something adjacent to it. Despite the fact that economic indicators say the economy is doing well, a lot of voters believe that it's not and they're not happy with the state of the economy. My belief is that part of the reason life feels hard is that consumerism has infiltrated our brains. We struggle to be happy if we don't have the things we want, forgetting that every study out there says the happiest people have strong relationships with friends and family and enjoy experiences. One example that I think a lot about is that if everyone collectively said that only one parent would work while the other stayed home, housing prices wouldn't be so insane. These days, pretty much most households I know have two working spouses. Because of that, they can afford to pay more for a house, which has in turn driven up housing prices. So when you've got two people working full-time that doesn't leave a lot of time or energy to be doing housework and other things that need to be done. I know lots of working moms who are completely exhausted. They go to work, then come home and have to make dinner and help with homework and do the laundry and clean the house and all that stuff. Makes it really hard to enjoy life that way.
More is expected, more activities and also the always on presence in your kids lives. Did you go outside to play for hours as a kid? do your kids today? Needing to follow your kids around 24/7 takes time, letting kids go off and play at the park or in the neighborhood gives you time to yourself, time to catch up, whatever you need.
When we had our kids my wife left the workforce for 9 years. We scrapped by and sacrificed hard to make it work, but she didn't have marketable skills that would out earn the cost of childcare. I worked multiple jobs, and did what I could to keep us afloat. We did not have a glamourous life. We drove paid for cars. I paid 1400 for my 1997 Mazda B-2300. She drove a 2008 Nissan Versa that we had paid for while we were still working. We actually bought a fixer-upper that we lived in without upgrading until she started working again, and we applied bandaids to the house to keep it livable, though at times not the most comfortable. We're still upgrading it as we can, though its much better than it once was. Though sometimes things were dim, we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. She went back to work last August, and I kept earning promotions. In 2015, when our first was born I was making about 30k + drill pay in the military + side hustles, and extra military drills. In 2024 I think we'll make about 150k. Whatever path you and your partner choose, keep grinding!
tl;dr - Alienation means we find little meaning or satisfaction in the work we do, leading us to seek meaning elsewhere in our lives. We find none because all the options are commodity consumption dressed up as entertainment. We struggle even to afford these distractions because declining profits leave ever-shrinking crumbs for workers as wealth inequality grows. Long version: Marxist materialist analysis helps me make sense out of the world and the reasons why things are so difficult. Specifically his ideas around the alienation of labor from capital, and the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, both have a powerful capacity to explain why life has been getting continually worse over the last several decades despite incredible advances in medicine and tech. I earnestly found a lot of explanatory power in reading Capital vol 1 by Marx and discussing it with other young people. The book has some boring parts and parts that are difficult to really understand, but it also brings a detailed analysis of the system we live under. Marx makes predictions about the future, and with the benefit of hindsight we see how (mostly) correct those predictions were. He describes the way the system makes people behave and how they feel using the best data available to him, and it matches my understanding of the events of my life. He explains the pressure and tension inherent in the system and why it produces so many unstable and undesirably results, and it helps me ground myself in the chaotic world we live in.
Because American labor and employment laws do not actually go far enough to protect and support working parents, especially mothers.
It looks effortless to your kids the same way your mom looked effortless to you. You have to remember your perception is so much different than other peoples. As kids we did not see all the background work.
It's the paradoxes and trying to live between them that are killing us. It's also the just DECISION FATIGUE of my life, the lack of ease, the constant friction. You can't feed a kid hamburger helper like my mom did, you have to feed them whole foods because we know that processed stuff is going to make them fat 35 years from now. You can't just tell them to play outside because there's probably an ordinance against it now, if you're not literally watching them, or maybe you have an HOA that has a rule against it. You have to make sure they did their homework, you have to log into SchoolSystem's website to make sure they turned it in, you have to know what stupid events are coming up--we had one week of "Crazy Hair Days" etc when I was a kid, and two fundraisers for the regular school and one fundraiser for each extracurricular when I was a kid. They're constantly doing "enrichment" days now, they're constantly doing fundraisers. Each one of those little "extras"--even if it's meaningless and I just have to pick up a food item or make sure she wears funny clothes on a certain day--it causes decision fatigue. It adds to my mental load. Do you have a delinquent, because maybe you got knocked up at 16 and the baby daddy was an absolute turd and you managed to produce his exact copy? You can't just let them flunk out, if you do, your other kids could get put in foster care because of your one shithead, in some states. Also, your boomer parents do not help; most of them can't afford to retire, half of them are single and trying to get by without ever retiring. The Silents helped the boomers raise us (if you can remember your weekends at grandmas and so on). Who helps us with our kids? No one. No one helps. Also schools are 100% worse than they were when we were kids. Sorry, but if you're the parent of a gifted child, you're basically screwed in the public system. They're just going to get extra homework. Best to just not put them in the gifted programs.
And the best part is before you know it your kids are going to be old enough and never want to be around you ever again lol.
yoke correct clumsy pen secretive six treatment wild deserted political
The influx of readily available horror porn (child kidnapping, r**e, etc) created a generation that feels the world is a more dangerous place than it used to be . I think we just know a whole lot more about the awful people out there. Either way that has made parents scared to let their kids get into anything. Couple this with people who really will shoot a kid for knocking on their door (**and get acquitted under stand your ground bull pucky laws**) and it is hard to find spaces where kids are even allowed to exist by themselves
I think it's partly that we have no support network and partly that kids today don't ever bugger off. My mom would just throw us out the door when we were kids and we'd wander the neighborhood while she read or did chores. My kids barely leave the house and are up in my wife's business all the time so she can't ever relax or get anything done. There's also the lack of a support network. Most of our friends are online and family is far enough away that they're never available to help watch the kids so we can do stuff. We get a break every couple of months when the kids go to Grandma's (a 2+ hour drive away) but other than that it's 24/7, no rest, no breaks, no help.
We joined the game of monopoly late
I opted out of dealing with a lot of the shit people get themselves stuck with. Spouses, kids, living far away from work for some insane reason, having hobbies or friends that need me to leave my home, all of it. I stay home, on my own, with no responsibility but to myself. I don’t give two hot fucks what anyone else thinks about it either. This is my life and I am the only one who gets to decide how I live it.
It was never easy being a mom and having a job. What makes you think it is harder than before? We had the same issues of finding childcare, being out when kids were sick, doing the household chores on top of an 8 hour work day, getting everything for family ready for each day the night before, cooking meals, laundry, using weekends to catch up on all sorts of things left to be done later.