I was reading this article from Pyschcentral about parents and whether or not we seem to kvetch more nowadays? Which was in response to the New York Times “Motherlode” blog.
Following the discussion on Why do Parents complain so much, do we whine more as modern parents? Are we less resilient that our parents were? Or is it just that we seem to complain more because we speak out more, share more and are a bit more open about how parenting can be challenging.
We discuss more publicly
Over time, we have stopped raising children in villages and started raising them seemingly by ourselves behind closed doors, minding our business and managing the parenting matter how best we can. Now with the internet it’s almost like the idea of raising your children in a village is returning – albeit an e-village, we are asking for advise online, we are sharing tips and researching more than ever before. I remember using babycenter to get pregnancy advice and using dcurbanmoms to get school and doctor recommendations.
So maybe it seems we complain more because there are so many platforms to share and discuss such as facebook, twitter, Bb, forums etc. Is it complaining or just collaboration on the parenting journey…
Parenting is hard(er)
Parenting has always been hard there has always been different challenges through the ages. Now in addition to raising healthy adjusted children we also have to figure out how to manage the modern day technology (for both our children and ourselves) we need to prepare our children for.
Our modern parenting challenges seem to be more intense if that’s possible? I do know Grandparents comment that “the children of nowadays are different sha” and that the “parenting challenges we face are entirely different”
Cylce of trying to have it all
One of the biggest issues I find is that there is so much focus on having it all. I believe in you have different things at different times.
Our parents didn’t have as much challenges of trying to be superwoman – a career women and raising a family. However with more expensive living standards, more expensive basic education, failed state, aspiring to summer holidays, ipads, it is harder than it was before to afford to raise a family.
The famous stay-at-home versus working mum discussion is always “trending” Mums who stay-at-home struggle with not working and those that work outside the home struggle with not being there for every school play.
As someone said, with social media, everyone seems to be having fun and you wonder if you are doing enough. Images of picture perfect families going on holiday, children on broadway and winning awards, Mums looking like she stepped out of a magazine gets everyone wondering why you can’t seem to measure up?
What do you think? Do we share too much? Or is it better to speak out more?
photo source:Â blog.vodafone.co.uk
