When your child rolls over 45 minutes past bedtime and asks 27 consecutive rapid-fire questions (“Why is your pee hot?”), your soul leaves your body and you wonder if you were being unkind. Has anyone ever woken up in the middle of the night worrying about something happening? Next, number 28: “When will I die? No, exactly how many years?”
If you’ve ever tossed and turned in the wee hours of the morning, you’re probably wondering if you forgot to set your alarm for 4 a.m. to compete with other parents in the city for a spot at swim class. (It’s like The Hunger Games, but maybe even more violent).
And if you’ve ever hit your face on a pillow, your main memory may be the time your child fell off the monkey bars while watching reels of Dancing with the Stars on your phone. Torture yourself about whether it formed (he was fine…) Maybe you should google “signs of delayed internal bleeding” just to be sure? )
You’re not alone in worrying that you’ve caused them irreparable harm. you are not special. You are truly a modern parent.
Last weekend, in response to a recent CBC News article about the stresses of modern parenting, Cross Country Checkup asked parents to describe the issues that stress their families the most. On the radio show, we heard from parents across Canada about generational differences in parenting styles, division of labor, and isolation, to name just a few.
Ask |Which parenting issue causes the most stress?:
Cross Country Checkup1:52:16Which parenting issue causes the most stress for your family?
For many of us, the most important role is that of a parent. It’s also one of the most challenging. It’s no wonder, then, that the US Surgeon General recently issued a warning about the potential damage parenting can do to mental health. Which parenting issue is the most stressful for your family? How has the way you were raised influenced the way you parent today?
“I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s, and she grew up in the late ’90s and 2000s,” Albert Jayme said of their differences. “Just that difference is starting to show how they approach things differently.” he said. He is discussing childcare with his wife.
“Growing up, I don’t really know if I’ve ever seen a car seat in my house,” said Jayme, who lives in Saskatoon and has a three-year-old and another baby on the way.
Some parents who participated in the program talked about broader issues, such as pressure to break generational cycles and teaching children to control their emotions, which caused them the most stress. Some parents were more specific about what they were doing.
“How do you deal with big eaters?” said Melanie Reavely of British Columbia’s Cowichan Valley. By the time she and her partner had their second child, they no longer had the will to fight for food. I explained that I had given up. “He’s almost 17 and we’re still concerned about this parenting issue.”
See |Why picky eating is caused by genetics:
British research suggests that “food obsession” lies in nature, not upbringing | Canada Tonight
New British research suggests that individual differences in picky eating at all ages are largely due to genetics, not parenting. Canada Tonight medical contributor Dr. Sameer Gupta breaks down the findings.
Parenting has really changed
The recognition that having children is increasingly expensive, time-consuming, and stressful is reflected in recent public health recommendations issued by the U.S. Surgeon General.
In August, Dr Vivek Murthy warned of the impact of modern stress on parents’ mental health, saying that today’s parents face unique challenges such as rising costs of living, social media and the youth mental health crisis. He said that
On top of that, some experts claim that parenting is becoming more intense. Data shows that today’s parents spend more time with their children than previous generations (despite more women working full-time), and that modern parenting styles are increasingly focused on acknowledging children’s feelings. It has been shown that many parents feel burnt out because of the emphasis placed on them.
Allison Schaefer, a family counselor and parenting expert in Kingston, Ontario, and author of Ain’t Misbehavin’, Honey I Wrecked the Kids, and Breaking the Good Mom Myth, says, “We have changed the way we look at parenting.”
Believe it or not, 100 years ago people didn’t even think that raising children was important, Schaefer told Cross Country Checkup. Today, the cultural idea that parents should always try to keep their children happy is very different from previous generations, other experts say.
For example, according to the New York Times, parenting manuals themselves were almost non-existent before their proliferation in the 1970s.
Only recently has “parenting” become a verb. A century ago, parents weren’t as concerned about how their parenting would affect their children, says expert Alison Schaefer. This 1919 archive photo shows a mother holding her child on a leash at a London train station. (Bobaku Tsushinsha/Getty Images)
In his book Long Days, Short Years: A Cultural History of Modern Parenting, author Andrew Bomback notes that the word “parenting” itself was not commonly used as a verb until then. . It was then, he wrote, that becoming a parent changed “from being someone to doing something.”
Right now, “we’re living in really, really scary times,” Schaefer said. “We think kids are so fragile, and we’re told that we have to worry about all sorts of things, like all the nutrition, that car seats actually have to be at a certain angle. ” she said.
“The level of specificity, the number of things that parents have to pay attention to, has become overly inflated.”
Where is the supposed village?
Genevieve Gee, of Vaughan, Ont., said she tries not to get stressed out while raising her four children because she knows difficult times won’t last forever. But she also acknowledged that none of that would have been possible had she not chosen to live in a community where she knew she would have support.
“I think that’s something that a lot of families are missing. My parents live around the corner. I have a great network of friends…a great community within walking distance of my home. There’s a center and there’s a transit line along the public road,” Gee said.
“But it’s kind of necessary…and without it, I don’t know if we would have made the choices we did to have a large family.”
Most parents today tend to feel increasingly isolated and alone, according to research cited in a recent report by U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. (Shutterstock)
The U.S. Secretary of State’s report notes that most parents today tend to feel increasingly isolated and lonely, with approximately 65 percent of parents and guardians experiencing loneliness. It cited a 2021 study that found about 65 percent of non-parents experience loneliness.
However, a 2023 study of hunter-gatherer societies published in the journal Developmental Psychology found that children experience high levels of contact from multiple people, a “village” of people needed to raise their children. It is possible that children are psychologically hardwired to grow through care.
“For most of our species’ evolutionary history, mothers probably received far more support than they do in the Western world,” lead author Nikhil Chowdhury, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Cambridge in the UK, said in a news release last year. ” he pointed out. . ”
In their research paper, the authors write, “Children have evolved to receive extraordinary levels of physical contact and care, rapid soothing responses to cries, and personal attention from multiple caregivers beyond their biological parents.” “It’s possible that we’ve been trained to expect that.”
Watch | Is parenting actually harder today?:
Is raising children more difficult now than in the past?
Public health advisories say today’s parents face unique challenges that can impact their mental health. For some parents of older generations, raising children has always been, and continues to be, difficult. Can we really say which generation had it worst?
division of labor
But as Winnipeg mother Jocelyn Lalonde pointed out, there’s still an expectation that the bulk of childcare and household management falls on one person, and that typically falls on the mother.
“If we continue with that default, we’re just on a speeding train of burnout,” she says.
Fathers may now have more household responsibilities than before, but those responsibilities are more predictable, with fathers spending more time with their children and mothers taking more responsibility for cleaning and scheduling. Researchers point out that this pattern often follows.
According to Statistics Canada’s 2022 report, women continue to perform the lion’s share of unpaid domestic work, including housework and childcare.
Many women work full-time outside the home, Lalonde said, but they still have the ability to communicate with schools, figure out what size their child wears, foster relationships with other parents in the neighborhood, and manage everything from car seats to diapers. He is responsible for researching everything from the best brands in the world. Bedtime routine — all the invisible labor you wouldn’t otherwise see.
She took on most of that labor for her first child until something was needed. Catalyst for change? “Twins,” Lalonde said with a laugh. “I had three children under the age of three, and I was like, oh no, I can’t keep going like this, or I’m going to crash and burn.”
Statistics Canada’s 2022 report finds that while fathers are spending more time with their children, women still consistently take on a larger share of unpaid housework. (Ropolo/Shutterstock)
Source link
