It was as early as last December when I probably first saw it. A video talking about various 20 something year old’s complaining on social media about millennial parents. How they don’t teach their children discipline and just thrust screens in their faces. Ever since then, it appears to be the general consensus. Millennials are the worst parents.
Well… As a millennial parent myself, this was not something I wanted to hear. After a while, if I was scrolling through the internet news and saw any reference to these trending topics, I avoided them knowing that the person on the other end would probably do the same thing the others had done. Turn to the camera with a solemn nod of agreement and extrapolate the same talking points the others had given about how and why this was the case.
Now, I imagine if any of these same people were to read about my anger and flat out refusal to even acknowledge these videos they would probably condescendingly reply something like, “Well, you’re just mad because it’s the truth”, but that’s not exactly why. The main reason being that I worry it’s the truth. These are the same anxieties I already have about my abilities as a parent. I don’t need a random person on the internet who doesn’t know me or my children to tell me what my inner demons are already cudgeling me with. Ultimately though it doesn’t matter, I still have questions about this.
Millennials are probably the first parents to experience parenting and share in it’s entirety a reality with social media. It won’t take you long to find millions if not thousands of videos, photos, and blogs about motherhood and parenting. There are moms talking about their kids meals every day, the cute things their kids are saying and getting up to, the best way to school your children, how to discipline their child, the wrong ways to discipline your child, the right ways to feed your child, the wrong ways to feed your child, what to feed them, how they got their body back, their child’s outfits, their children’s hair, all the trips and escapades they are going on with their family. This isn’t even talking about all the videos and blogs about fatherhood as well!
But the internet isn’t just a parents world. The internet houses all people and opinions. There are countless videos and posts from various teachers, their classrooms, the types of things they’re teaching, the types of things their students are saying to them, the types of things they do in their classroom to help kids, the types of children they encounter, the parents they encounter. People without children talking about experiences they witnessed on the street, their opinions on children and whether they want or value them or not, Teenagers and children talking about their parents, complaining about their family, gushing about their family, Therapist talking about a child’s mind, the best ways to parent, the best ways to teach, the best way to get them to eat their meals. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles talking about their experience, what they did, what they’re seeing, their advice, Political activists, their opinions on child rearing, the best ways to teach them, the best ways to raise them, homeschool? Public school? Private school? pediatricians opinions on children’s health, best practices, their experiences. And yes, any critisism any of these groups have about how parent’s parent.
There are groups of people like teachers, therapists and doctors in particular that are bound to see things that a parent isn’t seeing. They spend a lot of time with all sorts of kids. They studied it. You would hope they have some insight as to what is typical and what isn’t and that’s very valuable. It’s even valuable to take in the concerns of those who don’t have children. But the people behind the camera reacting are bound to encounter blind spots. There are so many things that we don’t know. Who are these parent’s they are complaining about? Who are these children? What exactly is happening behind closed doors? We don’t know. Very rarely is full context given.
In a lot of the video’s I’ve watched I’ve noticed these broad blanketing statements that if this one example shows a bad parent or undisciplined child, then this must be true of ALL millennial parents and this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine as someone who likes to be specific. There is usually just this unspoken and unacknowledged list of disclaimers for anything a person says and I’ve grown to understand and accept that. They’re most likely not meaning every millennial is a completely bad parent. But still the implication is that, overall, this is the case. And what gets me the most about these statements is wondering about the algorithm of their mind that helped them make these conclusions.
How much experience or qualifications do they have with raising children? Are they parent’s themselves? If so, how long or how long ago? If not, how much interaction have they had with children overall throughout their life? How much do they know about these parents they’re criticizing? What political or research biases do they have? In most cases, it’s hard to gage. While anyone has the ability to observe something like being a parent and having children and have an opinion on it, it’s a completely different experience to be one and it’s not secret how multifaceted it is.
There are millions of videos, pictures, memes, and blog posts talking about the other side of parenting. Moms talking about their struggle to discipline their child, feed their child food they give them, teach their child, comfort their child, spend time with their child, provide for their child, love their child and still have time with their spouse, finding time for themselves, struggles to get their body back into shape, struggles with loving themselves in general with the struggles of post partum depression. I’m sure people without children aren’t oblivious to this. It’s why I assume there are quite a few people who decide not to have children in the first place. But to reiterate for the millionth time, while a valuable experience, being a parent is much harder when you’re in it.
There are some people who think they have the answer. There are books, shows, channels, podcasts etc. who all preach of the knowledge they have about child psychology and go into great detail about all the aspects of how the child’s mind works. How they should be molded to create healthy functioning humans. And in theory it usually sounds great… You know…. if they all could agree on what to do. There are whole cliques about the best way to teach a child. Going from the gentle parenting crowd that encourage a parent to control their own emotions in order to discipline their child and use positive reinforcement all the way in the opposite side of the spectrum with the corporal punishment crowd that preach the benefits of spanking and screaming to get your children to do what you want. All of them citing the resources of child psychology that they believe proves theirs’ is the best way. The only way.
But, obviously, theirs isn’t the only way since children are a diverse group of human beings. Each responding to different things in vastly different ways and incentivized by vastly different things. For instance, my oldest child doesn’t like chocolate. My youngest? Loves it! I cannot simply incentivize both my babies with chocolate. I have to think outside the box and give her a fruit snack or a lollipop.
Not to mention, there issues and struggles in life are inherently different since their personalities and experiences are different. Do people really believe you should discipline the sensitive child and the spunky spitfire the exact same? And that’s not even scratching the surface of this. For instance, my oldest, struggles to eat anything outside oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly, tortillas, chicken nuggets, and peas, but I have no issue getting her to sleep in her bed the entire night. My youngest will at least try what’s in front of her, but struggles to sleep in her bed throughout the night.
This is, in part, because of the different things I have done for each of them. I started Sweets, my oldest, sleeping on her own at an early age. I’m a rule follower and was told not to sleep with her so I attempted to get her to sleep in her bassinet. Then her crib. Her entire first year being a struggle for me as I attempted to get her used to the idea of sleeping on her own until it wasn’t a struggle anymore. With eating, I attempted to give her varying things, but over time it became easy to feed her the same things over and over again. This might have attributed to her aversion to trying different things.
With Button, her life experience has been different. From an early age, I opted to let her sleep with us so I could get some sleep given that she shares a room with Sweets and worried about disrupting Sweets; which has made her learning to sleep in her crib a bit tricky. With eating, I have been better with her about giving her things I’m making and eating from an early age and she has gotten used to that.
Some outside the situation could point out that if I had just worked hard enough with Button on sleep or I had just been better about giving Sweets different foods, then I wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place, however, that doesn’t take into account a child’s agency and personality. Sweets may very well just not like certain textures and tastes and is more cooperative about things like sleep. She sleeps like the dead now. Button is also young and hasn’t developed a firm opinion about things. This could change since she is very much the youngest child and squawks when she doesn’t get her way. No matter how hard you want to control them, children, just like you do, make their own choices. They cannot simply be manipulated or threatened to do things the way you want them to if they don’t want to. And more and more it is looked down upon to try and scare them into submission. For good reason. But everyone’s line of what is too much is different. We like to think that if you just parent harder, they will all act like little angels who do everything we say…. But children are still, well, children. Still learning and growing.
Something else not taken into account is that parents are humans too with limited abilities, strengths, and time. We all have a general understanding of what needs to happen in order to create a healthy human being, but regardless of how healthy and equipped most parents feel they are, we are not perfectly healthy human being’s ourselves in perfectly settled situations all the time. Some are duel income, other’s aren’t, some are rich, other’s aren’t. Some have a big family or community support, others don’t, some are divorced, some have blended families, other’s aren’t, some are religious, other’s aren’t, some are gay, other’s aren’t, some bear children out of wedlock, others don’t, some have them young, others old. This isn’t even taking into account a person’s personality.
Take the duel income household, this might fuel the mom to spend as much time with her littles as possible or leave her completely exhausted at the end of the day to do little else but sleep. The same with a stay at home mom who has nothing but time. This might fuel her or leave her completely drained and/or bored with the task of attending to her children all day while also attending to every household need. Some moms are good at being patient. Others aren’t. Some are good teachers, others aren’t. Some are good listeners. Other’s aren’t. Some are good at math. or English? or science. Other’s aren’t at all. Same goes for fathers! And yet, we’re just supposed to assume the accountant is going to mother the same as the musician? And that one is inherently better than the other?
In a perfect world, I would have been more diligent with Sweets in having her eating different foods, but I was a heavily exhausted pregnant woman who just wanted my child to eat. With Button, I could have been better at helping her learn how to sleep alone, but I was a tired post partum woman who just wanted her baby to sleep so she could given her history with anxiety and depression exacerbated by sleep withdrawal. A healthy good parent is usually doing the best they can with what little they are able to give. It’s easy looking in on a situation and saying they would do something different and maybe they will, but it’s always different when it’s you.
All this I could forgive as me being defensive, but the biggest thing that gets me is this notion that somehow children of the past were somehow better off. More well behaved. More diligent. Smarter. Better disciplined. Claiming the issues we have today with children and teenagers are unique to the technology ridden society we are in currently. I beg to differ.
I remember a time when the same things were said about millennials. We watched too much tv, were so wrapped up in our smart phones, and too entitled with our “everyone’s a winner” badges. There’s a quote from Hey Arnold where Grandpa was complaining that the “Kids of today have no work ethic”.
What about other times? I wouldn’t doubt people had similar things to say about children and teenagers of the 60s and 70s. Or the baby boomers. You really think the average person living in that time looked at the hippy’s movement going on were looking at these kids in a positive light? Was it because their parent’s let them watch too much television? Is that the cause? The TV has been around as early as the 40s of 50s. That could be it (I say sarcastically).
But what about those kids in the 40s and 50s? Do you really not think people didn’t have similar concerns about the children of that day? I remember a video clip from Mystery Science Theatre 3000 of a 1940/50’s man complaining about that lack of work ethic and common sense of the kids of that day in comparison to when he was a kid and an older wiser man telling him it was his responsibility to teach those kids. But you know they did have the radio and movie theatres as early as the 1920s. That’s got to be it! Right? Those terrible screens and night clubs. The kids of the 1900s didn’t have time for those types of frivolous things! They were most likely working or in school…. Right? Well, given that those child leases came out around that time probably begs to differ. Why would they need leashes on children if they were under control?
The 1800s! They were bound to have an understanding of motherhood and child rearing… right? Well, Jane Austen’s Persuasion has a differing view. There is a whole part that talks about Mary, Anne’s sister, complaining about her mother in law giving her children too much sugar. Something I have heard quite a few moms of today complain about.
Then surely, you might say, surely there was some time in history when parent’s had a handle of their children. Well, I point you to the bible where the children were rushed away from Christ and he advised them to bring the children to him. Why might they not have wanted the children to bother the Savior? Isn’t it possible it was because children are, and forever will be, sweet, innocent little terrorists?
It’s easy to try and paint the past as this beacon of child rearing where children knew their place, read books, and behaved better, but I’m more prone to believe children have always been a challenge and good parent’s have always done everything in their power to teach them, feed them, and keep them busy with the tools and understanding of healthy practices they had at their disposal.
I’m not saying that there aren’t bad actors and times aren’t different when it comes to parenting. Heck, I don’t know. This entire rant is just me speculating based on my own observations. For all I know there are actual reliable studies without some political bias that prove parent’s are worse now than they have ever been. The one statistic I did look at that proves there was a decline in American’s test scores within the past few years, look to be more stagnant than the news paints them out to be if you compare it to as early as it will let you (here) which doesn’t mean anything! All I’m saying is that all the struggles parent’s have with raising children today, don’t seem to be all that different than the struggles parent’s had in the past. It feels like each age has a different thing that makes it easier while also making different challenges pop up that take the form of the exact same concerns all parent’s will have about their kids. Are my children going to be: successful, good, loved, and most importantly happy?
It’s easy to look at all that has changed since we were children and claim that these same struggles weren’t an issue when we were young, but we often forget that we most likely didn’t have to parent ourselves.
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