10 legit reasons why mums have it harder in 2020
From the first-ever primate mama, right down to the current
generation, mothers work –and have always worked– downright hard. All mothers
across the globe, through all ages in time, have at some point in their journey
through motherhood looked off into the distance and said, “No one told me life
was gonna be this way".
Despite the difficulties, billions of mothers have managed to
have children, raise them, and live to tell the tale. So why is it then that
most modern mothers ask themselves on a daily basis, “Will I survive this?”
If you ever find yourself struggling with motherhood but
thinking, “Well, generations of women successfully did it before me, so why do
I feel like this is impossible?” stop right there. Some people may not want to
hear this, but it’s the truth, and we have the proof: simply put, modern
mothers have it tougher.
Here are 10 reasons why modern motherhood is vastly different
–and much harder– than it was in the olden days.
1)
Lack of community
Most families in Western society comprise of two people in a
relationship, and their offspring, but that’s not always how it used to be. The
Native Americans believe that the community is everything and a big
part of who we are as humans. For them, the family goes beyond their parents
and siblings.
They say that man wasn’t made to be a lone wolf, and neither
were we supposed to find just one person, our “soul mate”, and then expect them
to fill every single role in our lives; partner, lover, friend, co-parent,
therapist, etc.
If we lived as nature intended, according to the Cherokees,
other members of the tribe would help fill these roles, alleviating the
pressure from one individual, with each person in the tribe having their own
responsibilities. In some tribes, the second set of parents were chosen
for a baby at birth.
These unrelated people would work together to raise the infant.
If one person was unable to provide childcare, there were others who would help
and make sure that the family succeeded. It would literally take a tribe to
raise a baby.
Most commonly, earlier generations would either live together,
or be on the same street or at least in the same area. Children would grow up
with their grandparents, great grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, second
cousins, and third cousins but a stones-throw away. There was a strong sense of
community and with that came assistance.
The role of looking after the children every waking moment
wasn’t solely on the mother.
Moving far from your family was uncommon unless it was a
necessity –think war or pestilence– but even in those instances, whole families
and extended families would usually relocate together. Some families took up
entire streets or even areas in their new locations.
It’s not a coincidence that some zones have a majority of one
nationality (the Cypriots in Palmers Green or the Bangladeshis in Brick Lane,
for instance). This structure made it so that all the children could bunch
together at one house, or even outside under the watchful eye of the whole
neighbourhood so that mum could attend to the other million things she had to
do.
As we’ve evolved and city life has become more prevalent and
necessary, we have moved further and further away from community life. Two
people –and in some cases just one– are raising their children alone and are
unreasonably expected to fill all the roles it takes to do so. Against our
nature, we became the lone wolf.
2)
Unfamiliarity with babies
The aforementioned life in a community structure meant that
people used to be constantly subjected to babies. A baby in the vicinity wasn’t
a rare “ooh, aah,” moment; it was the norm. Holding someone’s baby while they
popped to the loo or went to make a cuppa was pretty standard.
Ask older generations; babies were as prevalent as iPhones back
in the day (possibly because iPhones didn’t exist so they had to find other
ways to spend their time). Most people nowadays have never even held a baby,
never mind deal with crying or changing a nappy.
We are now handed a baby a couple of days after the whole
traumatizing birth fiasco, expected to take it home with strict instructions to
keep it alive, and are assumed capable of doing so because we attended a few
prenatal classes.
FYI, practicing changing a nappy at a prenatal class on a
plastic, unmoving, non-crying, non-fidgeting doll that doesn’t have runny green
poo all the way up its back is not the same as changing a real-life baby. No
amount of prenatal classes and reading up can adequately prepare you for when
your baby arrives, especially if you’re not familiar with babies.
3)
Grandparents have their own lives now
Throughout world history, grandparents have been looking after
their grandchildren and taking an active part in their upbringing. It was kind
of assumed that when you have a baby, your parents would chip in and assist.
Most of our generation and the generations before remember
practically being raised by our grandparents or at least can recall being
around them a lot. While some people still do live near their parents and are
lucky enough to have them help out, this isn’t the case for the masses anymore.
Grandparents aren’t what they used to be. Firstly, in most
cases, they don’t even live in the same area. Due to the necessity to move to
where there are jobs, a lot of people have moved into the city and don’t live
near their parents anymore.
When children come along, as opposed to back then, grandparents
can’t just hop on a train or plane to come to look after the kids for a few
months, because they have their own lives to think about. A lot of our parents
are still working. While the retirement age for women used to be 60, it’s now
67 or 68. Even if they do happen to live near us, they can hardly just give it
all up to come to look after our sprogs.
Back then, grandmothers didn’t really have anything else to do
but look after their grandkids. Now? Well now, grandmothers have Facebook. They
have social lives (more active than ours, it would seem). They have things to
do, places to go, people to see.
4) Freedom
and safety
Ah, the glorious olden days, where children would leave the
house at the crack of dawn and return just before dinner when the street lamps
went out, during which time, mothers got all the housework done, and perhaps
even managed a nap.
Name one parent now who lets their child wander out of the house
and tells them to come back “before dark”. Not to say that crime wasn’t
happening back then, but it wasn’t as rampant and perhaps due to the lack of
media, they weren’t so aware or cautious, and there wasn’t this need for the
super security that we have today.
For the safety and wellbeing of our children, everything needs
to be background checked. We need security cameras, nanny cams, car seats,
other safety equipment, and safety education. For an outing, they need
protective gear, sunscreen, and insect repellent.
Did they take their meds and vitamins? Remembering to buy
all these things (after researching which are the best ones) and remembering to
use them all correctly are just more things to add to the modern mother’s
never-ending to-do list.
5)Women nowadays are required to do more
It’s hard to imagine our mothers in their aprons, cleaning,
cooking, doing the laundry, hosting, etc., as doing less than us… but it’s
true. Back when there was no social media or easy internet-access, they didn’t
know that they should be researching what brand of fabric softener to use that
would be less harmful to their families and the environment, and so the one
that smelled the best was put into the shopping trolley and that was that.
They weren’t aware that processed foods are “bad” and so frozen
chicken Kievs, potato waffles, and microwave meals for dinner every day was
absolutely fine. Allowing the children to sit in front of the TV all day wasn’t
yet frowned upon by society and no one was yet guilting them into sitting,
playing, and reading with the kids all day to better aid their development.
There is more homework than before. There are more afterschool activities. Kids
see more, so they want more, and parents have to do more.
And that’s just when it comes to the kids. As for themselves,
women didn’t realise that they should be contouring, so make-up was much easier
–just blush and go. They weren’t aware that they needed to be taking vitamins,
exercising, and looking after their mental health, too.
Back in the day, people were not even required to shower every
day, and they did not. Firstly, showering meant having to boil hot water in a
cauldron or saucepan and, as you can imagine, they didn’t do this on the daily.
We don’t even need to go that far back though; even when hot water started
being more accessible, showering daily wasn’t a thing. Humans reasonably
smelled of human.
Now, body odour has been stigmatized so much that the tiniest
little bit can send someone over the edge. We’re not talking about stenching,
but it’s assumed that if we don’t smell of soap, we’re not clean.
Recently, Taylor Swift came under fire because she insinuated
that she might not wash her legs every day. This is the level of pressure
we have to live with. Medical experts actually advise against showering
daily, but we do it because we like it, so as not to offend others by smelling
remotely of human (how dare we?), and because we’ve been told that we are
smelly-pants if we don’t.
Modern mothers are required to take care of their appearance, be
clean and gorgeous, make sure the house is spick and span and baby-proofed,
have healthy homemade organic meals prepared every day, ensure their husbands
don’t feel abandoned, all while spending quality time with their kids 24/7 –and
with no help.
6)Work, work, work, work, work
Talking of doing more, more mothers are working now than ever
before. Sure, women have been working for generations and working just as hard
as men. Towards the beginning and even middle of the last century, however, the
norm in most of the world was that Mum stays home and looks after the house and
kids and Dad works to bring home the bacon. Not to undermine the millions of
women who have done both, and all the single mothers out there too, but since
we’re talking about the masses, back then women weren’t required to work as
much. Their husbands could comfortably take care of them and their families.
Now, not only do women prefer to work, make their own money, and
not be supported by their husbands but in most of the cases, even if they
wanted to be stay-at-home-mums, one salary just doesn’t cut it anymore. Back
then, they were giving low-rate mortgages to just anyone, and the husband’s salary
was more than enough to take care of a family of five with a little left over
for holidays and savings.
Now, you need one person’s salary just to pay for the rent or
the mortgage, and another’s to pay for living expenses. It sure ain’t like the
olden days, folks.
The proportion of working mothers in the UK has risen over the
last few decades and now stands at 71% compared to just 50% in 1975.
4.9 million mothers with dependent children (compared to 3.7 million in
1996) are now in employment. In the 50s, only 34.7% of women worked
in total.
However much our feminist streak doesn’t like it, the simple
fact is that women were homemakers. Now, women have to do all of that, while
holding down a full-time job as well.
7)
We spend more time with the kids (and more time worrying we’re not doing it all
perfectly)
The rise of media and social media has made it so that we are
more informed than ever before. Parents back in the day didn’t really focus as
much on their children’s psychological wellbeing. As long as they were alive
and healthy, that’s what mattered. In days of yore, mums used to spend so much
time cooking and cleaning that they usually left the kids to their own devices.
We are wiser to these effects now and know how important it is for parents to
spend quality time with their kids. We know that our children’s psychological
welfare is just as important as their physical health.
We think about what we say to them and how we say it. We
research toys and games before we let them play. We consider how we act in
front of the kids and how it could affect them. We make sure they’re eating
right, getting their five a day, doing enough exercise, are being socialised,
are drinking enough water, have a routine, get their shots, are developing
properly and hitting all the key developmental stages and if not, helping them
get there.
Parents now spend twice as much time with their kids
as they did 50 years ago. We somehow pluck the hours out of thin air and manage
to spend more time with them while still doing everything else.
8)
Mum guilt and mum shaming
Mum guilt is very real. Granted, mum guilt has always been
a thing, the only difference is that now we have more things –infinite, in
fact– to feel guilty about. We have guilt for working. We have guilt for not
working. If we do leave the kids by the TV so that we can tend to the endless
chore list, we have guilt. If we don’t leave them and let the housework pile
up, guilt. We feel guilty for not spending enough time with our significant
other, but if we do somehow manage to get a kid-free weekend away, we feel
guilty about it.
To top it off, in the struggle to manage to do everything, we
have guilt for struggling. Well, how are other people managing so swimmingly?
we think to ourselves while scrolling through perfect mummy Insta-feeds.
Mum guilt more often than not goes hand in hand with mum
shaming. Every which way we turn, there’s someone shaming us about something or
other –whether blatantly or inadvertently– which in turn, makes us doubt
ourselves.
Hands up if you spent the whole duration of your school summer
holidays at your grandparents’ house in the sticks? Imagine sending your own
kids off now for that long. You’ll be stoned in the public square. We feel bad
for taking time for ourselves, and we feel bad for relying on anyone or
anything else for any aspect of childcare. Which leads us to…
9)
New parent exhaustion and post-partum depression
Exhaustion and depression are bad enough on their own but have
kids and you get upgraded to the fully-comprehensive and deluxe new parent
exhaustion and post-partum depression package.
A recent study reports that new parents can face up to six
years of sleep deprivation, and that’s just for one child. Sleep deprivation,
an ancient and effective form of torture, also favoured by the CIA,
can decay the mind and body, causing weight gain, depression, anxiety,
poor quality of life, heart attack and stroke… and it comes part and
parcel of being a new parent.
Post-natal depression, a maternal mentalhealth disorder which often goes untreated and can actually
even start in pregnancy, affects millions of women
annually across the globe, with as much as 1-2 out of every 1000
womendeveloping post-partum psychosis, 10 of which tragically result in
suicide or infanticide.
Yes, new parent exhaustion and post-partum depression have
always been around, but since modern life means we have less help and more
stress, this is not something that should be ignored or taken lightly.
10)
We are constantly watching, being watched, and comparing
Social media, that devil. We all know what’s up. Gone are the
days where we didn’t know what anyone else was doing, they didn’t know what we
were doing, and our great aunt from Australia couldn’t watch our park Insta
story and tell us to put a jacket on our child.
Watching someone’s highlight reel shouldn’t make us question our
reality, but somehow, looking at the perfect mamas on the gram with their
flawless babies and spotless houses can still get us down. When scrolling
through our feeds, human tendency is to make upward, nondirectional, and
downward social comparisons, thinking that we’re better off, the same, or worse
off than our friends.
Even though logic tells us that these feeds are not indicative
of the madness of real-life with kids, evidence proves that “people feel
depressed after spending a great deal of time on because they feel bad when
comparing themselves to others.”
But it’s not all bad. People are starting to have the discussion
on social media. The real-life discussion. Many mothers, mum-bloggers, and
celebrities have taken to be more honest about the struggles of parenting.
Even people who do have the economic luxury of hiring help are
still feeling pressured into doing it all themselves, and end up feeling
overwhelmed. “There’s this thing called the fourth trimester which happens
after you have your baby,” says singer Jordin Sparks.
“It’s dealing with everything that happens with your body. Your
body goes and changes, your hormones are absolutely insane. We’ve got tons of
people to hold the baby, but who holds us? Who holds us together? Who helps us
get through all that stuff?”
“I feel guilty that
I’m not enjoying every second,” says Stacey Solomon. “Thinking of all of those who don’t have a support system
around them. If you need someone to talk to there are people out there… please
don’t hesitate to reach out.”
Yes, mothers have always been forces of nature to be reckoned
with, but the modern mother… well, the modern mother is a breed of her own.
*pats self on back* Let’s continue this conversation. Let’s speak up and ask
for help. We don’t have to keep it all inside.
There’s a whole population of mums out there who are feeling
exactly like you right now and we need to stick together. Join the Mother &
Baby #mumtribe, a safe space where you can reach out and
connect to like-minded mothers and keep this discussion going because no mother
anywhere should ever have to feel alone.
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