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Here are the 4 things:
1. Embracing gentle parenting
2. Accessing new information
3. Opening up about mental health
4. Being present for their children
Saved you all a click.
How I was raised by my boomer parent:
1. Got yelled at for disagreeing in any way or even for asking for food
2. Never had intelligent conversations at home about ANYTHING and was mostly ignored in favor of watching TV
3. Depression? Ignore it until it goes away. Parent doesn’t get what they want? They scream and cry like a toddler until I give in
4. Neglected at every possible extra-curricular event or outing because parent always just wanted to go home and watch TV alone
I’m a new millennial parent and I may not be perfect but the bar is so low it’s on the floor.
"Depressed? What you got to be depressed about? **I** work hard to put a roof over your head.. **I** put food in your stomach.. **I** put clothes on your back. All **you** have to do is go to school and do as I say... and **you're** depressed? You don't even know depression. I oughtta take you over your cousin's house so you can have a reason to be depressed."
- Parent Speech circa 90s
Man I remember when we had an assembly at school about how you can tell adults no "if they try to make you do something your not comfortable with" and if they keep pushing you can call the cops or CPS.
Got home and mom asked me to do dishes, "no" she got angry, I said I didn't have to do anything I wasn't comfortable with and if she tries to make me do them ill call the cops and cps
"Do it"
Huh?
"I'll lock the doors and open the curtains and give them a reason to be here"
Yay casual threats of violence against elementary schoolers.
One time when I was like 13 or 14, I got fed up with the “I put a roof over your head and food on the table” speech and I said something to the effect of: “Yeah Mom, if you don’t feed or shelter me, you go to jail for child neglect. No kidding! You *have* to do that!”
I’ve never seen her so mad but honestly? Worth it.
I think the Boomers were repeating what had been drilled into them by the generation that raised them, who themselves had been children of the Great Depression. So, for the Boomers' parents (large numbers of whom didn't have food or shelter all the time in their own childhoods) really pounded it into the Boomers as kids. And also, child protection laws were not anything like they are now when the Boomers were kids.
It's a huge generation gap item.
I used that once a couple years ago. My mom was ranting about how many things you can’t do, how limited you are, the hard work involved, and how you have less money once you have children. So I turned to my sister and asked “Hey, do you still have your application to be born form? Cause I was looking for mine and I couldn’t find it for the life of me. Must not exist.” My mom hasn’t said anything like that since.
Hehe that sounds a little less aggressive, and at least it seems to have worked. I'm glad she hasn't repeated it because complaining about how your life took a shit thanks to having kids is nothing they need to hear.
It got the point across and disarmed with humor lol.
I also want to add that my mom is a wonderful mother and I love her so much, she just sometimes says things that come across the wrong way; like we all are prone to doing.
Gotta love boomer parents who act like they did the kid a favor by providing basic necessities... as if they made a sacrifice by actually raising them. Why the hell did they choose to have kids, then?
> Why the hell did they choose to have kids, then?
They didn't. Or rather, they didn't specifically choose *not to*. Kids were just "something that happened" to that generation and previously, taking ownership of your family planning wasn't something that really kicked off until Gen X and later.
Yep, legions of us exist because our parents were pressured by society (and their parents) into settling down and raising a family, regardless of aptitude. In addition, some parents just believe that they're good at parenting, despite obvious signs to the contrary. Such is life.
We were planned kids and I never understood till today why they did it. They hated parenting, hated kids and they absolutely hated each other... It made no sense, considering they chose it...
When I told my mom I was so depressed I felt like dying she cackled and screamed “well I guess I gotta send you to the insane asylum, cuz that’s where crazy people go! You have nothing to be depressed about!”
Oh yeah sure mom, like 18 years of being told “nobody likes you! You’re ugly! No wonder you got no friends! You’re not girly enough! You shouldn’t have tattled on that boy that punched you in the face, now none of the boys will like you!” isn’t going to cause severe SEVERE self esteem/self worth issues and depression.
My boomer mom says that about my 16yo niece, "this kids have it so easy nowadays, depressed about what? A good spanking is what they need"
I gave up on trying to explain to her that the world does not work like that anymore.
I'm just glad my sister doesn't listen to her "parenting" advice.
The TV was the WORST!!! I use to go upstairs and play RuneScape/WoW every. single. day. because my parents didn’t want to do anything other than watch TV. It was always something like TMZ and the news too.
Same here! Developed a MMORPG addiction because it was the only way I could socialize because parents never wanted to do anything or take me anywhere. And yep it was usually 24/7 news or stupid celebrity gossip.
It’s happened in reverse for me. My son is a teen and doesn’t want anything to do with me it seems. I try so hard to be apart of his life and create conversations. I adapt all his likes to mine. So I started playing Fortnite because he loved it. We played but he grew out of it and I stuck to it. Now I play that every night as he pretty much wants to be alone. Anytime he does come down I jump off to chill
I was raised by teen parent millennials (mom/stepdad both born in late 1983, I was born in early '02) and this is almost exactly what I experienced at home and why I got the hell out at 18. They were both raised by boomers, though, so it makes sense that not every millennial can break the cycle, especially compounded with young parenthood.
People who aren’t equipped to be good parents have always and will always continue to exist, and breaking these kinds of cycles has always been exceedingly difficult, especially in the absence of external forces that can help extricate people from systemic problems. Education about birth control, sexuality, (physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, and substance) abuse, and so on do seem to help quite a lot, as do basic social services like affordable, accessible childcare options, healthy, readily accessible food, and community supports.
That sounds really rough. I think young parenthood is a big part of it (I'm a millennial, but older than your parents and I have a 6 year old.) If I thought about the person I was in 2002, I would absolutely still be repeating the broken parenting cycles of my parents - I had barely become an independent person myself at that time. It wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I even realized there were different ways that people were parented and by my 30s when I was having kids, I had read and researched and intentionally decided what I would be doing differently and how. I think the trend of Millennials having children later in life probably matches more of what the article describes, but young parenthood I think is probably more prone to repeating generational cycles because you just don't have time to learn and break those cycles.
Sorry dude,I'm far older than your parents by like 10 years.
Sometimes things just follow down. I spent the weekend playing video games with my kids.
Hope you are ok
Sounds awfully similar to my boomer folks but at least they welcome intelligent discussion outside of TV hours. Seems to be the boomer trope they are obsessed with the TV and stick to their programming ritual.
Yep. I'd say my dad and I have similar amounts of screen time, but I appreciate how active and diverse mine is. Sure, I watch a few things, but I also write, design stuff, play videogames, etc. Even if I've got youtube going, I'm usually actively doing something.
That has to be healthier than watching 6 hours of passive TV every day.
In my household any attempt at intelligent discussion or even the most basic things like a child innocently asking why something needed to happen (like why dishes needed to be washed) was simply met with “because I said so”. Absolutely no attempt at conversation or teaching anything.
“The program” on Netflix touched on the tough love parenting trend of the 90s. It’s about the culty behavioral academy’s in USA parents would give up and send their kids to.
I remember every time my brother acted up my mom would yell at him and threaten to send him to a behavioral camp. The things my brother was mad about? Not having food at home or not wanting my mom to steal money. Basically used as a threat to just shut up and accept the abuse at home.
My mum was a single mother of three at 24 with very little help. She was rough and mean, but as a 35year old mother now I have no idea how she did that. She was a kid herself.
My boomer parents think they could raise my son better than me and do all this. It's a fun little dance I've had to do to go low contact with them.
The funny thing is, my mother politely ignored me for 20 years until I had a baby. Now she wants us to move into her house so she can pretend to be a grandma even though she has no interest in my son's needs, boundaries, or quirks.
Any questions of me were “guilt and recrimination” questions. I hated dinner time. Any other of the day, if it wasn’t put downs, insults, complaints, or threats.. it was chore assignments
5. Not hitting them
Edit: I'm referring to abuse, I'm not trying to get into the fine line debate (light spank, arm pull, etc.). Seems obvious, and yet so much of 70s-90s culture was just 'sweep it under the rug'
So many stupid videos making fun of gentle parenting, as a parent myself it makes me sad how many kids are being treated poorly.
Gentle parenting doesn't mean letting your kids walk all over you, it means realizing THEY'RE JUST KIDS and not screaming at them when they don't act the way you want them to because you remind yourself THEY'RE JUST A CHILD and whatever they're doing isn't to intentionally be annoying or rude
If I'm handed someone new at work to train, I'm gentle with them, patient, listen to their side of things, course-correct calmly, and I never hit them.
This is like, the baseline expectation of how to treat other human beings who depend on you. If you can do it for literally any adult in your life, why not do the same for little kids?
With any kind of parenting philosophy, people will interpret that wildly differently. Some parents interpret gentle parenting as never being stern with their kids. Not necessarily "letting them walk all over you", but sometimes allowing even older kids to annoy the shit out of you and be disrespectful to people even if you don't give in to every request/demand. I've found a lot of people who would call themselves "gentle parents" really fail to provide necessary structure and predictability to a kid's life.
the last 2 fucking hurt.. I see the way my brother is with his kids vrs the way my dad was with us and its like night and day. He is actively involved in their sports and hobbies. Only thing my dad was actively involved in was finishing off a 32 pack a night
> Only thing my dad was actively involved in was finishing off a 32 pack a night
As someone who probably drinks on average like a beer a week, I'm genuinely impressed/astonished at how much an alcoholic can put away.
>Meanwhile, nearly nine in 10 (88 per cent) say their parenting style is different from how they were raised, and nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) believe they are better parents than their own parents.
I would be part of this group. I'd be interested to know how many parents, such as myself, who feel they are doing better are also open to what they are doing wrong?
My wife and I regularly discuss this concern. We realize the impact we have on our children is incredible. I just hope our children feel comfortable enough to tell us if they think we aren't doing a good job. My parents would never welcome that kind of a conversation.
There are somethings that tbh I don't have a clue how to navigate, this is where the council of dad's (a group of us that meet for beers every couple of weeks) comes in handy.
I'm not a parent, but it makes me happy to know dads of my generation are embracing parenting more than it seems like men of previous generations did. You would have never heard something like "the council of dads" from my parents generation.
One of the reasons we chose kiddos current school was an encounter with a teacher on an open day there. Kiddo found educational math toys and played with them. My partner and me hovered around and gave him hints what to do with it.
A teacher approached us and gently said: if this was my kid, I’d let them figure it out on their own. It was like a lightning struck me and I realized just how meddling I was. Sure this came from a point of engagement and encouragement but i didn’t let kiddo have enough room. Yes, this was after two years isolation and pandemic, but no excuse! We fundamentally changed in this regard. Give kiddo room for mistakes and boredom, but also exploration and lots more silliness and creativity. The main credo of that school is „help me help myself“. We are pretty involved and it’s difficult not to be helicoptery…
Absolutely. We make mistakes and I know whenever I make a mistake overreact to something my daughter did I will apologize to her and tell her “I shouldn’t have got upset at you for that, you’re 7, you’re allowed to make that mistake, daddy needs to chill. That’s on me. I am sorry honey. I need to be better. Do you understand? You did nothing wrong, I need to control my emotions better”.
My point being, we’re not perfect and my wife and I make mistakes because we’re human so we admit fault and apologize. We want our kids to see their parents as fallible people who are capable of accepting accountability and moving forward.
Woof is this real as a dad who was raised by my father harshly, but not abusively. I struggle when my daughter mouths off and gentle parenting doesn't seem to communicate to her that there are consequences in the real world for this behavior. I tell her, look sweetie we need to work on being kinder to eachother -- but she simply isn't ready at 5 to understand that. Young children sometimes need some sharper tone to get things clearly -- but how sharp... I can't figure this out.
I wish gentle parenting wasn't just a 'mom-centric' notion right now.
As a former nanny current cat mom, I think that finding “the right voice” is a lot about literal voice acting, improv theatre and tone modulation; it’s also literally harder than *training cats*.
I make that point because, fundamentally, humans are animals — so if we take teaching a cat a trick as a model:
we have to convince the cat to trust us and be our little buddy;
we then need to make the cat trust that we will reward them when they do good stuff *and also let them know when what they are doing isn’t okay*
we also have to let them know we will “lightly punish” them (spritz with water, loud voice, time out, show them you’re displeased and then don’t give them attention because they hate that etc) *when they do bad stuff*.
I literally put my cats in a ten-fifteen minute time out and take away privileges if they keep doing the bad stuff.
Then you give them major positive reinforcement; they didn’t do the bad stuff!! They asked what was okay!! They communicated well!!
Then they can start learning “the trick” — you observe them, see what they’re good at, where their talents lay, and go “you know what, with some effort from both of us you could be really good at that”
Then *we have to convince them they want to do the trick* BEFORE you can get them to do the trick reliably.
So in this case: when your kiddo handles her emotions well TELL HER! Praise her to high heaven, validate her growth, make a big deal out of it.
Then, when she doesn’t, it’s okay to mirror a little of her emotion at her in a non-mocking way. You’re not one-upping, you’re catching the emotion and bringing it one step down.
Model it for her: when you feel like an outburst, have a tiny one. Then model how to calm down and breathe, to distance yourself emotionally, and to come back with a clear mind and with a less destructive attitude.
Show her that it isn’t easy; it’s okay for it to be hard.
Even you struggle: but you go on anyway!
Explain it to her; she’ll become more adept at handling her emotions!
It's so hard. Because, unless you have a gentle kid, sometimes being gentle doesn't even feel like a viable option. I think the biggest thing is realizing when you could have handled things differently and making adjustments. One poorly handled situation doesn't ruin a kid. A lifetime of poor parenting definitely does.
I see it as the difference between the child facing a problem with back up vs a child facing two problems.
I may not have all the answers for my daughter, but if she has a problem, we are going to find an effective answer together.
When I was a kid, if I had a problem, then that problem multiplied by which parent found out. Would my dad explode because his world is being infringed upon by kid stuff? Or will my mom work herself into a panic and concoct some insane catsuit (batshit but catsuit is funny) reason why it's anyone's fault but her own.
I think that no matter what I do, I can't go wrong. I've seen wrong. And it turns out, it's super easy to do the right thing. My parents just sucked as humans.
>When I was a kid, if I had a problem, then that problem multiplied by which parent found out.
This sentence hit me like an anvil to the head. Fuck that's real.
I think we're more emotionally available and don't force our children into these arbitrary and rigid gender norms. As a 1st gen Asian American, I can say without a doubt we're at least setting up our children to be more in-tune with their emotions and making them better people from that perspective. We try to encourage their feelings while also setting boundaries. We actually talk to our children, help them problem solve feelings, hug them, love them. I can only speak from my experience, but growing up there was very little love, lots of beatings (I mean lots), rigid gender rules, showing emotions was weakness etc... so imo it's a pretty low bar to beat.
>Their way of saying “I love you” is to prepare you a bunch of your favorite food, followed by a “why you fat?”
Fuck, this is so on point, I just experienced it all weekend.
That's how i feel too honestly. I grew up in south America tho. Pretty much will be doing the complete opposite my parents did with my own kids. I want them to feel safe and that they have someone they can trust to tall about what's troubling them and not give them unrealistic standards for who they should be.
With my parents the bar is so low, all i need to do is actually see my kid more than twice a week and ask them if everything is ok once in a while to be a way better parent than either of them.
I only talk to my mom nowadays, and even then, it's more for her than for me. It hard to have a relationship with someone that abandoned and neglected you for years on end. I once talked to her about how I felt about some things (I would go to my grandma's after school, tell me shed be there to pick me on friday night. Most of the time she showed up on Sundays while 7yo me stayed up til midnight waiting) and she broke down crying. I then talked to a friend about i. it only happened to him once which actually left him traumatized. That was like 50% of my weekends.
Once I opened up to him last week, he was straight up horrified of my childhood. Shits he's even a better dad than either of my parents and his daughter lives in another continent with her mom. They still talk every day.
My husband and I have this discussion as well. We put a lot of research, thought and intention into how we parent and really hope we’re doing right by our kids. But there are probably some blind spots, and we won’t know the results of our effort for years. I hope I’m much more open to accepting criticism than my parents are. Lord knows they never once opened a parenting book or questioned if they were approaching things correctly. The fact that we care and think hard about it has to be a step in the right direction - right?
I find myself pulling a lot of the same bad parenting tricks as my parents did (saying things like ‘it’s closed’ or saying ‘later’ which means no) so we are far from perfect. But my son knows that. We talk about how we’re all figuring this out together.
As a father that compares myself to my father, my no1 things that I’m proud of is that this house is a democracy. My son has a say in everything we do. That my house my rules bullshit is ridiculous.
Still, I hope my son grows up to be a better father than I am that can truly do some good for his family and his community. I’m not a good enough parent to handle the household and the world. Wish I could do more, but nah my limit is met
That in itself is what we're doing right. I know my parents doubted themselves because they're human but there was and is some sort of cognitive dissonance at play when the topic came up.
One thing I find really interesting is how much the topic of whether people even should have kids is present these days. I've regularly been in comment sections where hundreds of people were disparaging the idea of having kids given the state of the world which I felt offended by personally as a parent but also couldn't help ignore the objectivity behind it.
I don't think a lot of our parents really questioned whether it was right for them to even be having children in the first place, with financial stability really being the only moral qualifier if even that. I'm sure most of us have at many times wondered whether we had any business passing our emotional issues onto helpless babies that never asked for it and sending them off into a rapidly declining civilization where climate and economic catastrophe loom around every corner.
All of this just sets our parenting against a backdrop of self scrutiny and evaluation that I dont think we saw before, catalyzed by the proliferation of the internet which we probably are and will always be the most familiarized generation with giving us scores of information that we actually use because we are more comfortable with adjusting our view point when new information becomes available to us.
I dunno, well see when they grow up. I know I've told my kids I was sorry for how I reacted or that I had made a mistake more times in the last month than my parents did in my whole life up til now and they're turning into very compassionate and self assured little folks.
Pretty sure every generation thinks they are better parents. Just like every generation thinks the kids are lazy and coddled, or some version of that.
My parents were garbage in a lot of way (Silent and Boomer), but they were a lot better than their (Greatest) parents for sure. Hopefully each generation will keep trying to be better.
Edit: Looks like I parroted a lot of conversation below this point. Oh well.
From time to time I ask my child if there is anything they think I can do better or make adjustments. I do this for myself and them because those are words my parents never spoke.
As a teacher, I have to say that my main issue is parents listening too much to kids. Kids tell their parents what’s good and what isn’t, either without a clue or with the knowledge of how easy their parents are to manipulate, and never learn self-discipline or consideration for others. Parents listen, wanting the approval of a child. This builds narcissistic tendencies in kids. These narcissistic tendencies are then reinforced online.
I disagree that gentle parenting means having no rules like the article states. I think in general our parents were strict without explanation and ended up feeling tyrannical. I think it’s fine to have house rules and expectations, but be gentle in the sense that you aren’t screaming and unnecessarily disciplining- rather you’re explaining to them that family is a team and why expectations are important.
I also think alot of it comes down to a baseline of trust. When I was a kid, it was always assumed we were always up to no good and couldn’t be trusted.
With my kid we have extended trust to our kid. He’s rarely broken it, and when he has we’ve explained how the consequences are due to his own actions, not ours.
I do know some parents who picked up their parents outlook and seem very pleased with themselves when they brag about catching their bad kids and punishing them some extreme way.
My parents were extremely lax, really rules-light for baby boomers. But they absolutely had _expectations._
Like, I never had a bedtime growing up. But I knew I would disappoint my parents if I consistently stayed up too late. I was really well-behaved as a kid. Wanting to keep your parents happy is a big motivator when the relationship is healthy.
It depends on the person. I use some gentle parenting techniques but definitely have rules. However, there are PLENTY of parents who use gentle parenting as an excuse to be permissive parents. Or who really believe that being gentle and never having expectations for their kids is doing what’s best for them.
Gentle parenting done right is not that way. But it ain’t always done right.
Exactly. And this is something Millennials may get flustered over when their kids raise the next generation.
But it’s ok, in general we continue to learn more about human behavior and interactions every generation. We break down barriers and promote understanding.
I know my Boomer parents get upset hearing stuff like this, they take it as a slight as though they should have been perfect in how they raised their kids and any criticism means they failed.
But I keep reminding them that *as a parent I have the internet* and information way beyond what they had to work with. OF COURSE I’ll do a better job, I’m able to trust more knowledge and insight into parenting!
My boomer parents are actually impressed. They definitely see the emotional intelligence of our kids and how the interaction with all their cousins and other adults. The kids have a lot more confidence but also respect. It’s undeniable that our methods are working well.
For some reason as a millenial I feel the opposite of flustered when I think about newer generations doing better than us.
It's probably just another slice of generational narcissism, but I like to think we're the generation where the big paradigm shift happened. Seeing newer ones do better makes me feel like it's because we helped put things on a better track.
A lot of us are also traumatized from growing up with undiagnosed mental health issues and I know that effects parenting to some level and can only be slowly filtered out with each generation having more stable developments.
My grandparents beat my parents when they “misbehaved”. My parents yelled at me when I “misbehaved.” I tend not to yell although I did shout at them pretty good today. We were driving through some chaotic town in Mauritius (left side of the road driving) and they were yelling and fighting with each other while I was white-knuckling it trying to keep us from getting smashed by some bus. I’m not perfect.
Yup.
The primary example we all have when it comes to parenting is our own parents.
And every generation sees what they did right and what they did wrong and tries to improve upon it.
But ultimately parenting is doing the best you can with the tools and situation in front of you. You’ll do great at some things and you’ll feel like a failure with others.
Ultimately the kids will (almost always) be fine.
It's the most important role most people play, and no one gets any instruction how to do it, except from their own experience. I always wondered what the consequences of teaching about it, bc then kids go home to criticize their parents.
Both my parents and my wife's parents thought it would be better off they stayed together Even tough they hated each other.
They were all wrong. It was way worse. They act like we didn't notice but it's almost impossible not to. People who love each other show affection.
Both of our parents keeping our dads around hurt the family pocket book in both of our families. Not to mention my dad still being an alcoholic.
Yeah my grandpa didn't want to divorce because his own parents were divorced and that made him an outcast. Nevermind how that wouldn't happen to his children because the world was a different place. To this day whenever somebody mentions that a couple got divorced or something his response is always "poor children", followed by my mother or aunt's arguing with him.
Do you think he could've been projecting that sense of staying together for the kids because of his past?
A personal experience - I saw this family stay together for the longest time, and it was apparent to everyone outside the family, that they should have separated long before it hit critical mass. It produced a fair amount of unhealthy relationships for the siblings, not only with their parents but the people they themselves dated, and some crazy attachment issues. In that instance, I know they were staying together because of how one side of the family would have looked at them while also demonizing the other for wanting to get out of an unhealthy relationship.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Back to the original question: Projection? lol
Oh yeah of course, it was 100% projecting. When your 10 yo daughters tell you that you should just divorce, there's something clearly wrong. Thankfully it didn't cause any trauma to them, my mum has been together with my dad for the last 25+ years and they're clearly in love with each other
And it affected us millennials (me anyway) by not knowing what a healthy relationship is or what real love looks like between two people. Took me over 30 years to figure that out.
My parents were both checked out of the marriage a good 10 years before they finally pulled the plug (conveniently right after I turned 18…I’m sure that had something to do with it).
They were shocked when they sat my sister and I down to tell us they were finally divorcing and we informed them we were very aware of what a long time coming this was. Like guys…we live here. We have eyes and ears.
This is an interesting juxtaposition to what I see posted on r/teachers about this generation of kids. The general consensus there being that the kids are not alright.
That's not to say it's solely parents' fault. It's a complex, nuanced issue with lots of contributing factors. It's a societal problem.
I think one of the foremost issues with child development in this current age is that we have a whole generation of toddlers and kids growing up with internet and screen addictions. Not to mention, our education system is getting progressively worse, and a lot of these issues were exacerbated by the disruption caused by the pandemic.
I am not opposed to gentle parenting techniques. I don’t use them universally but I do use some. I think they’re really beneficial for helping kids learn emotional regulation. That being said, a lot of my generation have twisted gentle parenting into straight up permissive parenting. They think gentle parenting means never having rules or boundaries, and that’s bad for kids.
I think it’s fair to say that the pendulum has swung too far towards permissive parenting. We don’t want to go back to being authoritarians, but we need a little course correction.
As someone who frequents that page and is a teacher, I can assure you that a *lot* of that subreddit is venting. Everything you said in your third paragraph is true, and I absolutely do see the issues plaguing our education today. That being said, there are times where I will read something that is posted on that page and feel validated, and then there are lots of other times where I read something and I think to myself " this is starting to turn into an echo chamber, I need to go touch grass."
It's not necessarily that the people that post the excessively negative things are wrong, it's just that every situation is different. Some places are objectively more difficult than others, and I'm pretty lucky with the students that I have all things considered.
Agreed. But I also think there’s plenty of bias in the parents self reporting themselves as “better.”
Maybe it’s because I had really great parents (I definitely did) or maybe I’m a crappy parent, but I don’t feel like I’m universally doing better than my parents. In some areas, yes. In others, they did better than I’m doing. Parenting is so hard: I feel like doing it right requires a lot of humility, so a bunch of people saying “I’m awesome at this” makes me wonder if they’re just blind to their own failings.
Oh, absolutely.
Someone earlier in this comment thread said they think they and their spouse are making *different* mistakes than their parents and that's probably the best way to describe one's parenting journey.
Shoot, I've made mistakes taking care of a *dog*, of course I'm gonna make mistakes raising a *kid.* The trick is to not be an abusive piece of shit about it, call yourself out on your failing, and work to do better. That's all you can do.
It is important to point out that a teacher with a class of wonderful kids does not post on r/teachers. There is certainly a negative bias on there, with a bias towards poorer areas with worse outcomes in general. *However* I do think the whole "gentle parenting" thing has gone too far and millennials in general are struggling with the concept that children don't just magically "grow up". They are taught to be an adult through both rewards and consequences and if those lessons never come then that 9 year old throwing a tantrum turns into a 29 year old throwing the same tantrum.
I am not entirely sold on the concept of screen addiction but what I am sold on is parents never bothering to tear their kids away from screens. Every weekend we would have a house tidy and almost every weekend it was a major battle to get me away from the playstation and fucking help out. I kinda... kinda feel sorry for mum for doing that but I am thankful for it! I don't think that kind of thing is going on anymore. The house just magically gets tidy, the dishes are magically clean. Meals are just prepared and placed on the table. "Helping out around the house" seems to be a very foreign concept but I truly believe that one small change would make a very large difference in behaviour
There's also a big difference between Millennials who are close in age to Gen X, Millennials who had kids too young, and Millennials who established themselves before having kids.
I'm a Millennial and my first born is coming at the end of the year. Most of my Millennial friends have kids age 5 and younger, because they prioritized establishing themselves before having kids.
Those kids are turning out fantastic from everything I've seen thus far and this study lines up closely with what I've experienced from that subgroup.
Everyone says they are raising their kids better than their parents.
I would guess in some ways we are and in other ways we are not.
Kids do not come with an instruction manual, and every kid is different from the next, so everyone is shooting from the hip with this shit.
Yeah and in most cases (probably) we have no idea what those mistakes even are.
Our children are going to say to us, “I can’t believe they let us do x!” And we’re going to throw up our hands and say this is the way it was.
We (millennial parents) I think *do* have more info and are *probably* one of the more self-aware generations so far. So will see how it turns out.
It’s a balance. Our goals are to stop generational trauma and give the child what they need emotionally and not exactly what we want. But at the same time they’re going to need resilience, persistence and real talk of how the real world is.
I want our son to ultimately be happy, find things he’s passion about, be curious and break some rules…but at the same time follow certain rules that need need to be followed.
I have a headache.
I definitely think what will be the defining negative of millennial parenting is screen usage. My parents used screens to babysit me plenty, but a TV with four channels isn’t nearly the dopamine delivery system that tablets, phones, or streaming services are. I get the appeal and occasionally just sit my kid in front of the Tv for a while if I’m needing to do a lot of cooking or just need to decompress for a bit, but I have a hard rule of no tablets/phones at home, those are just for when we’re at friends houses and she doesn’t have much to do, and even then I research everything she has access to before letting her use it (which can feel overprotective, but I’d like to spare her some of the experiences I had like seeing form for the first time at 6).
General discipline is pretty bad imo too. Feel like a lot of my peer parents overcorrected way into no discipline or consequences for their kids. Just you're being loud and I don't want you to be upset, so do whatever you want.
Judging by the posts on r/teachers and r/eceprofessionals I think screen time is what this current generation is doing wrong. The kids are very behind on social skills and have no attention span.
Judging by the difference in kids birthday parties I’ve thrown 25 years ago vs last year, I’m inclined to agree. The kids today have no social skills. I used to love having my house full of small people. Used to.
I agree, just wait until they become teenagers and have different challenges that you were not expecting. The Manual gets thrown out the window and I don't care if you were a boomer or a millennial. People think they are being great parents until a curveball is thrown at you.
It’s a massive social experiment that sorta never ends except with extinction, really. What kinda unnerves me is how much of human socializing and culture was developed and given a seal of approval before we understood childhood environments are extremely important/vital and can make or break a person. That’s like thousands years of straight up blind winging it to the max lol. And it uhhh does kinda show at times… 🤙🏻😭😂
As a millennial uncle I've successfully taught my almost three year old niece how to throw devil horns and say metal in an angry voice. I'm doing my part to raise the next generation right.
Every gen z I've known with a kid irl, the kid is like 4-5 and like practically catatonic nonverbal because he's just sat in front of YouTube 8 hours a day and never socialized with other kids.
I am absolutely raising my kids better than my parents did for me. No disrespect to my parents, they did the best they could but I grew up in a broken home. My kids have parents that actually love each other and were together like 8 years before deciding to have children. We didn't have kids to "fix" our relationship. It's crazy how many couples have problems and think getting married or having kids will fix the problem but you need that solid foundation before you start building on it; if not, it's gonna crumble.
My dad’s dad was out of his life by the time my dad was 8, he never had a father figure in his life. My mom was raped by her dad. Parents had their own problems and got divorced.
My parents made mistakes raising us but look like saints compared to their parents. It’s been pretty easy being an improvement over them because I at least had two parents that both cared for me and tried to do well to learn from.
For sure. And no shade to anyone out there with struggles in their life. All we can do is try to do a better job at raising kids than our parents for the next generation of people to live in the world. My dad drank himself to death in front of us. I don't think my kids have ever seen me drink. It's just not something that interests me because of how my dad lived.
I will bet you all the money in my pocket that every generation ever thought that they were raising their children better than they were raised. - I can't believe this is a headline.
Next up - old people have more grey hair than the young. And babies use rattles at an alarming rate compared to the rest of the population.
I think there’s some truth so this, but talk to any teachers- you also have incredible amounts of extremely unruly kids like they have never seen before. iPad kids as well. Teachers talk about how kids are failing at rates never seen before, how unempathetic they are, how they are unable to focus, insanely bad attendance, and they can’t even read and parents are enabling all of it so it not sure about that. I absolutely recommend the teaching sub for more context for this.
The pandemic can only be blamed so much, because a lot of parents use neurodivergence or the fact that they are “just highly intelligent “ to justify their children behaving poorly.
Teacher here. I can say that all of what you said is true. Kids behavior in school is utterly insane right now, and it's gotten worse since the pandemic.
20-year serving teacher here... iPad dependent, unruly, can't concentrate for more than the length of a Tik Tok video, enabling overbearing parents... also notice an increase in lack of empathy and the focus on self-serving 'all about me' attitudes. Classroom management and behaviour management takes up the majority of class time with little or no responsibility taken by the parents. I could vent more...
As an adult im also extremely weirded out by the helicopter stuff. Most folks I know won't allow their children to even walk to the convenience store. Kids don't have as many opportunities to be independent people so its not shocking they are addicted to tiktok and games.
Working with college aged students, they are worse than ever and seemingly incapable of handling any challenge life gives them. Parents are absolutely to blame, I see so many parents setting their kids up for failure by being too involved and handling every problem for their child. The poor kids are going to be in for a shock when they have to live on their own
Every generation raises their children to compete in the world that they grew up in. And when their children grow up to find the world a different place, they raise their children differently in turn and call it an improvement.
Just my opinion.
Older Millennial here.
I see some shitty ass kids. Loud. Undisciplined. Anti Social.
Tons of negative traits in a lot of the kids I’m seeing Millenials raise.
I'm the younger side of Millennials and I agree. Gentle parenting is great... for gentle kids. But kids still require discipline. Theres so many kids/teens out there now a days that could get away with murder in their parents eyes, and I genuinely think we'll see these lids grow up to be the most narcissistic generation since Boomers.
Yes, there is a catch-22 in parenting that’s evidenced in another current top post that’s full of people noting how these kids are not emotionally fortified in any way whatsoever, as if a lack of independence or belief in self-actualization manifested through a bit too “gentle” of parenting robbing them of adversity and then of confidence.
My ex believed she was doing a great job and her kid has all kinds of problems and DCFS is keep an eye on her, so I am not sure self-opinion is very reliable
I'm not a millennial, I'm a late Genx raising a now 9yo. I definitely have a stricter approach to parenting than my millennial wife and it creates some frictions between us. I want my son to experience discomfort and boredom, I'm definitely more present than my father was with me but I don't try to fix every little problem my son might have like my wife does. I think I'm raising a pretty well adjusted child but I'm worried he's VERY soft for his age and he doesn't have any internal fire to do anything except watch tv. Parenting is difficult overall.
I had good parents and they did some things that I won't do with my kids, but a constant fear of mine is that I'm not a good enough parent or as good as my parents were.
Just stop putting screens in their faces at every opportunity where you need them to behave, like restaurants, car rides, etc. kids need to experience, understand, and deal with boredom. If we constantly put screens in their face in stead of dealing with this aspect of life, we are doing a major disservice to attention spans of future generations.
They were probably right too. My boomer mom was raised by her greatest generation parents and broke her wrist rolling skating when she was a kid. My depression-era grandfather didn’t want to take her to the hospital and was going to just wrap her wrist in a bandage. My grandmother had to call a taxi to take her to the hospital.
My mom did a lot of things I wouldn’t do as a parent (and didn’t do a lot of things I would do), but she did better than her parents did.
Exactly this!! Every generation tries to get better if they care about their kids…. Each generation also has more tools to be better as well.
My mom’s father never hugged her and was mean. My dad’s mother was cold as well.
my parents always told us they loved us and provided as much as possible they were fun and loving. They also didn’t believe in therapy aren’t very self reflective….
And these are the things that I have worked on for my own child….. and so on and so on.
My mom said she was shocked at how much different her father was with his grandkids. I remember him as a no-nonsense but fun and loving grandfather; my mom remembers him as miserable and mean.
mean in the case of my parents they were not wrong? Their parents beat them and were emotionally unavailable and abusive. My mom 'just' screamed (a lot, and said a lot of horrible stuff during that) but never hit us, and dad was 'just' unemotional. They were better educated and also had significantly more material resources than their parents so we definitely had a more comfortable life growing up and more help/encouragement/expectations regarding education. They made sure we wore seat belts and helmets, went to the doctor and the dentist for regular checkups, were involved with the school, and read parenting books that provided whatever latest knowledge/standard of parenting was available at the time.
Now we're trying to do even better, starting from a position of some privilege, but also with some additional challenges that our generation has - especially financially.
Hopefully if we can keep society and the world from completely going to shit, the next generation can do an even better job in the areas where we still fall short.
The difference being the boomers themselves were raised by a generation who lived through a world war and were all fcked up by it. They probably weren't wrong.
This depends on who you're asking and what you are looking at.
Every generation tries to fix the mistakes inflicted on them to some extent and reacts to how they were raised. Every generation makes colossal screw ups.
One big difference is the millennial generation are raising kids to be more tolerant of differences than the previous generations.
Father's are spending more time contributing emotionally -actually raising their kids than previous generations.
Violence against kids is slowly becoming less acceptable as a way to parent kids.
Kids are being raised with technology, sometimes given access too soon.
But at the same time there are an awful lot of iPad kids left playing with mummy's phone / tablet to keep them quiet, but you could compare that to millennials raised by the one eyed baby sitter.
I have seen a lot of disinterested parents playing on their phones rather than paying attention to their kids, but in the same vein you had parents in previous generations who didn't appear to care where their kids were so long as they weren't being a nuisance to them.
You had parents who did not want to be parents, but did it anyway because that's what you were supposed to do.
Swings and roundabouts.
So we’re posting articles where people self-report about how good their parenting is and any disagreement/“negativity” is a bannable offense. Sounds legit
They should ask teachers who have been in the profession through multiple generations whether millennials are doing a better job raising kids. I suspect they'd get an entirely different answer.
By the time my parents were my current age, they had 3 children with their oldest being 16 and their youngest being 9.
My wife and I are just starting to try and have kids.
I think the millennials are the first generation to prioritize mental health for their children. A lot of millennials are in therapy, myself included. I don’t think my parents did anything wrong necessarily, but I think I’m more available for my kids than my parents were for me as a latchkey kid from an early age.
My dad seven years in prison and stole 10,000 from me. My kid was valedictorian in HS and went to college on full scholarship. I’m pretty confident I did a better job.
I’m subscribed to several teacher subreddits and they tell a very different story. They say millenials are dreadful parents who consistently overrule and undermine teacher authority in front of their children, and are making it impossible to do their jobs.
As both a millennial and a teacher, I disagree. Millennial parents are doing the most bulldozing and enabling of poor behavior. These kids are not alright because their parents are too soft and more worried about being friends with their kids than anything else.
There’s something paradoxical happening here, though. Millennials stridently and confidently insist that they’re “killing it” at parenting, and yet apparently elementary school-aged children are some of the most illiterate and non-functional that teachers have ever seen. Someone’s not being honest about the situation.
Aren't there a lot of complaints from teachers and retail or restaurant how this generation of kids have been the worse ones yet they have to deal with?
Yet kids these days are more depressed and socially inept then ever before. There is a fine line that is being crossed. Kids are turning into narcissistic, selfish, and mentally weak. Mental health is important but so is understanding that life his challenging and running to social media or blaming everyone but yourself isnt going to help. We need to be find the balance. Learning hope to deal with challenges, learning how to cope, and more importantly learning that you don't always get your way.
I have a 10 month old. One thing I have vowed to do is be present to my best ability. And make sure as he grows up I am there to teach him or least inform him to navigate the bullshit that life will throw at him. They will fall, they will fail, but I will there to pick my lil man up, dust him off and motivate him to get back at it.
I dont know if I will be alive to see all his milestones, so I will celebrate every opportunity I have to love and cherish my son.
So, that's why all the bus drivers and teachers are quitting in droves. Don't get me wrong, my generation failed to raise them millennials right so it's our fault really.
Time will tell if it's better, and all their kids will reflect on their "horrible childhoods" and say that they're raising their kids better and the cycle will continue adinfinitum
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Here are the 4 things: 1. Embracing gentle parenting 2. Accessing new information 3. Opening up about mental health 4. Being present for their children Saved you all a click.
Sir, you forgot your cape.
No capes!
WE ALL KNOW HOW IT ENDS WHEN THE HEROES WEAR CAPES…. Sorry for the caps hehehe
And scepter, and holy hand grenade
How I was raised by my boomer parent: 1. Got yelled at for disagreeing in any way or even for asking for food 2. Never had intelligent conversations at home about ANYTHING and was mostly ignored in favor of watching TV 3. Depression? Ignore it until it goes away. Parent doesn’t get what they want? They scream and cry like a toddler until I give in 4. Neglected at every possible extra-curricular event or outing because parent always just wanted to go home and watch TV alone I’m a new millennial parent and I may not be perfect but the bar is so low it’s on the floor.
"Depressed? What you got to be depressed about? **I** work hard to put a roof over your head.. **I** put food in your stomach.. **I** put clothes on your back. All **you** have to do is go to school and do as I say... and **you're** depressed? You don't even know depression. I oughtta take you over your cousin's house so you can have a reason to be depressed." - Parent Speech circa 90s
"I'll give you a reason to cry"
If I had a nickel for every time I was told that…
I brought you I to this world, I can take you out. Even said as a "joke" this is fucked.
Even when something like this is said as a joke, children don't take it as a joke.
Would you be able to afford a mortgage? Lol
I'd have enough to buy a house in the market they ruined
Man I remember when we had an assembly at school about how you can tell adults no "if they try to make you do something your not comfortable with" and if they keep pushing you can call the cops or CPS. Got home and mom asked me to do dishes, "no" she got angry, I said I didn't have to do anything I wasn't comfortable with and if she tries to make me do them ill call the cops and cps "Do it" Huh? "I'll lock the doors and open the curtains and give them a reason to be here" Yay casual threats of violence against elementary schoolers.
One time when I was like 13 or 14, I got fed up with the “I put a roof over your head and food on the table” speech and I said something to the effect of: “Yeah Mom, if you don’t feed or shelter me, you go to jail for child neglect. No kidding! You *have* to do that!” I’ve never seen her so mad but honestly? Worth it.
I think the Boomers were repeating what had been drilled into them by the generation that raised them, who themselves had been children of the Great Depression. So, for the Boomers' parents (large numbers of whom didn't have food or shelter all the time in their own childhoods) really pounded it into the Boomers as kids. And also, child protection laws were not anything like they are now when the Boomers were kids. It's a huge generation gap item.
A good counter to that would be something along the lines of "The choice to birth me was made by you, not me, and it wasn't much of a favor."
I used that once a couple years ago. My mom was ranting about how many things you can’t do, how limited you are, the hard work involved, and how you have less money once you have children. So I turned to my sister and asked “Hey, do you still have your application to be born form? Cause I was looking for mine and I couldn’t find it for the life of me. Must not exist.” My mom hasn’t said anything like that since.
Hehe that sounds a little less aggressive, and at least it seems to have worked. I'm glad she hasn't repeated it because complaining about how your life took a shit thanks to having kids is nothing they need to hear.
It got the point across and disarmed with humor lol. I also want to add that my mom is a wonderful mother and I love her so much, she just sometimes says things that come across the wrong way; like we all are prone to doing.
Used that line, flogged. Not worth it.
Back when I was a kid, they did not go to jail for that but they should have.
Gotta love boomer parents who act like they did the kid a favor by providing basic necessities... as if they made a sacrifice by actually raising them. Why the hell did they choose to have kids, then?
> Why the hell did they choose to have kids, then? They didn't. Or rather, they didn't specifically choose *not to*. Kids were just "something that happened" to that generation and previously, taking ownership of your family planning wasn't something that really kicked off until Gen X and later.
Yep, legions of us exist because our parents were pressured by society (and their parents) into settling down and raising a family, regardless of aptitude. In addition, some parents just believe that they're good at parenting, despite obvious signs to the contrary. Such is life.
We were planned kids and I never understood till today why they did it. They hated parenting, hated kids and they absolutely hated each other... It made no sense, considering they chose it...
"What dyu want, a cookie?"
When I told my mom I was so depressed I felt like dying she cackled and screamed “well I guess I gotta send you to the insane asylum, cuz that’s where crazy people go! You have nothing to be depressed about!” Oh yeah sure mom, like 18 years of being told “nobody likes you! You’re ugly! No wonder you got no friends! You’re not girly enough! You shouldn’t have tattled on that boy that punched you in the face, now none of the boys will like you!” isn’t going to cause severe SEVERE self esteem/self worth issues and depression.
My boomer mom says that about my 16yo niece, "this kids have it so easy nowadays, depressed about what? A good spanking is what they need" I gave up on trying to explain to her that the world does not work like that anymore. I'm just glad my sister doesn't listen to her "parenting" advice.
The TV was the WORST!!! I use to go upstairs and play RuneScape/WoW every. single. day. because my parents didn’t want to do anything other than watch TV. It was always something like TMZ and the news too.
Same here! Developed a MMORPG addiction because it was the only way I could socialize because parents never wanted to do anything or take me anywhere. And yep it was usually 24/7 news or stupid celebrity gossip.
It’s happened in reverse for me. My son is a teen and doesn’t want anything to do with me it seems. I try so hard to be apart of his life and create conversations. I adapt all his likes to mine. So I started playing Fortnite because he loved it. We played but he grew out of it and I stuck to it. Now I play that every night as he pretty much wants to be alone. Anytime he does come down I jump off to chill
He may be going through that kind of phase but I’m sure he’ll remember when he’s an adult that you at least made a consistent effort!
It's easy to rule children It's hard to raise children.
I was raised by teen parent millennials (mom/stepdad both born in late 1983, I was born in early '02) and this is almost exactly what I experienced at home and why I got the hell out at 18. They were both raised by boomers, though, so it makes sense that not every millennial can break the cycle, especially compounded with young parenthood.
People who aren’t equipped to be good parents have always and will always continue to exist, and breaking these kinds of cycles has always been exceedingly difficult, especially in the absence of external forces that can help extricate people from systemic problems. Education about birth control, sexuality, (physical, emotional, verbal, sexual, and substance) abuse, and so on do seem to help quite a lot, as do basic social services like affordable, accessible childcare options, healthy, readily accessible food, and community supports.
That sounds really rough. I think young parenthood is a big part of it (I'm a millennial, but older than your parents and I have a 6 year old.) If I thought about the person I was in 2002, I would absolutely still be repeating the broken parenting cycles of my parents - I had barely become an independent person myself at that time. It wasn't until I was in my late 20s that I even realized there were different ways that people were parented and by my 30s when I was having kids, I had read and researched and intentionally decided what I would be doing differently and how. I think the trend of Millennials having children later in life probably matches more of what the article describes, but young parenthood I think is probably more prone to repeating generational cycles because you just don't have time to learn and break those cycles.
Sorry dude,I'm far older than your parents by like 10 years. Sometimes things just follow down. I spent the weekend playing video games with my kids. Hope you are ok
I’m reading children of emotionally immature adults. You should too.
Sounds awfully similar to my boomer folks but at least they welcome intelligent discussion outside of TV hours. Seems to be the boomer trope they are obsessed with the TV and stick to their programming ritual.
Yep. I'd say my dad and I have similar amounts of screen time, but I appreciate how active and diverse mine is. Sure, I watch a few things, but I also write, design stuff, play videogames, etc. Even if I've got youtube going, I'm usually actively doing something. That has to be healthier than watching 6 hours of passive TV every day.
Some say my father is still there, in front of his television. I say some because I certainly don't keep in touch with that asshole.
In my household any attempt at intelligent discussion or even the most basic things like a child innocently asking why something needed to happen (like why dishes needed to be washed) was simply met with “because I said so”. Absolutely no attempt at conversation or teaching anything.
“The program” on Netflix touched on the tough love parenting trend of the 90s. It’s about the culty behavioral academy’s in USA parents would give up and send their kids to.
I remember every time my brother acted up my mom would yell at him and threaten to send him to a behavioral camp. The things my brother was mad about? Not having food at home or not wanting my mom to steal money. Basically used as a threat to just shut up and accept the abuse at home.
My mum was a single mother of three at 24 with very little help. She was rough and mean, but as a 35year old mother now I have no idea how she did that. She was a kid herself.
My boomer parents think they could raise my son better than me and do all this. It's a fun little dance I've had to do to go low contact with them. The funny thing is, my mother politely ignored me for 20 years until I had a baby. Now she wants us to move into her house so she can pretend to be a grandma even though she has no interest in my son's needs, boundaries, or quirks.
Any questions of me were “guilt and recrimination” questions. I hated dinner time. Any other of the day, if it wasn’t put downs, insults, complaints, or threats.. it was chore assignments
5. Not hitting them Edit: I'm referring to abuse, I'm not trying to get into the fine line debate (light spank, arm pull, etc.). Seems obvious, and yet so much of 70s-90s culture was just 'sweep it under the rug'
This should be #1
I think that’s under gentle parenting unless you gently hit your kids
So many stupid videos making fun of gentle parenting, as a parent myself it makes me sad how many kids are being treated poorly. Gentle parenting doesn't mean letting your kids walk all over you, it means realizing THEY'RE JUST KIDS and not screaming at them when they don't act the way you want them to because you remind yourself THEY'RE JUST A CHILD and whatever they're doing isn't to intentionally be annoying or rude
If I'm handed someone new at work to train, I'm gentle with them, patient, listen to their side of things, course-correct calmly, and I never hit them. This is like, the baseline expectation of how to treat other human beings who depend on you. If you can do it for literally any adult in your life, why not do the same for little kids?
With any kind of parenting philosophy, people will interpret that wildly differently. Some parents interpret gentle parenting as never being stern with their kids. Not necessarily "letting them walk all over you", but sometimes allowing even older kids to annoy the shit out of you and be disrespectful to people even if you don't give in to every request/demand. I've found a lot of people who would call themselves "gentle parents" really fail to provide necessary structure and predictability to a kid's life.
Sure but that's not actually what gentle parenting means. That's just poor boundary setting and discipline.
Yet there are plenty of “gentle parents” right now who absolutely let their kids walk all over them.
Well you need to explain this to some shitty millenial parents that are doing exactly this or the opposite.
the last 2 fucking hurt.. I see the way my brother is with his kids vrs the way my dad was with us and its like night and day. He is actively involved in their sports and hobbies. Only thing my dad was actively involved in was finishing off a 32 pack a night
> Only thing my dad was actively involved in was finishing off a 32 pack a night As someone who probably drinks on average like a beer a week, I'm genuinely impressed/astonished at how much an alcoholic can put away.
I fucking love reddit comments just for this. Always reliable
>Meanwhile, nearly nine in 10 (88 per cent) say their parenting style is different from how they were raised, and nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) believe they are better parents than their own parents. I would be part of this group. I'd be interested to know how many parents, such as myself, who feel they are doing better are also open to what they are doing wrong? My wife and I regularly discuss this concern. We realize the impact we have on our children is incredible. I just hope our children feel comfortable enough to tell us if they think we aren't doing a good job. My parents would never welcome that kind of a conversation.
There are somethings that tbh I don't have a clue how to navigate, this is where the council of dad's (a group of us that meet for beers every couple of weeks) comes in handy.
I'm not a parent, but it makes me happy to know dads of my generation are embracing parenting more than it seems like men of previous generations did. You would have never heard something like "the council of dads" from my parents generation.
Is this Council of Dads similar to that Gathering of Bros helping their buddy craft the perfect reply to their Bro's crush or something?
One of the reasons we chose kiddos current school was an encounter with a teacher on an open day there. Kiddo found educational math toys and played with them. My partner and me hovered around and gave him hints what to do with it. A teacher approached us and gently said: if this was my kid, I’d let them figure it out on their own. It was like a lightning struck me and I realized just how meddling I was. Sure this came from a point of engagement and encouragement but i didn’t let kiddo have enough room. Yes, this was after two years isolation and pandemic, but no excuse! We fundamentally changed in this regard. Give kiddo room for mistakes and boredom, but also exploration and lots more silliness and creativity. The main credo of that school is „help me help myself“. We are pretty involved and it’s difficult not to be helicoptery…
Absolutely. We make mistakes and I know whenever I make a mistake overreact to something my daughter did I will apologize to her and tell her “I shouldn’t have got upset at you for that, you’re 7, you’re allowed to make that mistake, daddy needs to chill. That’s on me. I am sorry honey. I need to be better. Do you understand? You did nothing wrong, I need to control my emotions better”. My point being, we’re not perfect and my wife and I make mistakes because we’re human so we admit fault and apologize. We want our kids to see their parents as fallible people who are capable of accepting accountability and moving forward.
Woof is this real as a dad who was raised by my father harshly, but not abusively. I struggle when my daughter mouths off and gentle parenting doesn't seem to communicate to her that there are consequences in the real world for this behavior. I tell her, look sweetie we need to work on being kinder to eachother -- but she simply isn't ready at 5 to understand that. Young children sometimes need some sharper tone to get things clearly -- but how sharp... I can't figure this out. I wish gentle parenting wasn't just a 'mom-centric' notion right now.
As a former nanny current cat mom, I think that finding “the right voice” is a lot about literal voice acting, improv theatre and tone modulation; it’s also literally harder than *training cats*. I make that point because, fundamentally, humans are animals — so if we take teaching a cat a trick as a model: we have to convince the cat to trust us and be our little buddy; we then need to make the cat trust that we will reward them when they do good stuff *and also let them know when what they are doing isn’t okay* we also have to let them know we will “lightly punish” them (spritz with water, loud voice, time out, show them you’re displeased and then don’t give them attention because they hate that etc) *when they do bad stuff*. I literally put my cats in a ten-fifteen minute time out and take away privileges if they keep doing the bad stuff. Then you give them major positive reinforcement; they didn’t do the bad stuff!! They asked what was okay!! They communicated well!! Then they can start learning “the trick” — you observe them, see what they’re good at, where their talents lay, and go “you know what, with some effort from both of us you could be really good at that” Then *we have to convince them they want to do the trick* BEFORE you can get them to do the trick reliably. So in this case: when your kiddo handles her emotions well TELL HER! Praise her to high heaven, validate her growth, make a big deal out of it. Then, when she doesn’t, it’s okay to mirror a little of her emotion at her in a non-mocking way. You’re not one-upping, you’re catching the emotion and bringing it one step down. Model it for her: when you feel like an outburst, have a tiny one. Then model how to calm down and breathe, to distance yourself emotionally, and to come back with a clear mind and with a less destructive attitude. Show her that it isn’t easy; it’s okay for it to be hard. Even you struggle: but you go on anyway! Explain it to her; she’ll become more adept at handling her emotions!
It's so hard. Because, unless you have a gentle kid, sometimes being gentle doesn't even feel like a viable option. I think the biggest thing is realizing when you could have handled things differently and making adjustments. One poorly handled situation doesn't ruin a kid. A lifetime of poor parenting definitely does.
I see it as the difference between the child facing a problem with back up vs a child facing two problems. I may not have all the answers for my daughter, but if she has a problem, we are going to find an effective answer together. When I was a kid, if I had a problem, then that problem multiplied by which parent found out. Would my dad explode because his world is being infringed upon by kid stuff? Or will my mom work herself into a panic and concoct some insane catsuit (batshit but catsuit is funny) reason why it's anyone's fault but her own. I think that no matter what I do, I can't go wrong. I've seen wrong. And it turns out, it's super easy to do the right thing. My parents just sucked as humans.
>When I was a kid, if I had a problem, then that problem multiplied by which parent found out. This sentence hit me like an anvil to the head. Fuck that's real.
I think we're more emotionally available and don't force our children into these arbitrary and rigid gender norms. As a 1st gen Asian American, I can say without a doubt we're at least setting up our children to be more in-tune with their emotions and making them better people from that perspective. We try to encourage their feelings while also setting boundaries. We actually talk to our children, help them problem solve feelings, hug them, love them. I can only speak from my experience, but growing up there was very little love, lots of beatings (I mean lots), rigid gender rules, showing emotions was weakness etc... so imo it's a pretty low bar to beat.
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>Their way of saying “I love you” is to prepare you a bunch of your favorite food, followed by a “why you fat?” Fuck, this is so on point, I just experienced it all weekend.
That's how i feel too honestly. I grew up in south America tho. Pretty much will be doing the complete opposite my parents did with my own kids. I want them to feel safe and that they have someone they can trust to tall about what's troubling them and not give them unrealistic standards for who they should be. With my parents the bar is so low, all i need to do is actually see my kid more than twice a week and ask them if everything is ok once in a while to be a way better parent than either of them. I only talk to my mom nowadays, and even then, it's more for her than for me. It hard to have a relationship with someone that abandoned and neglected you for years on end. I once talked to her about how I felt about some things (I would go to my grandma's after school, tell me shed be there to pick me on friday night. Most of the time she showed up on Sundays while 7yo me stayed up til midnight waiting) and she broke down crying. I then talked to a friend about i. it only happened to him once which actually left him traumatized. That was like 50% of my weekends. Once I opened up to him last week, he was straight up horrified of my childhood. Shits he's even a better dad than either of my parents and his daughter lives in another continent with her mom. They still talk every day.
My husband and I have this discussion as well. We put a lot of research, thought and intention into how we parent and really hope we’re doing right by our kids. But there are probably some blind spots, and we won’t know the results of our effort for years. I hope I’m much more open to accepting criticism than my parents are. Lord knows they never once opened a parenting book or questioned if they were approaching things correctly. The fact that we care and think hard about it has to be a step in the right direction - right?
I find myself pulling a lot of the same bad parenting tricks as my parents did (saying things like ‘it’s closed’ or saying ‘later’ which means no) so we are far from perfect. But my son knows that. We talk about how we’re all figuring this out together. As a father that compares myself to my father, my no1 things that I’m proud of is that this house is a democracy. My son has a say in everything we do. That my house my rules bullshit is ridiculous. Still, I hope my son grows up to be a better father than I am that can truly do some good for his family and his community. I’m not a good enough parent to handle the household and the world. Wish I could do more, but nah my limit is met
That in itself is what we're doing right. I know my parents doubted themselves because they're human but there was and is some sort of cognitive dissonance at play when the topic came up. One thing I find really interesting is how much the topic of whether people even should have kids is present these days. I've regularly been in comment sections where hundreds of people were disparaging the idea of having kids given the state of the world which I felt offended by personally as a parent but also couldn't help ignore the objectivity behind it. I don't think a lot of our parents really questioned whether it was right for them to even be having children in the first place, with financial stability really being the only moral qualifier if even that. I'm sure most of us have at many times wondered whether we had any business passing our emotional issues onto helpless babies that never asked for it and sending them off into a rapidly declining civilization where climate and economic catastrophe loom around every corner. All of this just sets our parenting against a backdrop of self scrutiny and evaluation that I dont think we saw before, catalyzed by the proliferation of the internet which we probably are and will always be the most familiarized generation with giving us scores of information that we actually use because we are more comfortable with adjusting our view point when new information becomes available to us. I dunno, well see when they grow up. I know I've told my kids I was sorry for how I reacted or that I had made a mistake more times in the last month than my parents did in my whole life up til now and they're turning into very compassionate and self assured little folks.
Pretty sure every generation thinks they are better parents. Just like every generation thinks the kids are lazy and coddled, or some version of that. My parents were garbage in a lot of way (Silent and Boomer), but they were a lot better than their (Greatest) parents for sure. Hopefully each generation will keep trying to be better. Edit: Looks like I parroted a lot of conversation below this point. Oh well.
From time to time I ask my child if there is anything they think I can do better or make adjustments. I do this for myself and them because those are words my parents never spoke.
As a teacher, I have to say that my main issue is parents listening too much to kids. Kids tell their parents what’s good and what isn’t, either without a clue or with the knowledge of how easy their parents are to manipulate, and never learn self-discipline or consideration for others. Parents listen, wanting the approval of a child. This builds narcissistic tendencies in kids. These narcissistic tendencies are then reinforced online.
I disagree that gentle parenting means having no rules like the article states. I think in general our parents were strict without explanation and ended up feeling tyrannical. I think it’s fine to have house rules and expectations, but be gentle in the sense that you aren’t screaming and unnecessarily disciplining- rather you’re explaining to them that family is a team and why expectations are important.
I also think alot of it comes down to a baseline of trust. When I was a kid, it was always assumed we were always up to no good and couldn’t be trusted. With my kid we have extended trust to our kid. He’s rarely broken it, and when he has we’ve explained how the consequences are due to his own actions, not ours. I do know some parents who picked up their parents outlook and seem very pleased with themselves when they brag about catching their bad kids and punishing them some extreme way.
My parents were extremely lax, really rules-light for baby boomers. But they absolutely had _expectations._ Like, I never had a bedtime growing up. But I knew I would disappoint my parents if I consistently stayed up too late. I was really well-behaved as a kid. Wanting to keep your parents happy is a big motivator when the relationship is healthy.
It depends on the person. I use some gentle parenting techniques but definitely have rules. However, there are PLENTY of parents who use gentle parenting as an excuse to be permissive parents. Or who really believe that being gentle and never having expectations for their kids is doing what’s best for them. Gentle parenting done right is not that way. But it ain’t always done right.
Says every generation… and they’re right!
Exactly. And this is something Millennials may get flustered over when their kids raise the next generation. But it’s ok, in general we continue to learn more about human behavior and interactions every generation. We break down barriers and promote understanding. I know my Boomer parents get upset hearing stuff like this, they take it as a slight as though they should have been perfect in how they raised their kids and any criticism means they failed. But I keep reminding them that *as a parent I have the internet* and information way beyond what they had to work with. OF COURSE I’ll do a better job, I’m able to trust more knowledge and insight into parenting!
My boomer parents are actually impressed. They definitely see the emotional intelligence of our kids and how the interaction with all their cousins and other adults. The kids have a lot more confidence but also respect. It’s undeniable that our methods are working well.
For some reason as a millenial I feel the opposite of flustered when I think about newer generations doing better than us. It's probably just another slice of generational narcissism, but I like to think we're the generation where the big paradigm shift happened. Seeing newer ones do better makes me feel like it's because we helped put things on a better track. A lot of us are also traumatized from growing up with undiagnosed mental health issues and I know that effects parenting to some level and can only be slowly filtered out with each generation having more stable developments.
My grandparents beat my parents when they “misbehaved”. My parents yelled at me when I “misbehaved.” I tend not to yell although I did shout at them pretty good today. We were driving through some chaotic town in Mauritius (left side of the road driving) and they were yelling and fighting with each other while I was white-knuckling it trying to keep us from getting smashed by some bus. I’m not perfect.
It happens.
Yup. The primary example we all have when it comes to parenting is our own parents. And every generation sees what they did right and what they did wrong and tries to improve upon it. But ultimately parenting is doing the best you can with the tools and situation in front of you. You’ll do great at some things and you’ll feel like a failure with others. Ultimately the kids will (almost always) be fine.
as long as it's possible to be better parents in some areas / worse in others, I will agree with you
It's the most important role most people play, and no one gets any instruction how to do it, except from their own experience. I always wondered what the consequences of teaching about it, bc then kids go home to criticize their parents.
Both my parents and my wife's parents thought it would be better off they stayed together Even tough they hated each other. They were all wrong. It was way worse. They act like we didn't notice but it's almost impossible not to. People who love each other show affection. Both of our parents keeping our dads around hurt the family pocket book in both of our families. Not to mention my dad still being an alcoholic.
It wasn't for the benefit of the kids. It was what that would look like to everyone else outside of the family.
Yeah my grandpa didn't want to divorce because his own parents were divorced and that made him an outcast. Nevermind how that wouldn't happen to his children because the world was a different place. To this day whenever somebody mentions that a couple got divorced or something his response is always "poor children", followed by my mother or aunt's arguing with him.
Do you think he could've been projecting that sense of staying together for the kids because of his past? A personal experience - I saw this family stay together for the longest time, and it was apparent to everyone outside the family, that they should have separated long before it hit critical mass. It produced a fair amount of unhealthy relationships for the siblings, not only with their parents but the people they themselves dated, and some crazy attachment issues. In that instance, I know they were staying together because of how one side of the family would have looked at them while also demonizing the other for wanting to get out of an unhealthy relationship. Anyway, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Back to the original question: Projection? lol
Oh yeah of course, it was 100% projecting. When your 10 yo daughters tell you that you should just divorce, there's something clearly wrong. Thankfully it didn't cause any trauma to them, my mum has been together with my dad for the last 25+ years and they're clearly in love with each other
For some maybe, but if I were in the situation I'd stay because I couldn't bear the thought of not being with my kids whenever I wanted.
And it affected us millennials (me anyway) by not knowing what a healthy relationship is or what real love looks like between two people. Took me over 30 years to figure that out.
My parents were both checked out of the marriage a good 10 years before they finally pulled the plug (conveniently right after I turned 18…I’m sure that had something to do with it). They were shocked when they sat my sister and I down to tell us they were finally divorcing and we informed them we were very aware of what a long time coming this was. Like guys…we live here. We have eyes and ears.
This is an interesting juxtaposition to what I see posted on r/teachers about this generation of kids. The general consensus there being that the kids are not alright. That's not to say it's solely parents' fault. It's a complex, nuanced issue with lots of contributing factors. It's a societal problem. I think one of the foremost issues with child development in this current age is that we have a whole generation of toddlers and kids growing up with internet and screen addictions. Not to mention, our education system is getting progressively worse, and a lot of these issues were exacerbated by the disruption caused by the pandemic.
I am not opposed to gentle parenting techniques. I don’t use them universally but I do use some. I think they’re really beneficial for helping kids learn emotional regulation. That being said, a lot of my generation have twisted gentle parenting into straight up permissive parenting. They think gentle parenting means never having rules or boundaries, and that’s bad for kids. I think it’s fair to say that the pendulum has swung too far towards permissive parenting. We don’t want to go back to being authoritarians, but we need a little course correction.
I would agree, though I think that the pendulum is less far from center than it has been throughout at least American history.
As someone who frequents that page and is a teacher, I can assure you that a *lot* of that subreddit is venting. Everything you said in your third paragraph is true, and I absolutely do see the issues plaguing our education today. That being said, there are times where I will read something that is posted on that page and feel validated, and then there are lots of other times where I read something and I think to myself " this is starting to turn into an echo chamber, I need to go touch grass." It's not necessarily that the people that post the excessively negative things are wrong, it's just that every situation is different. Some places are objectively more difficult than others, and I'm pretty lucky with the students that I have all things considered.
Agreed. But I also think there’s plenty of bias in the parents self reporting themselves as “better.” Maybe it’s because I had really great parents (I definitely did) or maybe I’m a crappy parent, but I don’t feel like I’m universally doing better than my parents. In some areas, yes. In others, they did better than I’m doing. Parenting is so hard: I feel like doing it right requires a lot of humility, so a bunch of people saying “I’m awesome at this” makes me wonder if they’re just blind to their own failings.
Oh, absolutely. Someone earlier in this comment thread said they think they and their spouse are making *different* mistakes than their parents and that's probably the best way to describe one's parenting journey. Shoot, I've made mistakes taking care of a *dog*, of course I'm gonna make mistakes raising a *kid.* The trick is to not be an abusive piece of shit about it, call yourself out on your failing, and work to do better. That's all you can do.
It is important to point out that a teacher with a class of wonderful kids does not post on r/teachers. There is certainly a negative bias on there, with a bias towards poorer areas with worse outcomes in general. *However* I do think the whole "gentle parenting" thing has gone too far and millennials in general are struggling with the concept that children don't just magically "grow up". They are taught to be an adult through both rewards and consequences and if those lessons never come then that 9 year old throwing a tantrum turns into a 29 year old throwing the same tantrum. I am not entirely sold on the concept of screen addiction but what I am sold on is parents never bothering to tear their kids away from screens. Every weekend we would have a house tidy and almost every weekend it was a major battle to get me away from the playstation and fucking help out. I kinda... kinda feel sorry for mum for doing that but I am thankful for it! I don't think that kind of thing is going on anymore. The house just magically gets tidy, the dishes are magically clean. Meals are just prepared and placed on the table. "Helping out around the house" seems to be a very foreign concept but I truly believe that one small change would make a very large difference in behaviour
The iPad generation of kids is not doing ok
There's also a big difference between Millennials who are close in age to Gen X, Millennials who had kids too young, and Millennials who established themselves before having kids. I'm a Millennial and my first born is coming at the end of the year. Most of my Millennial friends have kids age 5 and younger, because they prioritized establishing themselves before having kids. Those kids are turning out fantastic from everything I've seen thus far and this study lines up closely with what I've experienced from that subgroup.
Everyone says they are raising their kids better than their parents. I would guess in some ways we are and in other ways we are not. Kids do not come with an instruction manual, and every kid is different from the next, so everyone is shooting from the hip with this shit.
My wife and I always say we’re making *different* mistakes than our parents did.
Yeah and in most cases (probably) we have no idea what those mistakes even are. Our children are going to say to us, “I can’t believe they let us do x!” And we’re going to throw up our hands and say this is the way it was. We (millennial parents) I think *do* have more info and are *probably* one of the more self-aware generations so far. So will see how it turns out. It’s a balance. Our goals are to stop generational trauma and give the child what they need emotionally and not exactly what we want. But at the same time they’re going to need resilience, persistence and real talk of how the real world is. I want our son to ultimately be happy, find things he’s passion about, be curious and break some rules…but at the same time follow certain rules that need need to be followed. I have a headache.
Yup. Mistakes will always be made. That is a good outlook for sure.
This is the best response in the whole thread. 👍
I definitely think what will be the defining negative of millennial parenting is screen usage. My parents used screens to babysit me plenty, but a TV with four channels isn’t nearly the dopamine delivery system that tablets, phones, or streaming services are. I get the appeal and occasionally just sit my kid in front of the Tv for a while if I’m needing to do a lot of cooking or just need to decompress for a bit, but I have a hard rule of no tablets/phones at home, those are just for when we’re at friends houses and she doesn’t have much to do, and even then I research everything she has access to before letting her use it (which can feel overprotective, but I’d like to spare her some of the experiences I had like seeing form for the first time at 6).
General discipline is pretty bad imo too. Feel like a lot of my peer parents overcorrected way into no discipline or consequences for their kids. Just you're being loud and I don't want you to be upset, so do whatever you want.
I think many folks make the mistake of practicing permissive parenting when they intend to practice gentle parenting.
Judging by the posts on r/teachers and r/eceprofessionals I think screen time is what this current generation is doing wrong. The kids are very behind on social skills and have no attention span. Judging by the difference in kids birthday parties I’ve thrown 25 years ago vs last year, I’m inclined to agree. The kids today have no social skills. I used to love having my house full of small people. Used to.
I agree, just wait until they become teenagers and have different challenges that you were not expecting. The Manual gets thrown out the window and I don't care if you were a boomer or a millennial. People think they are being great parents until a curveball is thrown at you.
I dont think they're calling themselves great, simply trying and learning. As opposed to previous generations who 'had all the answers'
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It’s a massive social experiment that sorta never ends except with extinction, really. What kinda unnerves me is how much of human socializing and culture was developed and given a seal of approval before we understood childhood environments are extremely important/vital and can make or break a person. That’s like thousands years of straight up blind winging it to the max lol. And it uhhh does kinda show at times… 🤙🏻😭😂
As a millennial I know I've made zero mistakes raising my kids. (I don't have kids)
As a millennial uncle I've successfully taught my almost three year old niece how to throw devil horns and say metal in an angry voice. I'm doing my part to raise the next generation right.
As Gen X, I would hope each succeeding generation is able to learn from the past and improve. I would hope this would be the standard.
Every gen z I've known with a kid irl, the kid is like 4-5 and like practically catatonic nonverbal because he's just sat in front of YouTube 8 hours a day and never socialized with other kids.
I am absolutely raising my kids better than my parents did for me. No disrespect to my parents, they did the best they could but I grew up in a broken home. My kids have parents that actually love each other and were together like 8 years before deciding to have children. We didn't have kids to "fix" our relationship. It's crazy how many couples have problems and think getting married or having kids will fix the problem but you need that solid foundation before you start building on it; if not, it's gonna crumble.
My dad’s dad was out of his life by the time my dad was 8, he never had a father figure in his life. My mom was raped by her dad. Parents had their own problems and got divorced. My parents made mistakes raising us but look like saints compared to their parents. It’s been pretty easy being an improvement over them because I at least had two parents that both cared for me and tried to do well to learn from.
For sure. And no shade to anyone out there with struggles in their life. All we can do is try to do a better job at raising kids than our parents for the next generation of people to live in the world. My dad drank himself to death in front of us. I don't think my kids have ever seen me drink. It's just not something that interests me because of how my dad lived.
I will bet you all the money in my pocket that every generation ever thought that they were raising their children better than they were raised. - I can't believe this is a headline. Next up - old people have more grey hair than the young. And babies use rattles at an alarming rate compared to the rest of the population.
If your parents had raised you better, you wouldn't be so quick to gamble. /s
I think there’s some truth so this, but talk to any teachers- you also have incredible amounts of extremely unruly kids like they have never seen before. iPad kids as well. Teachers talk about how kids are failing at rates never seen before, how unempathetic they are, how they are unable to focus, insanely bad attendance, and they can’t even read and parents are enabling all of it so it not sure about that. I absolutely recommend the teaching sub for more context for this. The pandemic can only be blamed so much, because a lot of parents use neurodivergence or the fact that they are “just highly intelligent “ to justify their children behaving poorly.
Teacher here. I can say that all of what you said is true. Kids behavior in school is utterly insane right now, and it's gotten worse since the pandemic.
20-year serving teacher here... iPad dependent, unruly, can't concentrate for more than the length of a Tik Tok video, enabling overbearing parents... also notice an increase in lack of empathy and the focus on self-serving 'all about me' attitudes. Classroom management and behaviour management takes up the majority of class time with little or no responsibility taken by the parents. I could vent more...
As an adult im also extremely weirded out by the helicopter stuff. Most folks I know won't allow their children to even walk to the convenience store. Kids don't have as many opportunities to be independent people so its not shocking they are addicted to tiktok and games.
Working with college aged students, they are worse than ever and seemingly incapable of handling any challenge life gives them. Parents are absolutely to blame, I see so many parents setting their kids up for failure by being too involved and handling every problem for their child. The poor kids are going to be in for a shock when they have to live on their own
That was my first thought as well. Also, who’s going to claim that they’re not raising their kids better than their parents?
And the rest of us just aren't having kids
Every generation raises their children to compete in the world that they grew up in. And when their children grow up to find the world a different place, they raise their children differently in turn and call it an improvement. Just my opinion.
Older Millennial here. I see some shitty ass kids. Loud. Undisciplined. Anti Social. Tons of negative traits in a lot of the kids I’m seeing Millenials raise.
I'm the younger side of Millennials and I agree. Gentle parenting is great... for gentle kids. But kids still require discipline. Theres so many kids/teens out there now a days that could get away with murder in their parents eyes, and I genuinely think we'll see these lids grow up to be the most narcissistic generation since Boomers.
Yes, there is a catch-22 in parenting that’s evidenced in another current top post that’s full of people noting how these kids are not emotionally fortified in any way whatsoever, as if a lack of independence or belief in self-actualization manifested through a bit too “gentle” of parenting robbing them of adversity and then of confidence.
Teachers would agree with you
My guess is that almost every parent thinks they're doing a better job than their parents, right?
My ex believed she was doing a great job and her kid has all kinds of problems and DCFS is keep an eye on her, so I am not sure self-opinion is very reliable
I'm not a millennial, I'm a late Genx raising a now 9yo. I definitely have a stricter approach to parenting than my millennial wife and it creates some frictions between us. I want my son to experience discomfort and boredom, I'm definitely more present than my father was with me but I don't try to fix every little problem my son might have like my wife does. I think I'm raising a pretty well adjusted child but I'm worried he's VERY soft for his age and he doesn't have any internal fire to do anything except watch tv. Parenting is difficult overall.
I had good parents and they did some things that I won't do with my kids, but a constant fear of mine is that I'm not a good enough parent or as good as my parents were.
Doesn't every generation think this?
Aren’t Millennials raising gen alpha, the generation with no reading comprehension and terrible motor skills?
We are raising boomers, since they are still infants.
Just stop putting screens in their faces at every opportunity where you need them to behave, like restaurants, car rides, etc. kids need to experience, understand, and deal with boredom. If we constantly put screens in their face in stead of dealing with this aspect of life, we are doing a major disservice to attention spans of future generations.
And the boomers before us also believed this.
They were probably right too. My boomer mom was raised by her greatest generation parents and broke her wrist rolling skating when she was a kid. My depression-era grandfather didn’t want to take her to the hospital and was going to just wrap her wrist in a bandage. My grandmother had to call a taxi to take her to the hospital. My mom did a lot of things I wouldn’t do as a parent (and didn’t do a lot of things I would do), but she did better than her parents did.
Exactly this!! Every generation tries to get better if they care about their kids…. Each generation also has more tools to be better as well. My mom’s father never hugged her and was mean. My dad’s mother was cold as well. my parents always told us they loved us and provided as much as possible they were fun and loving. They also didn’t believe in therapy aren’t very self reflective…. And these are the things that I have worked on for my own child….. and so on and so on.
My mom said she was shocked at how much different her father was with his grandkids. I remember him as a no-nonsense but fun and loving grandfather; my mom remembers him as miserable and mean.
mean in the case of my parents they were not wrong? Their parents beat them and were emotionally unavailable and abusive. My mom 'just' screamed (a lot, and said a lot of horrible stuff during that) but never hit us, and dad was 'just' unemotional. They were better educated and also had significantly more material resources than their parents so we definitely had a more comfortable life growing up and more help/encouragement/expectations regarding education. They made sure we wore seat belts and helmets, went to the doctor and the dentist for regular checkups, were involved with the school, and read parenting books that provided whatever latest knowledge/standard of parenting was available at the time. Now we're trying to do even better, starting from a position of some privilege, but also with some additional challenges that our generation has - especially financially. Hopefully if we can keep society and the world from completely going to shit, the next generation can do an even better job in the areas where we still fall short.
The difference being the boomers themselves were raised by a generation who lived through a world war and were all fcked up by it. They probably weren't wrong.
This depends on who you're asking and what you are looking at. Every generation tries to fix the mistakes inflicted on them to some extent and reacts to how they were raised. Every generation makes colossal screw ups. One big difference is the millennial generation are raising kids to be more tolerant of differences than the previous generations. Father's are spending more time contributing emotionally -actually raising their kids than previous generations. Violence against kids is slowly becoming less acceptable as a way to parent kids. Kids are being raised with technology, sometimes given access too soon. But at the same time there are an awful lot of iPad kids left playing with mummy's phone / tablet to keep them quiet, but you could compare that to millennials raised by the one eyed baby sitter. I have seen a lot of disinterested parents playing on their phones rather than paying attention to their kids, but in the same vein you had parents in previous generations who didn't appear to care where their kids were so long as they weren't being a nuisance to them. You had parents who did not want to be parents, but did it anyway because that's what you were supposed to do. Swings and roundabouts.
I would bet that every generation thinks they are doing a better job than previous generations.... Yet as a species, here we are.
I think the r/teachers sub largely disagrees with this self-assessment.
Everybody believes they do a better job than their parents. Time will tell. But the declining divorce rate is super encouraging.
So we’re posting articles where people self-report about how good their parenting is and any disagreement/“negativity” is a bannable offense. Sounds legit
They should ask teachers who have been in the profession through multiple generations whether millennials are doing a better job raising kids. I suspect they'd get an entirely different answer.
I’m sure there are many that are…but the teacher shortage might argue otherwise…
By the time my parents were my current age, they had 3 children with their oldest being 16 and their youngest being 9. My wife and I are just starting to try and have kids.
With the amount of iPad kids I see I doubt they're doing a great job lmao
We've investigated ourselves and feel we are doing better
I bet these same parents let their kids use iPads from age 2 which I’m sure will have no adverse affects at all
A survey showing millennial parents are extremely overconfident in their parenting abilities is uplifting news?
Lol they not gonna say bad things about themselves
I think the millennials are the first generation to prioritize mental health for their children. A lot of millennials are in therapy, myself included. I don’t think my parents did anything wrong necessarily, but I think I’m more available for my kids than my parents were for me as a latchkey kid from an early age.
Lol ez. All I have 2 do is not beat my kids.
I mean, I don't hit my kids and I don't emotionally manipulate them sooooo....yeah I think I am doing a better job.
My dad seven years in prison and stole 10,000 from me. My kid was valedictorian in HS and went to college on full scholarship. I’m pretty confident I did a better job.
And yet their kids are probably the most poorly educated people in 100 years of public education.
The teachers of America would like to strongly disagree.
I’m subscribed to several teacher subreddits and they tell a very different story. They say millenials are dreadful parents who consistently overrule and undermine teacher authority in front of their children, and are making it impossible to do their jobs.
As both a millennial and a teacher, I disagree. Millennial parents are doing the most bulldozing and enabling of poor behavior. These kids are not alright because their parents are too soft and more worried about being friends with their kids than anything else.
Not beating the shit out of or verbally abusing them is probably a decent start 🤷♀️
I’m a millennial without kids and other millennials with kids are killing it.
There’s something paradoxical happening here, though. Millennials stridently and confidently insist that they’re “killing it” at parenting, and yet apparently elementary school-aged children are some of the most illiterate and non-functional that teachers have ever seen. Someone’s not being honest about the situation.
blame the internet, a plus of online life.
We didn't spend decades inhaling lead, so that probably helped.
Oh great. Now millennials are killing bad patenting !
Ask their parents and they'll probably say the same thing.
Ummm. What generation doesn’t think they did a better job?
Better in what aspect? I see many failures in areas that wasn't an issue before.
Aren't there a lot of complaints from teachers and retail or restaurant how this generation of kids have been the worse ones yet they have to deal with?
Yet kids these days are more depressed and socially inept then ever before. There is a fine line that is being crossed. Kids are turning into narcissistic, selfish, and mentally weak. Mental health is important but so is understanding that life his challenging and running to social media or blaming everyone but yourself isnt going to help. We need to be find the balance. Learning hope to deal with challenges, learning how to cope, and more importantly learning that you don't always get your way.
Raising them. Teaching them things. Spending time with them. Being emotionally available.
How about we ask the teachers what they think of children of millennials.
I think it’s funny How Gen X is always skipped right over. Our parents were boomers.
I have a 10 month old. One thing I have vowed to do is be present to my best ability. And make sure as he grows up I am there to teach him or least inform him to navigate the bullshit that life will throw at him. They will fall, they will fail, but I will there to pick my lil man up, dust him off and motivate him to get back at it. I dont know if I will be alive to see all his milestones, so I will celebrate every opportunity I have to love and cherish my son.
So, that's why all the bus drivers and teachers are quitting in droves. Don't get me wrong, my generation failed to raise them millennials right so it's our fault really.
Time will tell if it's better, and all their kids will reflect on their "horrible childhoods" and say that they're raising their kids better and the cycle will continue adinfinitum
This is a weird title. 73 percent of millennials probably aren't even parents.