One thing you might ask yourself is why you only have one? Why only one rather than 6 or 10 kids? Is there anything that would encourage you to keep having kids in order to help maintain the replacement level? Or has the one child made you feel fulfilled enough that you are fine without having more?
For a lot of people who have kids, one or two kids is enough. They get the sense of fulfillment from being a parent without having a replacement-level amount of kids themselves. So even the people who do want to be parents and take that step, they aren’t having enough kids. Not only are they not achieving replacement level in their family, they aren’t making up for any shortfall from other people who don’t have children.
I had limited exposure to children prior to having one, didn’t really like being around them at all. My husband has a large family robust with children. They can’t really help with childcare but when we are all together there are like 12 kids under age 5 and it’s okay. It’s not my favorite time, but I do like how we all collectively have responsibility for everyone else’s kids and we trust one another to do that. That’s something I never experienced before. And it feels nice. Even the implicit assumption, “I trust you to keep my child safe” feels nice. And the kids are nice, too.
That’s just how things are done in his family and I think that’s really positive.
ETA: I about died when I learned the younger, child-free cohort of cousins refers to the older, parentified cohort as “The Boomers.” In our defense, we only had one.
“Trends” vary based on where you spend your time, both in real world and virtually. Yes there are “experts” earning clicks saying whatever gets clicks. Boring common sense doesn’t get many.
I’ve seen videos mocking gentle parenting. I see more real people in all our flawed glory.
That said there is close to an expert consensus out there. It is first a promotion of authoritative parenting over either authoritarian, permissive, or neglectful styles. These basic parenting styles are not new. It is second a recognition that we parents don’t have to be perfect; our kids are more resilient than we often give the credit for.
We are authoritative parents with a heavy dose of emotional support. For the most part. I’m rather effusive with my affection but neither of us has any problems saying “no.”
I think the biggest indicator of “you’re screwing this up” can often be the child himself. He seems pretty well-adjusted, all things considered, and so probably we’re doing okay. We had a moment recently where he seemed like he was more easily dysregulated, dialed back on screen time, and it helped.
But the ubiquitous nature of all these parenting trends demonstrates parents’ general anxieties about doing it wrong. In many cases it’s the opposite of the ones who raised us, who never thought twice about whether what they were doing was helpful, and often ignored evidence to the contrary.
Still, I feel the culture would benefit more from, “It’s not as easy to screw this up as you think.” Because I’ve also talked to parents who want kids but are terrified of repeating their parents’ mistakes.
Gotta say, it isn’t as new as you may think it is. I think I am just about old enough to be your parent and my wife and I had the mantra that we wouldn’t make the mistakes our parents made (me adding in “we will make own gosh darn it!”)
A standard line is always for parents to learn to smile and say “thank you for your concern” and grandparents along with aunts and uncles having been telling parents how awful of a job they are doing forever. I’m sure it is in ancient texts.
But yeah as noted above, the criticisms used to come with actual supports as well. That part is lessened now.
I see the same thing, and my wife said basically what you said above word for word. (She was feeling beat down because she was reading some gentle parenting forums and felt all the things you said about it above).
I told her - this might be true online - but in the real world, I think the vast majority of parents are just doing their best, like we are. We should learn what we can from gentle parenting, but we don’t need to treat it like the holy word of God.
And one of the parts we disagree with is indeed not telling kids “good job”.
Not to speak for @demontree or @spice_weasel, but once concern is that the older you get, the rougher pregnancy is on both mother and child, the more likely it is that pregnancy itself will result in complications, and the more likely it is that your child will be born with Autism.
Since we were dating, my wife made it clear that we needed to have all the kids we were going to have by 35 (we are the same age) as she did not want to risk pregnancy at a later age than that.
I have no idea how common it used to be, but I feel like the parents I meet are always apologizing for their kids, for acting, well, like kids. In my circles these kids are either autistic or ADHD. I’ve done it too. There’s this pressure to not inconvenience anyone with your child. I even had one guest apologize for her autistic kid who is support Level 3. He wasn’t even really having a meltdown, he was just overstimulated and climbing in her lap a lot. This is a kid with a serious developmental disability. By definition there are going to be some inconveniences.
Like, this is hard enough without feeling like you have to apologize all the time. So we have a rule that unless something is actively dangerous, you don’t have to apologize for your kids.
So yes, I see a lot of parents doing their best but also feeling like they should be doing better.
Yes on all accounts. Both pregnancy and birth were really hard on me physically, I had a post-partum depression from hell that I feel like I barely survived. Our son is autistic and requires a lot of support, and once you have one autistic kid the odds of having another are about 33%. I know a parent with multiple kids with autism - it looks really, really hard. We don’t have the bandwidth. We also don’t have the money. I consider it a privilege that we can even afford one child and an even greater privilege that we can afford the support he needs, but it’s been tight.
But at least I know what being a parent entails so I can make the decision not to have more with a fuller understanding of what that actually means.
That’s different than when people with no experience of parenting have to sort of guess how they’ll do. In the past you just did it because it was expected. I don’t think a lot of thought went into it, generally. Now more people feel like they have a choice and they take that choice very seriously. Which is good, but I think it’s possible to overthink it as well. Because it all comes down to, “you don’t know.” You don’t know what the kid’s needs will be, if they’ll be medically expensive, if their personality will suit yours, the cost of childcare five years from now, whether your spouse is going to die of cancer and leave you a single parent of a three year old (happened to my friend), you don’t get to know any of that ahead of time. And that’s scary. And when you’re focused on all that uncertainty it’s a lot harder to pull the trigger.
Because I changed my mind about having a kid very late, and started menopause early.
Yes, better reproductive technology. By the time I started wanting another baby, I was over 40 and it didn’t seem worth trying IVF when the success rate is so low. It’s not only the expense, and unpleasantness of daily injections and hormonal mood swings, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up and be disappointed. And I didn’t want to take my attention away from my daughter. So we stuck to trying the natural way, and it didn’t happen.
Now, if there had been more positivity about kids from people around me, and especially if my sisters had had kids earlier, allowing me to actually spend some time around a baby, I probably would have changed my mind about having kids sooner. In which case I would have had at least one more. This is how delayed fertility turns into reduced fertility.
Wow, that sounds chaotic. But it’s nice that your som has so many cousins, and as they get older, they entertain each other more and more, so the adults can focus on adult things.
My daughter has four cousins on my side, and really enjoys visiting them. It’s nice for her to have other kids in the house to play with. My husband is an only child, so there aren’t any on his side.
Yes. Reading that parents don’t make all that much difference to how kids turn out, and that you just have to be good enough rather than do everything perfectly made me feel like I could actually manage it. I do wish we weren’t forced to helicopter parent, though. Children can’t just go out and play in the streets anymore, and learn independence. It all has to be playdates or organised activities.
I haven’t heard that one. Why are you not supposed to say “good job”?
It was harder, and the lack of sleep was rougher that it would have been at 30, but I had a mostly uncomplicated pregnancy and birth. So although it would be preferrable to have kids younger, it didn’t stop me trying again.
This is indicative of the sheer impossibility of reaching this ideal standard. It’s not enough to positively reinforce your kids, you have to do it in a certain way.
OR
By saying “good job” they won’t learn the intrinsic value of doing things and will seek out reassurance too much.
The other thing I saw is that you’re not supposed to tell your kid “Wow, you’re so smart/artistic/talented!”. Instead you have to tell them “Wow, you worked really hard on that!”.
Or yeah maybe remove the “wow”, you don’t want them to fail to intrinsically self-motivated
I try to take this sort of advice in stride. OK - interesting idea - I’ll take it under consideration. But I’m not going to radically change how I am going to parent based on the latest fad-dy parenting book.
I don’t say ‘good job’; that’s very American. Not sure what I do say, I’ll have to try and pay attention when I’m praising her.
Yeah, I’ve heard that one. If you tell kids they are clever or talented, they’ll feel like their achievements aren’t under their control and refuse to try anything they aren’t confident of succeeding at. You’re supposed to praise effort instead because that’s under their control. I try and do it, but there’s so many of these rules it’s impossible to follow them all.
What would actually be useful is a better way to deal with meltdowns.
Classy how you edited out the second half of the quote, which puts the statement in context.
Even if I think that Earth could easily support a much larger population while also lessening our impact on the environment, this has very little to do with the current problem of rapidly shrinking populations.
Furthermore, just because I think there’s a possible way to support a much larger populations, it doesn’t imply that I support the means of getting to that point. There are all kinds of things that I think are good outcomes but where there’s no good path toward them, and so they shouldn’t be pursued (though if they happen organically, all the better).
I’ve become friendly with another mum at my daughter’s dance class, and she’s a single mother who just had her second baby via IVF, at 40. And she was saying she’d quite like to have a third(!) So clearly age doesn’t deter everyone. She said she would have done it earlier if she could have afforded to, and she’s not the only person I know whose decisions were affected by financial constraints, so it’s kind of surprising policies like free childcare don’t make more of a difference.
The United States is unique in a lot of ways, so it seems to me first we’d have to figure out why people in the US are not having children. It could be for a totally different reason than why people in Japan are not. We don’t know that free child care wouldn’t work here, and I’m leery of assuming what didn’t work for one country won’t work for another.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure what country you’re from but you mentioned you are not in the US. Do you see any issues specific to your country that might be at play?
(For the US, it could well be that free child care is not enough given the medical burden, and the gender pay gap, and all of these things.)
In some ways I got the easiest kid ever. He’s had maybe 5-10 autistic meltdowns in his whole life. They were mostly related to people taking turns out of turn, not taking their turn, or something not happening the way it should have that he couldn’t articulate. One big one happened when he was much younger and I was lovingly singing him a song. He freaked out and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Upon reflection I realized I inadvertently skipped a verse.
Well, I’ve never had kids. Never really wanted them. And I had plenty of “kid” experience. I had no access to pocket money unless I worked for it, so, when I was 11 I started babysitting for kids in the neighborhood. I branched out to other areas and continued doing it until I could get a real job at 16.
I hated it. I didn’t like dealing with them even when the kids were relatively o.k. Some kids were like torture for me. What if I ended up with kids like that? I was a substitute mom for a bf’s daughter from the time she was about 13 until she went away to college, and we’re still close today. But that’s the closest I got. I have a niece and nephew and a grandnephew, and I’m fine hanging out with them (heh, my nephew is over 40 and my niece is 39!), but I don’t feel the need for more than that.
Another factor, in the context of societal changes following from medical advances, is the improvement in treating infertility and the reduction in child mortality. Back in the day, even if you weren’t sure you wanted children, it might not deter you from marriage, because the odds of never having children were much higher than now. AFAICT, on average, around 10-15% of married women in mid-19th c. US never had children. (And many of those who did give birth still ended up with no living children by the time they were postmenopausal.)
There’s also a lot less adoption of “excess” children by friends or family members than there used to be, and abandoning a family in favor of a new solo identity is a lot more difficult. Not that these changes aren’t good things on the whole, but they mean that parenthood nowadays in places like the US is seen as a very permanent commitment of a huge amount of effort and resources, to an extent well beyond how it was traditionally perceived.
(I am always reminded of the absolutely chilling passage in Jane Austen’s Persuasion about the potential expendability of one’s children:
In our defense, we only had one.
)