Earlier this year Rachel over at The Kids Are All Right did a survey of her readers. When she asked who they turned to for parenting advice this is what she found.
In last year’s Changing Face of Motherhood Report (undertaken by Proctor & Gamble), mums sought parenting help from their own mothers first, ahead of all other resources.In The Kids Are All Right survey, our own parents were well down on the list of people we go to for help. Our readers are more likely to get parenting help from friends, online forums and blogs, elsewhere on the Internet and from health professionals.
We wonder if this has something to do with the fact that, unlike the Changing Face of Motherhood Report which surveyed mums of children aged 0–16, we focus on the parenting of teenagers. Perhaps our own parents are less able to offer insights into the unique challenges of parenting teenagers in 2013?
I think we are obviously in a whole new world of parenting here. We are the trailblazers. The first parents dealing this technology onslaught and a pressure driven society high on achieve at all costs.
Every day I find myself facing issues my mother never had to deal with.
- Mum never had to have a discussion about online porn with me because nobody carried porn around in their pocket. Anyone who had it kept it safely hidden under their bed.
- Mum never had to turn off all the electronic devices in the house and drag a surly teenage out of her bedroom to force her into some social engagement. Firstly, the only electronic devices in the house were the kettle, toaster and television, secondly I was expanding my mind in my bedroom by READING, not wasting my life on Facebook. Oh no I was happily engaged with the great works of literature by Virginia Andrews and Judith Krantz.
- Mum didn’t spend her life driving me to my friend’s houses if I needed to go anywhere I WALKED.
- Mum never had to monitor what I was doing online – the only “line” in the house was the telephone line, and as it was attached to the wall in the hallway she could hear everything I was doing quite clearly.
- Mum didn’t agonise over where to send me to school there were only two choices Public or Catholic. We were Catholic so went to the Catholic primary school and she flipped a coin for high school.
- Mum never had to worry about what I was messaging to my friends because the only messages being passed where on scrawled up bits of paper in the classroom and the teacher usually confiscated them without any need for Mum’s involvement.
- Mum never had to deal with too much parenting advice. There wasn’t much around. Parenting books were pretty much non-existent (a bloke called Spock in the US had written some baby manual but I doubt it was big in rural NSW), nobody was overwhelmed by information overload, you just got on with it.
- Sexting, cyberbullying, trolls, online predators none of that was on Mum’s radar because it just didn’t bloody well exist. Yes bullying, sexual harrasment and predators were around but not coming into your house on a daily basis through a myriad of online devices.
I think it’s totally different to what our parents had to deal with. But remarkably, I am not sure that kids are all that different. In some ways, they may be better equipped than we were to deal with the grown-up world because that world has infiltrated theirs sooner. I have my fingers crossed anyway that everything is going to turn out just fine, as long as we keep talking to them (and to other parents – boy, that helps).
I think you are right that the kids aren’t all that different, it’s just everything else that has changed! As I keep saying to the Hippie Child “two more years and you are out on your own” sometimes I worry she won’t be prepared at all!!!! But it’s true the grown-up world has infiltrated theirs much earlier than it did for us.
I think the issues are the same it’s the methods that are different. Teenagers today, like in our day, just want to connect to their peers, separate themselves from their parents/family and find their place in life. I think the biggest problem is that information and news overload makes us parents overly paranoid and crazy. There are no more predators and deviants around now than there was in our day but we are more aware of them and thus fear them more than our parents did. Yes life is different and technology allows more and varied ways for kids to engage with each other but overall I think things are very much like they’ve always been. As always trying to keep the lines of communication open with our kids and generally doing our best to maintain a connection with them is the best we can do for them. Not buying into the achieve/pressure/panic/future dynamic is how I’m trying to work. Life will happen for them, like it did for us…
You make me calmer just reading that, I agree that there are still the same emotional issues floating about, but I do think the explosion of social media and the whole internet situation has intensified many things – and added to parental responsibilities. I do think Gen X are the most over-protective, hyper parents that have ever existed though!! I also agree totally that keeping the lines of communication open is the key to getting through all this with some semblance of success.
I couldn’t agree more with you – it certainly is very different parenting now to what our parents went through and how they had to deal with us growing up.
Have the best day !
Me
I just think there is a lot of “new” things we have to deal with that didn’t actually exist back when our parents were raising us.
I’m dreading the teenaged years. Being a highschool teacher, I know what they get up to, and the pressures on them.
I think that is what has surprised me the most, the amount of pressure on them is far greater than what we had growing up.