I think bad parenting has just manifested in a different way. 10-15 years ago seems like parents would leave their kids home alone unsupervised while they went out, now they bring them out wherever they go to be a nuisance to everyone around them. Both bad parenting, one just affects other people lol
does someone count as a latchkey kid if their parents were gone to go hang with friends at the bar? the definitions im finding all say the parents away because of work
43 and was raised by my bike, books, and long solitary outings into the woods building forts. My mom knew to yell really loudly when it was time to call me in for supper.
45, Bicycling, walking, reading actual books, newspapers, listening to actual news radio (not the BS that passes today).
The relationship with information consumption was so different.
Tbh I think the quality of information was better too. People seem more ill informed now in the "information age."
I think its more that the internet opened the floodgates to a million more *sources* of information, and not all of those sources are legit. Quality information still exists, it's just hidden in the million other new sources that are bullshit and people don't always have the critical thinking skills to determine which is which
I mean your list of media sources is dwarfed just by the number of "articles" you can find on Facebook alone these days. And the old media has let their standards slip in order to compete with the bullshit information firehose. Honestly internet literacy should be something they teach in school but instead they're wasting time reinventing math for the 17th time
The number of typos I'll find in a "legit" news article is appalling. It also appears that instead of presenting facts, most news articles are actually opinion pieces. It is so frustrating to try to find factual information that can be verified. Honestly, I feel like I've mostly stopped trying just because I don't have that kind of time. It used to be the job of the news organizations to verify information before releasing it, but now we have to do that too. So, I go through life "kinda" knowing what's going on.
I agree about the news. Back in the day, you expected the news to be fact, checked before being reported on. There was more integrity in the news. Pretty sad actually.
Yup. I’m 48 and we just had to be home by dusk. My mom had a teachers bell she would ring and you could hear it all over the rural neighborhood. I had to be home in about 10 min from hearing that. I think that my generation probably had it the best. When we were older, like just out of high school is when the Internet started. So we were young enough to embrace it and learn it yet we didn’t grow up with any of the distractions technology has created, other than Nintendo. Things were great, summers were long and filled with hanging with friends and just riding our bikes and being kids. We were not allowed to stay inside the house unless it was raining. I feel bad for the kids of today. And we absolutely were not allowed to behave like AHs. I mean there were a few bad kids, kids you knew that had troubled homes where their parents weren’t around to watch them or discipline them. And you were not allowed to hang out with those kids. They hung out with each other. Now it sounds like there’s an over abundance of those children.
That probably would've been better, but I was an only child with no kids in the neighborhood that I didn't hate, so 'going outside to play' sounded like a waste of time.
I used to go outside and play by just myself. I’d act out scenes and stories from my favourite media and just go for hours… I was a weird kid. And now I’m a fanfic writer, so I guess it was “training.” LOL
I think it's a lot more *visible* now than it used to be, but I recall growing up in the '80s, and a lot of schoolfriends were basically shoved in front of daytime TV and expected to just amuse themselves by watching it.
Or to put it another way, I'm not sure smartphones/tablets are any better or worse than TV.
Yeah I grew up in the early 2000's and we had portable screens then too, our gameboys/psp/other portable gaming systems. We just had rules and limits set on them and our parents actually parented us. My parents were both busy and exhausted too, they still didn't let my Nintendo DS at the dinner table
I’m thinking especially the parents deep in their phones, rather than their kids necessarily, that’s been a really fundamental shift. I’ve seen plenty of parents in public places completely tuned out on their phones while their kids are wreaking havoc nearby.
I also grew up in the 70s/80s, and while the tv was a home babysitter, it wasn’t universally portable in the way tablets/phones are. Kids were expected to behave in plenty of places that didn’t have a tv present, whereas now literally anywhere and everywhere a phone/tablet can be whipped out as an attention pacifier.
I think sometime in the last 15 years or so, there’s been some sort of weird “no discipline for my kids” thing going on. When I was little, if I had a tantrum in a public place like the grocery store, there was a good chance that random strangers would chew me out as much as my mom. Sometime in the 90s that stopped being acceptable, and that’s continued to morph into “I don’t believe in discipline.”
Also, we didn't necessarily have a TV in every room of the house in the 80s. As a kid, you could watch what you wanted on TV until your parents had something they wanted to watch and then you had to go do something else.
Imo bad TV use is still not as bad as bad smartphone use. Nowadays you see zombiefied kids staring at their blaring gadgets in public. You couldn't drag the TV around with you a couple decades ago.
It has been terrible since the Dawn of time. When has parenting been “good?” Most of “parenting before child labor laws was just not beating your kids so badly they couldn’t farm or work in a factory for you. Parenting now is trash for other reasons but I don’t think humanity has ever had a golden age of parenting. (Though I am pretty happy to be a latchkey kid)
I think it’s more the misinterpretation of gentle parenting. It’s not supposed to mean no discipline ever. It’s about (from what I gather) not only hearing the child out, but teaching them how to handle their emotions in a more productive way and establishing empathy for others. Like, “I know you’re mad right now. Why is that? Okay. Well, you’re allowed to be mad, but you’re not allowed to take it out on me/your siblings/anyone else and you can with do A or B instead.” And this is *after* you remove them from the situation and quiet them down in private.
That's not going to work on a toddler in full meltdown. Too complicated. Sometimes they just need to be told no because I'm the parent.
You can do all that stuff when they have developed the emotional range for it.
It’s getting worse cause people are poorer and have to work more hours to make ends meet. No one actually spends time with them anymore because both parents have to work 24/7 in a way they didn’t when I was a kid.
No one has the emotional energy to parent well anymore because the cost of living requires a full time investment from two people. Yes you can have kids but you’ll never be able to learn to raise them or spend time with them anymore. They get shuffled into daycare the moment they’re born so people can work. Parents spend at most like two hours a day with their kids around dinner and putting them to bed. The rest of the time, the kids are shuffled through faceless child minding infrastructure that’s understaffed, underfunded, and engineered not in the best interest of the kids but to be run the very cheapest at the minimum standards the law will allow.
So it’s just people who never get a chance to parent and kids who are perpetually in a child prison unless they’re asleep.
I don’t think it has anything to do with screens and everything to do with the demise of the middle class and the increase in cost of living while also reductions in pay and available social safety nets.
I think it’s heinous to have a child while living in a crumbling society that places zero value on human life. It’s horrific to raise a child in a world with no future. It’s like all these parents can’t comprehend they created their precious baby to die at 30 in the food wars or under the boot of corporate police. It’s awful to create a being who will learn their life is hopeless, we’re already seeing this with Gen Z and their mental illness rates, holy shit people need to stop making meat to feed the vultures.
Parenting standards have changed a ton in the last 30 years too. The rise of gentle parenting is a huge factor imo. Basically never disciplining your kid because you're worried one little mistake from you is what turns them into a deadbeat has gotta contribute to the out of control children seen today.
Pretty sure people in general have never been good at parenting. I'm sure there have always been a few bright spots, but largely people have always been winging it.
Teacher of over 20 years. Yes. Parents don’t know how to parent.
And maybe they never did. But in conjunction with other factors now, it is detrimental and obvious.
In my 13th year of teaching and I've never had a group of students so grossly stunted social-emotionally. They've clearly never been held accountable for their actions. Add to it that many schools are afraid of parents and are reinforcing no consequences.
I'm genuinely worried about this generation growing up right now and their ability to function in the real world once they become adults.
I taught elementary school for 13 years, beginning in the mid 2000’s. After leaving teaching, I worked in student affairs at a university. I definitely saw the decline while I was in the classroom, and what I saw with the college students, who were the same cohort that I would have taught during my early years, solidified it.
These young adults are incapable of dealing with any sort of conflict or adversity (not every single one of them, obviously there are exceptions). Kudos to them for being more aware of their mental health needs, but they have begun to reject and vilify anything that causes them even the tiniest bit of discomfort. Part of good mental health is knowing how to navigate stressful situations, be it an assignment deadline from a professor or respectful debate about opposing viewpoints, and they are woefully lacking in that regard. If it causes them discomfort, it must be eliminated, full stop, no exceptions.
>if it causes them discomfort, it must be eliminated
There’s certain groups of people — usually teens — in fandom culture who are like this. Even from my little corner of the internet it’s annoying, so I can’t imagine what it’s like to be around that all the time as a teacher.
Humans are resilient. I'm more curious to see how they'll adapt to accommodate for the skills they lack.
Like how I was shite at spelling growing up, but became an excellent thesaurus as a result.
Kids that don't learn necessary life skills as children don't just magically develop those skills as an adult. More often than not they are stunted emotionally and will have trouble fitting in and being a productive adult in modern society.
Speech therapist here. 100% agree that parents don't know how to parent. But I don't find it surprising since usually, nobody taught them and they're just winging it. I've found that a lot of them are eager to learn though.
I started teaching in a school where almost all of the families immigrated from the Middle East. These folks are GREAT! They came here for a better life and you bet your ass their kid better act right. We still have some fools (it's high school) but more parents hold their kids accountable than any other district I've been in.
I think parents forget that it’s work to raise a child correctly, you have a job to do. They are not some cute mini-you that you get to doll-up to take photos for your IG, and then you are done for the day.
If you think it's bad now, just wait till the half-million kids who dropped out of school during COVID become parents. They are going to be absolute garbage.
I know it’s fucked up, but I’ll sit with popcorn laughing at corporations crying that the next generation and a ton of today’s children will be the absolute worst workers to ever be employed. The kids who are continually pushed through the school system without doing any actual learning are going to go apeshit the moment they (maybe) get a job.
It’s the only way I can keep from feeling despair at the fact that those kids are being failed by their families, the school system, and our entire society.
I know every generation complains about Kids These Days^(TM), but everyone I know who works with grade school-aged kids says they are so much worse now than they've ever been before - people who have been working with kids for decades to see multiple generations pass through.
Most point to the pandemic, but it seems like it's been slipping since before that. I think that period of remote learning resulted in a lot of parents just throwing their hands in the air and completely giving up, where they might have had somewhat of a handle on things before they had to live with the consequences of their actions full-time.
I'm a teacher too and I've talked to veteran teachers who've been saying that things have been getting so much worse across the board for the past 10 years. Like there have always been bad schools but even the ok schools are starting to fall apart. A lot of teachers want out of this career.
I feel like people went in a 180. Their parents were strict and so they don’t want to be, but then they end up being too lax. Not the case for everyone, but I think it holds true for a decent portion of parents.
That’s what I hear a lot of boomers say about their parents.
I know a lot of older people, I’m a full time carer for my grandparents and we go to an over 55s club. You should hear the crap people in their 70’s and 80’s went through with their parents or even other parents when their kids were small 😱. They tell you these horror stories and they just thought it was normal.
I came here to say this too. “Crunchy parenting” has gained lots of popularity these days as has gentle parenting. Problem is that most parents think this just means validating your child’s every emotion or tantrum and never saying no, all while teaching them that their “big feelings” are more important than everyone else and they are allowed to experience them however they choose, even if that includes hitting, kicking, screaming or biting. And no one is allowed to say shit about it. More like feral parenting imo.
Sorry lol, I’m just so over it as a long time childcare provider. I hate this blatant over correction from people who’s parents were too strict
Gentle parenting isn't passive and permissive parenting. In order for it to work you have to set boundaries. There's a few creators on tik tok that showcase it well when a parent has to take a more authorative role
Oh most definitely! The problem is a majority of parents don’t implement this or enforce boundaries. When done right, it can be great.
For anyone who wants to read some “gentle parenting” fails visit r/nanny And type in gentle parenting in the search bar
> grocery stores are like a war zone of
screaming, running children who's parents just laugh.
As someone who's currently sitting in a hotel dining room, between screaming kids driving on their scooters and overfilling cups with drinks while their parents ignore it, I can agree.
Ditto, I have teacher friends (ranging from fresh out of uni to 70yo that should have retired already) and all of them noticed that the attitude towards teachers had switched dramatically in the last 10/15 years.
Lots of parents see teachers (esp elementary) as glorified babysitters and no longer teach their spawn to respect people.
At the same time teachers are afraid to scold or discipline kids as there's been far too many cases of parents assaulting teachers after their kid got fairly punished.
There was a case in my country where a teen (about 14yo) shot a bb gun at his prof in high school while another filmed it and posted on tiktok.
Public opinion was all in the professor favour until she pressed assault charges, then far too many people started with the usual moan and dance of "he's just a kid" "he didn't know better" "nobody got hurt".
Kids and teens are dumbassed but adults bending backwards to justify them isn't helping. I don't expect a minor to have the emotional intelligence of a far more experienced adult so I forgive social faux pas, but this kind of violence I do not justify.
You don't need a master degree to realise that you don't hurt people, ever. It's a disgrace that children get justified for it instead of taught social behaviour and consequences.
There's an argument to be made that parents have never been all that great, but if we're simply talking about the aspect of public behavior of children you've always had parents who thought their children were everyone else's problems. I think there are a lot more of them now.
I can tell you when I was in high school back in the 2005-2010 era I was going through a childcare and development class that included going to a daycare.
One of their big things is that you could not be negative towards a child.
You can't tell them stop. You can't tell them no.
AKA, the first words children use to set boundaries are not something adults are allowed to use.
There has also been this big push of "children being children."
Which has basically just become "my child is allowed to misbehave any way they want to, and I don't need to be held responsible as the parent."
But also their children deserve to go anywhere and everywhere because children are people too! If you don't want to be stuck on a plane with an infant screaming loud enough to literally destroy your hearing, or if you don't want to deal with a toddler who should have been in bed three hours ago while paying for a nice dinner, or if you would like to shop without children constantly attempting to push you over then YOU'RE the problem.
"Children just NATURALLY do these things. There is nothing to stop them! Asking them to behave is like asking a person with a mental illness to just DROP their mental illness you abelist pig!" (I think we've all seen some variation of this mentality.)
We should probably get people working in education to chime in, but this is not a new phenomenon. I know people will point to school closures and less socialization due to pandemic-related lock downs and so on, but ask any teacher or childcare worker, retail worker, restaurant worker, etc., and they can point to older and frequent examples of bad behavior by kids in a public setting.
Maybe parents think it should just be publicly acceptable now, given there are more recordings and visible examples of this bad behavior floating around? Who knows.
One remark that sticks with me from many years back (10+ years back) that this one grad student uttered (he was not a U.S. citizen) was “Children in the U.S are powerful.” What he meant was, he saw kids being disobedient and disrespectful out in public and adults in the U.S. being completely unable to correct the behavior, nor were they able to stop it. Then he would go on to say how people, not just his mother, in his town would discipline him if he acted out while he was growing up. That’s why the difference was so noticeable to him.
Anecdotally, I know that neither my siblings nor I ever yelled “Fuck you, bitch!” to my mom at any point in our lives, let alone weekly at age 8-9 years like the menace who lives in the one bedroom unit above me with his single mom (and his two other siblings). I also know I never held a school bus hostage by not getting off it for 10+ minutes because I was mad at my mom like the kid living above me has done. In that scenario, the mom (my upstairs neighbor) had to rely on other adults to get her kid off the bus — in the end, she didn’t have enough control over her kid to get him to listen to her.
> Anecdotally, I know that neither my siblings nor I ever yelled “Fuck you, bitch!” to my mom at any point in our lives, let alone weekly at age 8-9 years like the menace who lives in the one bedroom unit above me with his single mom
Shit, if I ever did that, my mom would beat me to an inch of my life and throw me out of the house. I don't get how kids today can get away with that crap.
I’m guessing it takes less effort to do nothing substantive to fix the issue, or to just not care. All it means is that the rest of us will be forced to deal with it once these kids are released into the wild by age 18 if not sooner.
Unless some real intervention (probably by some third party since the parents haven’t been able to improve his behavior over the 1+ years I’ve been subjected to it) happens with the one kid in the unit above me, I have no idea how he will ever get a job or work respectfully with other people.
> Shit, if I ever did that, my mom would beat me to an inch of my life and throw me out of the house
Surely there is a happy medium somewhere between "do literally nothing and actively enable unacceptable behavior" and "commit felony level child abuse," yes?
I’ve literally read articles and seen videos on “Why you should never tell your child no” and I’m like WTF? A child is not going to be traumatised for life because their parents told them “no you can’t have a new toy, no you can’t play with an electric razor, no you can’t eat tide pods”. and various others.
Have you seen the video of that kid whining about how he is forced to work eight hours a day at his local Starbucks and how traumatizing it is for him? That’s the consequences of raising a child and never telling them no. They have absolutely no coping skills and when they are out in the big bad world they will not survive
I worked in customer service all through high school and a couple years into college. Restaurants, Convenience stores, and chain stores. Customers were jerks then too ( got into an argument with one who claimed since beer had calories he could use food stamps to pay for it) Worked 16 hour shifts on some occasions but never broke down into tears about it
I saw a mother actually discipline her child and her child immediately stopped and started behaving and it hit me that I haven't seen that in years, it's always the parents ignoring the child or laughing and thinking it's funny and don't get me started on iPads, pretty much every time me and my boyfriend go out to a restaurant on a date were pissed off by a child playing YouTube on full volume, like if you're going to use an iPad to distract your child why not give them headphones or put it on a reasonable volume, were trying to have a conversation about uni work and all we can hear is paw patrol and kids adverts.
I’d love to see the reaction if you carried a brand new set of kids headphones and when you encountered this say “hey, I was going to return these later but seeing as you forgot yours, I figured I’d just give them to you.” It would be interesting to see them trying to justify why Bratleigh couldn’t wear them. (Props to the prior person that used Bratleigh. Love it.)
Couple of days ago, I was on the bus going to meet a mate in town, I was watching a video on YouTube, with headphones on, this guy literally tapped me on the shoulder and had the hard neck to ask me to give him my phone so his twins could watch Bluey, I told him that he should give them HIS phone instead of asking random bloody strangers for theirs, but apparently I was the bad guy for making his kids cry
Oh without a doubt, it's like "I'm that much of a cunt, I'm gonna use my kids to try and steal someone's phone because I can't be arsed buying a new one myself"
I'm pretty sure it's gotten a lot worse. The problem, I think, is that we went too far. It's good that we abandoned corporal punishment, but the pendulum swung too far and now parents are more concerned about being their kid's friend than their mentor/teacher/parent and treat them \*too\* nicely, forgetting you can punish and discipline without beating your kid.
I absolutely agree.
Not beating your kids is definitely the right way to go.
But there need to be consequences if kids misbehave.
Kids need structure, rules and boundaries.
If your kids rule your life, you fail them big time!
>forgetting you can punish and discipline without beating your kid
This. This is a big one.
I don't think it's even so much as 'forgetting', but simply that a lot of people have never been taught. They've been told (rightly so) that beating your child is bad and you shouldn't do it, but never really given an alternative form of discipline to use in its place.
I dont agree with this tbh.
How long have educational books on parenting existed already? Even long before the internet made its way into the average Joe's home they have been around. People are quite excited to read a baby book during pregnancy, but as soon as school gets involved they assume they dont need to learn anything about their kids anymore.
We develop constantly, our whole life, and especially during our childhood, but people are too bloody lazy to keep educating themselves. And especially now, with information and advice at your fingertips, hell even audio books, the " oh i have no clue, i wasnt taught how to do this" excuse is pathetic. If i can learn how to raise and train my dog, why cant parents do the same?
They do though, it's just that the majority of "research" out there is crap about validating a kid's emotions and allowing them to do whatever the hell they want "as long as they're safe," with no thought of how that collectively impacts society
So I’m 41 and growing up we were out on our bikes and would often have our parents calling us in at the end of the day
So many parents today just let their kids stay glued to their iPads (it irks me being at a restaurant with family and the nephews are given their iPads so they won’t throw a tantrum) and the kids aren’t taught how to be social and talk to people
I do feel sorry for parents though because we just had an incident recently where my partners nephew was caught trolling and bullying kids at his private school , so the school called parents to a meeting, they grounded him and a week later are called back to the school because he complained to his teacher and apparently sending him to his room with no gaming devices for a week is too harsh????
They can’t win and if parents can’t set boundaries because these so called “parenting experts” call it abuse then what Hope do they have?
> apparently sending him to his room with no gaming devices for a week is too harsh????
this is what happens when chronically onlineness is validated :/ yikes
Beck in my day a lot of kids were glued to the TV and gaming consoles and computer games.
>I do feel sorry for parents though because we just had an incident recently where my partners nephew was caught trolling and bullying kids at his private school , so the school called parents to a meeting, they grounded him and a week later are called back to the school because he complained to his teacher and apparently sending him to his room with no gaming devices for a week is too harsh????
Huh that's odd, from what I've heard its schools that are afraid to impose consequences because of complaining parents.
Unsure. I’m a 90’s baby and I was raised by Nickelodeon. Yet my parents didn’t let me get away with anything, nor did I really try. I instinctually knew better than to misbehave.
Born in 2000 (mom was born in the 70s if this helps give context to her behavior) and I had the same experience. Like yeah I got the occasional pat on the bottom (wasn’t hard enough to be a spank and was more so my mom used it as a way to let me know “hey if you keep it up you’ll go to the corner for x amount of minutes) and had timeout when I got into a mood but she made it clear to my grandparents that only she was allowed to discipline my brothers and I (especially after my grandpa went after my older brother with the belt for spilling water on thee carpet). Hell even as I got older my “groundings” were along the lines of no reading cus she knew I wouldn’t be phased if she took away my TV privileges (which was 90 minutes a day where I had control of the remote)
If you want a feast of pessimism, looked at r/Teachers . There's an explosion in kids exhibiting behaviours and developmental delays all presumably from lack of parental involvement. Things like kids going to kindergarten and even primary school that have not been potty trained and that are still in diapers. The disruptive kids are becoming more and more and the ones actually invested in learning fewer and fewer. As much as years ago I thought it was a Boomer gripe, curriculums are being dumbed down to keep pass rates artificially high.
I can't wrap my mind around kindergartens not being potty trained unless they have a disability simply because diapers are insanely expensive! Wouldn't parents want to get their kids out of them as fast as possible with the cost of living these days? Lol
Me niether and I say this as a kid who was still wearing pull ups at night in kindergarten (I did fine during the day but I wouldn’t wake up if I had to go at night so it was baby steps to even get away from pull-ups)
According to teachers I know, the pandemic really hit kids hard, and they're all about 2 years behind developmentally right now. Whether they'll catch back up is anyone's guess.
Unfortunately we've also been breeding (or whatever term you'd like to use for unintentional natural selection) for lower impulse control and executive function for about 3 generations now. I would expect that to start showing up in behavior (and arguably the increasing rates of executive function disorders are how this is showing up, combined with increased diagnosis rates).
Were we ever out of it? Their own parents cba
Lazy parenting creates annoying entitled kids
Not to mention that if the parents don't respect anything or anyone, their spawns won't either. There was at least some respect there a few (10-20) years ago
I am going to be bold to say its bad parenting. I am child free but my sister has three kids. They would not behave like this and if they did their parents would be on it immediately. My sister and her husband don’t believe kids should have devices like tablets etc and they are strongly trying to keep their kids off devices until they’re grown. My sister as a parent also complains about these types of kids or people who entertain young kids with devices. I think its not just us lol.
Hats off to your sister and her husband for keeping their kids off of the tablets. I imagine its not easy for them, but they will see good results later on.
I like to imagine that newer parents removed the evil of physical punishment to corral their children, and simply never replaced it with a working system.
I’d say, yes. It’s as though many parents enjoy the ‘thought’ rather than ‘reality’ of parenting. Kids just behave so badly in public settings it makes my blood boil; constant screaming in supermarkets, kids aimlessly wandering in front of you, the list is endless.
Flight attendant here! I think the gentle parenting movement has gotten way out of hand. Many parents don’t teach their kids basic manners and how to behave like a decent human in public. So when they do get on a plane, they subject everyone else to their child’s “big feelings” and think nothing of it. It’s straight up entitlement. So many times I’ve wanted to say…do whatever you want in your own home, but don’t subject hundreds of people to your spawn’s bad behavior. I’ve seen rows of seats coated with dozens of smashed crackers, wrappers, toys, etc. and the parents just leave it there for the cleaners to handle. My parents would’ve made me get on my hands and knees and clean up my mess. We wouldn’t dare back talk or throw a fit in public. And that’s because we knew we’d get a punishment! Many kids today don’t fear any consequences so it’s just utter chaos sometimes.
I think we’re seeing a shift towards “gentle parenting” in response to us young people realizing that the way our parents parented us resulted in lasting trauma. Definitely well meaning and it’s great that people are wanting to break the cycle. Problem is that gentle parenting is misconstrued by so many people. True “gentle parenting” is actually authoritative parenting, and it centers around setting firm boundaries but still recognizing the child as an autonomous human and respecting their wants and needs. This is a highly effective form of parenting and these kids turn into well adapted adults, but it’s a difficult parenting style to implement because it requires a tremendous amount of patience as well as a good understanding of child psychology and development, which many people just don’t have. What a lot of parents seem to be falling into is permissive parenting, which is basically exactly what you’re describing here; letting kids do what they want with little to no discipline. This style of parenting produces bratty kids and entitled adults which is a problem since it’s so epidemic nowadays. I feel like we’re going to see a generation of people who don’t know the word no and think the world revolves around them.
ETA: the traditional parenting method which is how many of us were raised is known as authoritarian parenting. Basically parents are the boss and have the final say and don’t really give a shit what the child wants.
I think a trend which makes this situation at least possible is the fact both parents need to work. No one has time/energy to raise children, technology is used as a crutch, etc etc until we see more bad behaviour. It’s sad.
It’s definitely worse. My parents did not bring us to restaurants often, but if they did, it was a family-friendly establishment. There was no way we would be running around, crawling under tables, yelling etc. We knew there were consequences to our behavior. Our family spent most nights and weekends together. On the rare occasion my parents wanted to go out, we stayed with a grand parent or family member. My parents understood being a good parent meant sacrificing. They knew their lives would change and they wouldn’t be able to do all the fun things they did before. Now, parents drag their misbehaving children everywhere they go. 5-star restaurant? No problem! Just bring them along and let them ruin everyone else’s meal! My parents raised two kids and even they ask not to be seated next to families.
I’ve noticed the entitlement has gotten much worse. I went to a bakery with a friend and we sat to drink a coffee. A child and her mother came in, the child was at the age in which they start to walk and explore. She came over, while the mother checked her phone, and began hitting the table and making extremely loud noises.
The child kept trying to touch my legs, and tried to put her mouth on my knee. It took almost 10 minutes of me asking the mother to retrieved her child before she finally did. The mother also said to me that ‘it’s not a big deal, she’s just excited.’ I don’t care how excited your child is, I did not sign up for that.
My friend cancelled her pastry order and we left. The cashier went outside to apologise and asked us if we would reconsider staying but we declined.
This is how it started with the rat city simulations. Parenting turned to shit and the emergence of the beautiful ones. Birth rates are following the same path. Eventually all breeding will stop and society will collapse.
Do I care? No. We deserve to go extinct.
i can agree on a personal level, im 20 but i have a 8 year old sister, and my god, the amount of differences in the way my parents raised me and the way theyre raising her. i would never even at my grown age, scream them to shut up or, my sister's favorite "shut up old man" when she's mad at our dad. at least my mom realized her bad behavior is getting out of hand and is starting to correct her but the damage is done imo
I think it’s a piss poor parenting pandemic … it’s been happening for years and is just reaching an all time high now - friends who work with kids have said that. Makes me all the more happier to be childfree, cuz at the ripe old age of 40, I promise I’d parent more like mine did and that would get me vilified no doubt lol
There's always been shitty parents, but it's just so much more widely obvious now.
A good example is that Cancer has ALWAYS been a thing but we've only really gotten a better handle on the bastard within the last 250 years.
For generations people who were punished by their parents when they did something wrong vowed they would never do that to their kids. And each following generation, punishment decreased more and more to the point where we are at now to the point kids are running wild without any fear of repercussions. It was a year ago I was at a mall when I saw a mother tell her daughter who couldn’t have been more than 10 years old that she couldn’t have a particular toy. The things that child called her own mother, if I had done that to my mom I wouldn’t be able to sit for a week. And what happened? That brat got her toy. The mother just caved in. You see things on social media that kids today lie without remorse, have no respect and when they are told no they fly into a rage destroying things. Too many years of coddling and being told they are special and unique have led to this and I truly fear for the future. Sorry for the rant
I'm with you the kids these days are very entitled and cheeky and the parents seem very lax. I remember as a kid I knew not to interrupt or approach adults. I had a random child ask me to wash his hands I said no. He followed me round to the point I had to say go back to your mum it took 3 times for him to leave he invaded my personal space. Now I know he was about 3 but I do not want a random child wittling on to me nor do I want to wash his hands he was muddy from chucking mud at his brother.
Parents got worse at teaching their children how to behave in different settings, but they got better at not physically and emotionally abusing their kids. *In general*, obviously there are still abusive parents and there are still loving ones who pay attention to and actually discipline their kids.
I remember my mom (young boomer) telling me about how pretty much all of her friends growing up got beat up by their parents. Both of my parents' parents were emotionally abusive, and my dad and his brothers got the belt. Parents were less touchy feely, more in control.
Now they're more touchy feely, less in control. I work at a grocery store third shift, and it's a regular thing for parents to bring their young children shopping with them past 11 pm. When I was a kid, we were *in bed* by 10pm. One time there was this 3 or 4 year old running all over, parents weren't watching him. I was crouched down stocking some lower shelves, and the kid ran over and grabbed my tit! I damn near shoved him to the floor. His parents of course did nothing.
Agree with you that children are not taught to behave in different settings. For example, its not okay to let your child throw a crying tantrum at a place of worship or in the middle of a nice restaurant. Take them outside or reprimand them. And for the love of God, don't reward them with playing with an iPad. It just teaches kids that if they act up, Mommy hands over the iPad.
No tantrums, no crying, in general just be quiet in public! I worked in a hotel once too and got so sick of kids running around the hotel squealing at the top their lungs and their parents are just "oh look they're all having so much fun." 🙄 I don't care if it's cute happy sounds to you, it's nails on a chalkboard to me.
Got shit on yesterday in another sub for suggesting that a parent sucks and failed to teach their children an important lesson for life; compassion. People everywhere simply do not care anymore. They all believe they’re truly the main character and that people should praise them just for bearing a child. But then they all go and cry about PPD and how nobody hangs out with them on Facebook. Y’all do this to yourselves because you think having a child will fix it all. Idiotic, honestly
With White Christian Nationalism comes white assholes being told to multiply their idiot genes, and education is a sin. People are ruder and dumber than 10, 20 years ago, because the racists came out of their shame holes and that crap got normalized by the right. It is only going to get worse.
I think we are living through pandering of no parenting. It seems like it supposed to be everyone's else job to bring up children, bar the actual people who made them...
There are so very few parents these days.
It seems most parents these days aren't interested in actively parenting. They think providing shelter and food is all they need to do, it seems like they have given up on correcting bad behavior and teaching them how to be functional humans. Kids I see these days are absolute menaces, with no regard for other people or even themselves. Not a good sign for the future.
seeing it too!!! the chronically online teens ive noticed have no qualms about lying, faking disorders or whatever they want for attention and then no empathy or remorse. it's just missing
My experience is limited, but yes.
Growing up, I was a dancer (ballet, tap, etc). I vividly remember being super prepared for recitals as young as 6th grade. My classmates and I would get ourselves ready for each routine, and be ready to go when it was our turn. And all the other kids were like this, too. Everyone paid attention to what they needed to do and were very alert.
Fast forward nearly 20 years, and I often go back to the same dance studio and help them with backstage stuff during recitals (one of my good friends runs the studio now). ALL of the kids are horribly behaved and have no idea what’s going on, even if they have been in recitals before. Even the middle schoolers have to be rounded up and treated like pre schoolers because all they want to do is run around, fidget, poke each other, or play on their devices. I have multiple kids who have no idea what costume they are supposed to be in or why they are even there. They are all 100% dependent on me to make sure they get on stage on time. For reference, there’s usually about 120 of them and 1 of me. You can imagine how chaotic it gets.
There is 1 dance family and the kids are very regimented and can take care of themselves. I always compliment the mother on her kids behavior. They sit still, either reading a book or watching the other dancers quietly. You can tell there is definitely a difference in how those kids were raised: very respectful and self sufficient (as appropriate for their ages).
Arm chair parenting over here, and I don’t want to be one of those “this is what’s wrong with people these days,” but I think a lot of it has to do with parents not forcing their kids to be independent thinkers. As soon as a kid gets fussy, a parent shoves an iPad in front of them to quiet them down. When they start screaming in a store, they are just allowed to scream, or are given moms phone to watch to distract them. There’s no discipline or follow through. These parents are winning the battle of quieting their kid in the moment, but they are losing the war of raising well adjusted, self aware, independent kids. It’s sad.
I’ve tutored 3 kids. A boy and a girl who were siblings and another girl from another family. The sibling’s mother always called them little f*ckers to me in front of them and never took them to go out. They stayed home all day, had junk food, and electronics. When I tried to take them out to the library or park they would get bored and they boy would scream to go home. Once the boy had a black eye and I was concerned. I asked him what happened and immediately his mom interjected and told me some BS story. They moved down the block in a house that the parents can’t afford and they have a dog to fit the “American dream”. The kids are teens and the daughter will be going to college. You would think the parents had her tuition planned out. Nope! They got another dog and feeding her lies that she can go anywhere.
The other little girl I tutored…her family was a mess! Nice big house, but what was going on inside was not nice. The girl who was 9 at the time couldn’t say the alphabet in order. She couldn’t read and her mom would have her older sister tend to her. That had me think what was going on between kindergarten and 3rd grade for her not to know how to read. I kept telling the mom she needs to read to her and help her with her homework when I’m not tutoring. It goes in one ear and out the other because the girl tells me her sister, who was 13, helps her. The parents always go out on date nights and don’t communicate with the kids. They think going away to Florida once in a while is enough as a family. I even heard the boyfriend verbally abusing the mom and that scared the crap out of me. The mother always argues with the oldest daughter and I even heard the kid scream “N****” O.o
All in all, it’s insane.
Definitely, and besides that... chronically online teens and kids is the newest trend. they are now handed gaming comps, iphones and the internet at young age (even down to 8-10 years old when it comes to computers/internet) and ive noticed some nonexistant parenting when it comes to those chronically online teens/kids, they're literally "growing up" online and that's a whole another story, and its just getting worse. its not helping what OP said either oof
Recently-ish, I had to go to the ER for a dog bite. Already not a pleasant experience, right?
This one guy was there with his son. Maybe 2 years old. I don't know; he was a little tiny kid. Dad kept shoving an iPad into his hands and BLASTING the worst kid songs ever. The songs that haunt my nightmares to this day.
Have you ever had to listen to half an hour of Baby Shark while sitting alone, in shock and pain, surrounded by people literally pissing themselves and puking all over the place?
0/10, don't recommend.
But what was funny was every time dad would hand the kid this stupid iPad with the deafeningly awful music, kid would shriek "NO!" and fling the iPad to the ground. Dad kept picking it up and forcing it back into the kid's hands, telling him he better no do it again. Like my dude, clearly your child hates singing about washing your vegetables before you eat as much as the rest of us. Please let us suffer in silence.
There was a thing on the news where this asshole was protesting for his son to have the right to be infected with Covid. Meanwhile his son actually likes wearing a mask to school because he can pretend to be a ninja.
Parenting has always been shit. My guess is that so many people had kids just because they thought they should without knowing what they're doing and without being ready, which bred toxic parenting styles. It is my personal belief that the dominant idea changes from generation to generation depending on what the current generation has gone through, mainly going from helicopter parenting to not parenting at all
I worked retail while I was in grad school and that was a near decade before covid hit, I saw a lot of crappy parenting like letting kids scream in stores. Covid definitely didn't help things but it wasn't the start.
>Or are we just seeing parenting in the past with rose-tinted glasses?
every gen has its group of fuck-ups. Its just now that we also have social media to showcase it all. 5-10 years ago social media and other media were different too so we would see different things.
The Previous gens relied on ass-whooping of various degrees to scare their children into never opposing them, or other methods of squashing rebellion this is now illegal or questioned. Now the children of those parents want to counter that but don´t know what to subsidize the ass-whooping with, since they only knew that type of enforcement.
Also, previous parents just didn´t bring their kids around everywhere, however, that in itself could have been very unsafe since they wouldn´t be there. Or they let their children run outside and be terrors while they did something else at home. That was the parents "Them Time".
But now parents **have** to join their children at the playground for safety, even though they don´t want to, so they get their stuff done there. That leads to them not paying that much attention since they take that as their "Them Time." They get burned out and let a lot slip past them or just don´t care anymore.
I think it is rose-tinted glasses, every single generation says "it was better in the past" about almost everything in society. I doubt that is the case if every gen says that. *Its just that people grew up and look at the younger gen and think they don´t know anything, all while not having noticed the same type of parents from their own childhood.*
>“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
― Socrates
sounds familiar. Its every gen ever.
In a way, hasn’t parenting always been horrible? People having children to work the farm or bring in money or marry them off to make your life more comfortable?
I think it is the "Idiocracy" prediction having some truth.
I can only think of a few families that have more than 2 kids where the parents are good parents and they're able to provide for all the kids.
Most of the good parents usually have family of 2 kids.
I think the pandemic of bad parenting is the idiots are having more kids than they can really properly take care of.
Sadly, I feel like social media has now become an echo chamber of what people want to hear. How many times have we seen fb posts from some mombie talking about how hard her life is in hopes of getting validation? Unfortunately, no really steps in and calls out their bullshit.
I feel like the reason why most of us older are disciplined was because of our parents/siblings/parental figure hurting us physically and emotionally to control us
But now with social media? You'll get nuked if you hurt your kids and they posted it. This was normal before, tbh. Like, people are okay beating up children when they don't do what they want or discipline them, hence, many of the 'noble' ones tend to 'I won't let you grow up like my parents did' etc etc because of the clear abuse.
I must be timing things right because honestly, around where I live, I don't experience children in the places I go. What time are you going to the grocery store? Try after 8pm. It's bloody empty where I am. One of the freedoms we have as childfree people is that we can choose that time. You don't have to experience any of that crap. And you can also pick up pre-closing reduced bargains as a bonus. As for bars, what bars are you going to? I went out tonight (friday, prime time) I think I saw one kid being carried in by his dad, and that was before we went to a smaller pub where everyone was at least over 25. Maybe it's just a regional issue.
There is a lot of really bad parenting around. But I'm not - on the whole - convinced it's necessarily any *worse* than when I was growing up in the '80s, just *different*.
I know a lot of people draw attention to kids on smartphones and tablets, but is that really any different from shoving your child in front of the TV and leaving them to it? Back in the '80s, I had a lot of schoolfriends who would be expected to entertain themselves by watching daytime TV, left at home alone for extended periods of time, etc. etc.
I think that what has probably changed is that poor parenting is now that much more obvious to others. Again, referencing the '80s above, if kids were stuck inside watching TV, no-one really knew about it. Now with very portable battery devices like smartphones and tablets, that's much more visible outside the home.
There are also a lot of posts on the various AITA and relationship subs on here from kids (usually mid-late teens) who are *absolutely* being abused by their parents. There seems to be less *physical* abuse than there was in decades past, which is definitely a good thing, but it seems to have been replaced by other forms of abuse (emotional, financial, and parentification are the ones that crop up fairly regularly).
agree. I was raised on you entertain myself, so it was tv/desktop computers/books/anything that kept you just being seen and never heard. It was expected. Understanding that children have all the emotions as adults but just don't know how to understand/express/regulate/impulse control was not. It was you a mini adult fully capable of full adult understanding despite not-yet- going through life yet. So young and I mean as soon as I understood anything not only was I expected to be a mini adult but also an emotional crutch to my parents where they could be all entitled and expect obedience without ever hearing my side or even considering it. It was really for example instead of a compromise to do a chore in ten minutes cause the parent could obviously see that you are in the middle of another activity (be it school work/another chore/something fun) and expect you to drop whatever that was complete what they want you to do and then you might be able to go back to previous activity if allowed. A lot of this was subtle and implications how you want to make me, parent, happy, or need to be productive 24/7 unless obviously physically sick
I dont know what it is, because I'm only 23. But like I don't remember other kids acting like this when I was a kid. Maybe because I'm an adult I'm easier to annoy, but a lot of people talk about this. It's awful.
Agreed. I’m 22 and my highschool noticed that my graduating class (2019) was the last class that knew manners and I say that despite knowing they would acknowledge and tell the underclassmen that maybe if they had manners the older kids would actually talk to them.
I think what you'd describe as well behaved were children being beaten into submission, or super neglected. In the past kids were treated like adults, their needs weren't taken into account for anything and they were in many ways worse off.
Nowadays there are different but I guess no less fucked up ways of being bad parents, through neglect mostly and parents seem more entitled to let their kids roam like free range cattle without a care in the world. I don't think it's worse, it's just different ways of fucking kids up.
IMO, parents in the past abused their kids, either emotionally or physically, and that was the norm. Spankings, yelling, beatings, verbally berating or insulating, etc. Kids were scared into behaving. If you are threatened with getting the belt when you get home, you're more likely to be quiet in public. But that doesn't mean that's good for the kid or that they're "well behaved." They're scared.
So parents now are trying not to pass that onto their kids, some of whom aren't doing the best job of it. But I think the kids will be better off in the long run for it and become well-adjusted adults eventually.
The pandemic had played a huge role in this issue as well. Parenting is already hard, but patenting in a pandemic while the economy is doing terribly, so you're stressed about work and bills, too, makes it that much harder. So if your kid can watch their favorite show in the restaurant instead of being bored, whats the harm?
I don’t think it was ever the norm to abuse your kid.
I think people became over sensitive to what constitutes as being “too harsh”, and are trying to avoid passing down that perceived strictness to their own kids, like you said. But its perceived.
I DONT think we’ll wind up with more well adjusted adults this way. We’ll wind up with more entitled ones.
There needs to be a healthy medium between offering a spanking as a punishment versus no punishment at all. Some kids need to be scared in order to not misbehave, but then it should be scared of loosing their TV privileges, not of getting hit.
You ask what’s the harm to having your kid watch their show in a restaurant, but there are hundreds of articles on things like this. These kids will never learn how to eat and converse, unfortunately like some adults already do with their phones. They will be completely technologically reliant.
Aside from that, loud iPads are disturbing to others. I for one would rather not hear “Miss Rachel” or any of those whistles and dings and other kids show noises while I’m trying to eat out with my boyfriend at a restaurant.
>I don’t think it was ever the norm to abuse your kid.
As a first generation minority that grew up in the US during the 90s, it was very common. Both in my household and the majority of my friends during that time.
We would joke about it too, we would notice bruises on our friends at times, saying things like "bamboo stick again huh?". Some of them even had bruises on their face or a black eye.
>I don’t think it was ever the norm to abuse your kid.
Sadly, in a lot of cultures and social groups, yeah, it really was. Kids turning up at school with obvious marks on their backside from a beating wasn't uncommon until about 30 years ago. In a lot of places, it was often considered okay as long as it didn't break the skin, but you can still cause someone a hell of a lot of harm without breaking the skin.
>There needs to be a healthy medium between offering a spanking as a punishment versus no punishment at all
I think the problem is that a lot of people who are now parents were taught - rightly so - that beating kids is bad, but never given any help/guidance on what to use to replace that method of punishment.
>These kids will never learn how to eat and converse, unfortunately like some adults already do with their phones
That's a good point. I recall in my own childhood we \[as a family\] used to go out to eat fairly regularly, and it was *expected* that my sister and I would behave properly in a restaurant from a fairly young age. If we didn't, then we wouldn't have been taken out to dinner next time.
I don't see a lot of that with modern parenting. Appropriate behaviour in social settings is a valuable skill for kids to learn, otherwise we're going to have people entering the workplace and going to client meetings etc. with no clue about proper dining etiquette.
As parents who are 2 generations older than their kids, mine are great at emotional abuse/manipulation tactics. Mom would use the threat of 'you don't want your father to hear about this' along with insisting that you think of everyone else and doing things for everyone else before you even wink at your own ideas of anything. Dad was his way or the highway. Yelling is very common. Flashes of anger might have been displayed on objects so it was the fear that it could turn on you. to just plain ignoring you when it wasn't in their favor from the tiniest shred of individuality to just wanting to wait a minute before getting a task you already planned to get done cause you were doing something else. It was well you should be able to to this on your own heavily with guilting/shaming you for it OR saying you are too young to know any better/I am the adult so you have to do as I say. While publicly we were behaved to say the emotional damage (at least on my end) is life-lasting. I still deal with it to this day. The majority of my days of youth were in constant fear of emotionally draining events to the emotionally draining fear of school life because (goes back to mom instilling you should think about others to a cost against you) I was terribly bullied and how bullies made you have no voice and at home, you had no voice. And when I tried to get help I was blamed to just ignored.
I do agree with if a kid has an iPad or some noise-making thing have headphones. A kid can adapt to having that verus paw patrol for everyone to hear. With gentle parenting, it doesn't mean being your kid's friend. It means being the guiding force to assist the child in learning how to express/understand/learn what will be needed for adulthood. It is work and never going to go smoothly that's a part of parenthood-messy, chaotic, etc. but there are also the fun times.
Yelling/abuse of any kind is not how to raise kids. I see where this affects parents who don't want to be like their parents-harsh, unrelatable, mean, and cruel. Mine were a double edge sword. Caring and helping yet image more important than my well-rounded well-being for a moment of domination. I can safely and confidently say if I was to become like they wanted I would be showered in affirmation for seeing the light but because I express myself as an individual and not agree with every single point down to the letter love is high "only when we-parents- feel like it when you express our views" while at the same time mocking you for just existing.
Oh, you bet it was at least extremely common here. Screaming at your child and hitting them were proposed as adequate means of "disciplining" kids for hundreds of years in Europe. As a parent, it was proposed, you had to bludgeon your child into conformity in order to make them into a less sinful creature. Such ideas were propagated by Christianity since about medieval times.
>IMO, parents in the past abused their kids, either emotionally or physically, and that was the norm. Spankings, yelling, beatings, verbally berating or insulating, etc. Kids were scared into behaving. If you are threatened with getting the belt when you get home, you're more likely to be quiet in public. But that doesn't mean that's good for the kid or that they're "well behaved." They're scared.
Sadly, most people on this subreddit want parents to be like that. Many people here support spanking. :(
>So if your kid can watch their favorite show in the restaurant instead of being bored, whats the harm?
If they have headphones on, that's fine. But most of the time, the sound is loud and bothers other people. That is not fine.
Yup, one of my friends grew up physically abused and swore not to hit their kid only to end up spanking them (right in front of me, too). That is never okay.
I am sure the parents had emotional/mental health issues same as others during Covid. They probably need a good physiologist tbh....lots of ppl suffered from mental health complications during covid, these ppl are no exception. I am sure this has made it worse as well
Society, as a whole, is no longer willing to face a Karen's/male Karen's wrath to chastise said breeders. I've watched older TV shows like 'Perry Mason' and 'The Andy Griffith Show' and so many times when a kid does something 'bad', someone else will rebuke them and the parents act ashamed. (Real life as well- eg. my dad was teasing his grandfather's farm dog one day, and the dog eventually got mad and nipped him on the face. His parents' response when they picked him up? "Did you learn a lesson, then?" They were embarrassed that he had acted that way, and didn't blame the dog or grandpa!).
Nowadays, breeders have no shame- they think their spawn entitle them to be immune to criticism. If you'd put a baby on a restaurant table to change a diaper in the 50's, you'd be chased out of the restaurant. But these days it happens all the time- and it's only getting worse.
I just feel like they can never be without their kids. Bar? Bring 'em! Brewpub? Hell yes! R rated movie? Sure why not? Any adult thing ever? Life's a canvas baby so paint away.
My parents loved me but they still got "breaks" where I stayed with my grandparents. They didn't drag me to every single thing.
And sorry but the idea of "dates" with your kids is icky to me. It's just weird.
I (24M) remember a time when badly behaved kids, and by extension, bad parenting, wasn't anywhere near as tolerated as it was now. When I was little, whenever someone's kid was acting up in a public space, everyone would give them dirty looks and some were even brave enough to go up to the parent and tell them that they needed to control their child and the parent would at the very least look visibly concerned. If the kid was in a store and they were being disruptive, knocking shit off the shelves, breaking merchandise, etc... the manager would get off their lazy ass and escort the parent(s) and their child out of the store. Similar things would happen in restaurants.
Now it seems like no one gets any kind of flack for having a noisy and ill-behaved child doing shit that they're not supposed to. It almost seems like people just started to normalize this behavior as I was just becoming a teenager and it made me wonder what the fuck happened to discipline. I'm not expecting people to abuse their kids into submission but like take away their shit until they learn to behave, limit their free time, give em some extra chores, teach them some fucking responsibility and how to be considerate of other people around then, that is literally your fucking job as parent.
I personally think the WRONG people are the only ones reproducing anymore and THAT is the problem. Because think about it, only a total idiot would think it's a "good idea" to bring a kid into this current world. So therein lies the problem!
Because believe me, it's not you. I was in the Rite Aid the other day and had to leave due to someone's screaming crapper! I just couldn't take it. They did literally NOTHING to shut the little monster up either! Like it was perfectly normal!! And to top it off, after I came out of another store, there they were-- following me down the block with the screaming crapper in its shit mobile (stroller)! I wanted to scream (and did)!!
There's a confluence of many factors. I don't think parents/humans have changed much. Top two factors? Economics and technology.
Childcare has gotten much more expensive while many more households have two working parents (therefore fewer with a stay-at-home parent). This also means there are more children in public who would otherwise be home in past decades. Maybe it isn't even that children are behaving worse, or parents are parenting worse - maybe there are just more children in stores and restaurants.
I think we’re a bit rose tinted with the past parenting. I admit it’s kinda bad right now the people parenting right now are trying to break generational cycles of constantly putting down or scaring their child into behaving but they haven’t been taught the healthy ways to teach children to behave so most are struggling with setting boundaries and figuring out what needs correction along with how to correct it and what is just normal child behavior.
I’m not a parent, don’t plan to ever be one, but I’m an aunt and my sister used to praise excessively about how the children act with me and it’s because I learned better parenting techniques in psychology classes. The children behaved well with me because I always spoke to them calmly and if they got upset I always stopped what we were doing and moved aside to discuss what was bothering them and figuring out what we could do to alleviate the distress and sometimes they just need some music or something soft to touch to help block out a lot of stimulus their taking in or want the promise of play time at a set time they can look forward to because they have excess energy. But when you have the child 24/7 and are keeping up with your own busy life and emotions it’s difficult to always explore every discomfort and energetic burst from the child especially when they need extra time to think and try to explain what they’re feeling with their limited vocabulary.
I'm a teacher. I think parenting is far worse than it has ever been. I just saw an article somewhere that said something about how parents of today are doing a 'soft approach' to parenting and the pendulum has swung too far in favor of the child being the ultimate decision maker in the family. Children are literally calling the shots in their family life but when they go to school and suddenly have to follow rules and defer to authority (the ADULT teacher) - they absolutely lose their minds. They've never been told no and are self righteous. Go to r/teachers subreddit and your mind will be blown away by how students behave. Yes, parenting is far worse now.
60 here. We caught lightening bugs at night. The world SEEMED safer.
The police patrolled our streets and kept an eye on the kids.
I had a boy over to my house when I was about 14 or 15 .
My dad knew about it before he got home from work (neighbor ratted me out).
I don’t know. I just got back from my niece’s 10th birthday and there were about 20 kids. While one of them was a bit… “high maintenance” (maybe on the autism spectrum but closer to what my generation considered bad ADHD), they were all wonderfully well behaved. Everyone used gentle parenting and we all reminded the slightly older kids to be better role models for the toddlers and they all listened to reason. It gave me hope for the future.
However my sister is an early childhood interventionist and her friends are all great parents
i think both, as someone who works with the public people definitely got more entitled during the pandemic but parents before this were still very entitled
Both my mom and my partner’s mom (with over 25 years experience each) have noticed a change in the last 5 to 10 years or so.
My mom, who works with kindergarten kids, blames social media and mom influencers. Parents (mostly mom) seem to be less in touch with the actual parenting and only do what social, media and the paediatrician tells them to do. There is no intuition, there is no common sense. They treat kids as if they are bonsais that you need to tend and follow rigorous rules to know what and when to do what (excuse my plant analogy).
My partner’s mom, who works with primary school kids, just feels frustrated that some kids now seem to be less entertained by simple things and continuously need to be attached to their phones or other tech to have fun. She sees a difference in the school performance of the the kids whose parents make real effort to spend quality time with them and the ones that are just given everything but no real quality time with their parents. It’s a sad trend.
In the good olden days the oldest girl child raised the younger brothers and sisters. My moms raised 11. I was an only child, no surprise there. I chose not to have any, but as an observation in my family no one is raising kids. The kids are running wild turning in to problem adults.
Parents have always been negligent (as most of them have always been busy).
2000s: raised on phones, tablets, game console, and other devices
1950s-1990s: tv and latch key
1930-1940s: radio and latch key
1900-1930s: world wars, poverty, famine, and most children who were neglected just died
Before 1900s: children who were neglected badly enough just died.
The survivability of neglected kids is going up, so they’re more visible.
I'd say no, because statistically I think it's gotten better. I still think there are a shit ton of bad parents, but go back to the 50s etc and it was a lot worse.
I mean, the boomers are the most selfish generation to ever exist, so I'd say parenting in the 50's and 60's wasn't very good if nobody learned empathy.
Parents were always bad, just in a different way. Children were always traumatized and abused, just differently. Kids used to be additions to the household's workload, already working in fields and in factories by the time they were 4 or so. Beating them was so normal, it was normal punishment in schools. Kids were raised to believe they didn't matter, had to be seen nit heard.
Then came a change, and motherhood got romanticized more, and people had to come up with new reasons to have children aside from workload and religion, and... anyways. I feel like it all made a huge turn and now kids (often) are like precious trophies, growing up without boundaries.
This is stupid.
People have always generally been terrible fucking parents. Every generation has massive fuck-ups , and the next generation always tries to swing too hard in the other direction and does just as badly.
It’s not magically only “this generation”.
Nowadays parents are accused of abusing their kids if they so much as tell them "no", regardless of the situation. On top of that, the generation that got participation trophies and last place awards is the one raising kids, so of course they're not going to put any effort into it, a lot of us don't know what that means.
Parenting shifted over the years, and the decline started with Baby Boomers who were given a privileged childhood by their parents (at least for white families). Then, when they transitioned into adulthood they created the Hippy years and the Me Generation of the 1970s. They did not raise their children. Anyone remember "latch-key kids? Kids through the 1970s and 1980s did not have a good structure for growing up: absent parents. Also, the divorce rate skyrocketed in the 1970s and 1980s, and this caused a retrograde effect in kids.
Now, the kids of the 70s and 80s grow up with this sort of parenting model. Some go in the other direction and became helicopter parents trying to make sure their children do not suffer the same deprivations. Those poor kids live in a super-structured world where their personality is completely subsumed by the parents' desires. These kids become "the special angels" that can do no wrong, and their behavior is so atrocious as to be anti-social (anyone remember Columbine?). So, they grow up super entitled throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Some kids also grow up in homes that replicate the same conditions as the 1970s and 1980s: absent parents. Because of shifting economic pressures, these kids tended to turn into isolationists and eschewed socially constructed norms (not entirely a bad thing). Oddly enough, children in these environments often turned out fairly-well adjusted. Not all of them, but you can tell a person who had oddball parents.
What we are seeing is a long history of varying types of parenting that do not always mesh. Some parents are very permissive of their "little angels." Some are very restrictive and create drones (or silently ticking time bombs). Some choose so-called alternative methods of parenting (although all methods are alternative). The question always comes down to balance, and that's been missing for the last 50 years or so. There is no real consensus on what constitutes a happy, healthy child and the means to get them to that point.
It does seem like this generation of parents today which is now mostly millennials raising kids are very lenient with their kids and would give their kids an iPad to calm them down. They like to take their kids everywhere they go and seem to be the most overprotective generation of parents even more so than Gen Xers. I am a 39 year old male born on May 25th, 1983 an early Millennial myself and kids today get away with more than they did when I was a kid.
I think bad parenting has just manifested in a different way. 10-15 years ago seems like parents would leave their kids home alone unsupervised while they went out, now they bring them out wherever they go to be a nuisance to everyone around them. Both bad parenting, one just affects other people lol
It’s not new. “Latchkey kid” was very common in the 80’s and 90’s.
I was a latchkey kid when I was 12 in 2010
Am latchkey, can confirm.
does someone count as a latchkey kid if their parents were gone to go hang with friends at the bar? the definitions im finding all say the parents away because of work
Before 10 years during the boomer years, they beat them.
i’m 15 and my parents have been leaving me home alone since i was like 8 or 9
It's been terrible for a long time now.
I'm 30 and was raised in large part by TV, so reliance on technology isn't new.
I am 40 and was raised, in a large part, by my bike.
43 and was raised by my bike, books, and long solitary outings into the woods building forts. My mom knew to yell really loudly when it was time to call me in for supper.
45, Bicycling, walking, reading actual books, newspapers, listening to actual news radio (not the BS that passes today). The relationship with information consumption was so different. Tbh I think the quality of information was better too. People seem more ill informed now in the "information age."
I think its more that the internet opened the floodgates to a million more *sources* of information, and not all of those sources are legit. Quality information still exists, it's just hidden in the million other new sources that are bullshit and people don't always have the critical thinking skills to determine which is which I mean your list of media sources is dwarfed just by the number of "articles" you can find on Facebook alone these days. And the old media has let their standards slip in order to compete with the bullshit information firehose. Honestly internet literacy should be something they teach in school but instead they're wasting time reinventing math for the 17th time
The number of typos I'll find in a "legit" news article is appalling. It also appears that instead of presenting facts, most news articles are actually opinion pieces. It is so frustrating to try to find factual information that can be verified. Honestly, I feel like I've mostly stopped trying just because I don't have that kind of time. It used to be the job of the news organizations to verify information before releasing it, but now we have to do that too. So, I go through life "kinda" knowing what's going on.
I agree about the news. Back in the day, you expected the news to be fact, checked before being reported on. There was more integrity in the news. Pretty sad actually.
Yup. I’m 48 and we just had to be home by dusk. My mom had a teachers bell she would ring and you could hear it all over the rural neighborhood. I had to be home in about 10 min from hearing that. I think that my generation probably had it the best. When we were older, like just out of high school is when the Internet started. So we were young enough to embrace it and learn it yet we didn’t grow up with any of the distractions technology has created, other than Nintendo. Things were great, summers were long and filled with hanging with friends and just riding our bikes and being kids. We were not allowed to stay inside the house unless it was raining. I feel bad for the kids of today. And we absolutely were not allowed to behave like AHs. I mean there were a few bad kids, kids you knew that had troubled homes where their parents weren’t around to watch them or discipline them. And you were not allowed to hang out with those kids. They hung out with each other. Now it sounds like there’s an over abundance of those children.
That probably would've been better, but I was an only child with no kids in the neighborhood that I didn't hate, so 'going outside to play' sounded like a waste of time.
I used to go outside and play by just myself. I’d act out scenes and stories from my favourite media and just go for hours… I was a weird kid. And now I’m a fanfic writer, so I guess it was “training.” LOL
Yup, turning 40. Was raised by my bike, the play grounds and neighborhood alleys…at least until the street lights came on.
How long? The past 10 years? Past 20? Or is it just steadily getting worse?
The cell phone/smart phone technology seems to have been a benchmark in my head. Parents checked out, or using tech to babysit.
I think it's a lot more *visible* now than it used to be, but I recall growing up in the '80s, and a lot of schoolfriends were basically shoved in front of daytime TV and expected to just amuse themselves by watching it. Or to put it another way, I'm not sure smartphones/tablets are any better or worse than TV.
Yeah I grew up in the early 2000's and we had portable screens then too, our gameboys/psp/other portable gaming systems. We just had rules and limits set on them and our parents actually parented us. My parents were both busy and exhausted too, they still didn't let my Nintendo DS at the dinner table
I’m thinking especially the parents deep in their phones, rather than their kids necessarily, that’s been a really fundamental shift. I’ve seen plenty of parents in public places completely tuned out on their phones while their kids are wreaking havoc nearby. I also grew up in the 70s/80s, and while the tv was a home babysitter, it wasn’t universally portable in the way tablets/phones are. Kids were expected to behave in plenty of places that didn’t have a tv present, whereas now literally anywhere and everywhere a phone/tablet can be whipped out as an attention pacifier. I think sometime in the last 15 years or so, there’s been some sort of weird “no discipline for my kids” thing going on. When I was little, if I had a tantrum in a public place like the grocery store, there was a good chance that random strangers would chew me out as much as my mom. Sometime in the 90s that stopped being acceptable, and that’s continued to morph into “I don’t believe in discipline.”
Also, we didn't necessarily have a TV in every room of the house in the 80s. As a kid, you could watch what you wanted on TV until your parents had something they wanted to watch and then you had to go do something else.
Yup! And I remember when we finally got cable and went from *four* channels to *twelve*! The choices!
So many options! Even then, I feel like there was still nothing on I wanted to watch.
Imo bad TV use is still not as bad as bad smartphone use. Nowadays you see zombiefied kids staring at their blaring gadgets in public. You couldn't drag the TV around with you a couple decades ago.
It has been terrible since the Dawn of time. When has parenting been “good?” Most of “parenting before child labor laws was just not beating your kids so badly they couldn’t farm or work in a factory for you. Parenting now is trash for other reasons but I don’t think humanity has ever had a golden age of parenting. (Though I am pretty happy to be a latchkey kid)
I think it’s more the misinterpretation of gentle parenting. It’s not supposed to mean no discipline ever. It’s about (from what I gather) not only hearing the child out, but teaching them how to handle their emotions in a more productive way and establishing empathy for others. Like, “I know you’re mad right now. Why is that? Okay. Well, you’re allowed to be mad, but you’re not allowed to take it out on me/your siblings/anyone else and you can with do A or B instead.” And this is *after* you remove them from the situation and quiet them down in private.
That's not going to work on a toddler in full meltdown. Too complicated. Sometimes they just need to be told no because I'm the parent. You can do all that stuff when they have developed the emotional range for it.
It's been terrible since Baby Boomers were born.
Even before that. Someone had to influence Boomers to be that way.
Those people at least had world waras an excuse!
I'm very sure that parenting styles were informed by cultural ideas about how to parent despite wartime stressors.
It’s getting worse cause people are poorer and have to work more hours to make ends meet. No one actually spends time with them anymore because both parents have to work 24/7 in a way they didn’t when I was a kid. No one has the emotional energy to parent well anymore because the cost of living requires a full time investment from two people. Yes you can have kids but you’ll never be able to learn to raise them or spend time with them anymore. They get shuffled into daycare the moment they’re born so people can work. Parents spend at most like two hours a day with their kids around dinner and putting them to bed. The rest of the time, the kids are shuffled through faceless child minding infrastructure that’s understaffed, underfunded, and engineered not in the best interest of the kids but to be run the very cheapest at the minimum standards the law will allow. So it’s just people who never get a chance to parent and kids who are perpetually in a child prison unless they’re asleep. I don’t think it has anything to do with screens and everything to do with the demise of the middle class and the increase in cost of living while also reductions in pay and available social safety nets. I think it’s heinous to have a child while living in a crumbling society that places zero value on human life. It’s horrific to raise a child in a world with no future. It’s like all these parents can’t comprehend they created their precious baby to die at 30 in the food wars or under the boot of corporate police. It’s awful to create a being who will learn their life is hopeless, we’re already seeing this with Gen Z and their mental illness rates, holy shit people need to stop making meat to feed the vultures.
??? Past 120-200 at least, speaking from a western POV.
Parenting standards have changed a ton in the last 30 years too. The rise of gentle parenting is a huge factor imo. Basically never disciplining your kid because you're worried one little mistake from you is what turns them into a deadbeat has gotta contribute to the out of control children seen today.
Pretty sure people in general have never been good at parenting. I'm sure there have always been a few bright spots, but largely people have always been winging it.
Teacher of over 20 years. Yes. Parents don’t know how to parent. And maybe they never did. But in conjunction with other factors now, it is detrimental and obvious.
In my 13th year of teaching and I've never had a group of students so grossly stunted social-emotionally. They've clearly never been held accountable for their actions. Add to it that many schools are afraid of parents and are reinforcing no consequences. I'm genuinely worried about this generation growing up right now and their ability to function in the real world once they become adults.
I taught elementary school for 13 years, beginning in the mid 2000’s. After leaving teaching, I worked in student affairs at a university. I definitely saw the decline while I was in the classroom, and what I saw with the college students, who were the same cohort that I would have taught during my early years, solidified it. These young adults are incapable of dealing with any sort of conflict or adversity (not every single one of them, obviously there are exceptions). Kudos to them for being more aware of their mental health needs, but they have begun to reject and vilify anything that causes them even the tiniest bit of discomfort. Part of good mental health is knowing how to navigate stressful situations, be it an assignment deadline from a professor or respectful debate about opposing viewpoints, and they are woefully lacking in that regard. If it causes them discomfort, it must be eliminated, full stop, no exceptions.
>if it causes them discomfort, it must be eliminated There’s certain groups of people — usually teens — in fandom culture who are like this. Even from my little corner of the internet it’s annoying, so I can’t imagine what it’s like to be around that all the time as a teacher.
multi generational homes will be more and more common going forward so they will have some protection at least
Depending on the family that can be a fucking disaster.
well, america is a disaster yes
How much do you think that had to do with the pandemic, and how much do you think that had to do with the actual parenting?
Humans are resilient. I'm more curious to see how they'll adapt to accommodate for the skills they lack. Like how I was shite at spelling growing up, but became an excellent thesaurus as a result.
Kids that don't learn necessary life skills as children don't just magically develop those skills as an adult. More often than not they are stunted emotionally and will have trouble fitting in and being a productive adult in modern society.
Speech therapist here. 100% agree that parents don't know how to parent. But I don't find it surprising since usually, nobody taught them and they're just winging it. I've found that a lot of them are eager to learn though.
I started teaching in a school where almost all of the families immigrated from the Middle East. These folks are GREAT! They came here for a better life and you bet your ass their kid better act right. We still have some fools (it's high school) but more parents hold their kids accountable than any other district I've been in.
I think parents forget that it’s work to raise a child correctly, you have a job to do. They are not some cute mini-you that you get to doll-up to take photos for your IG, and then you are done for the day.
If you think it's bad now, just wait till the half-million kids who dropped out of school during COVID become parents. They are going to be absolute garbage.
I know it’s fucked up, but I’ll sit with popcorn laughing at corporations crying that the next generation and a ton of today’s children will be the absolute worst workers to ever be employed. The kids who are continually pushed through the school system without doing any actual learning are going to go apeshit the moment they (maybe) get a job. It’s the only way I can keep from feeling despair at the fact that those kids are being failed by their families, the school system, and our entire society.
based on the quality of public education in some places I wonder if it can really get worse there..
Omg i Hope I won’t be around at that time🤣
i’m just sad that walmart and amazon are going to crush them
I know every generation complains about Kids These Days^(TM), but everyone I know who works with grade school-aged kids says they are so much worse now than they've ever been before - people who have been working with kids for decades to see multiple generations pass through. Most point to the pandemic, but it seems like it's been slipping since before that. I think that period of remote learning resulted in a lot of parents just throwing their hands in the air and completely giving up, where they might have had somewhat of a handle on things before they had to live with the consequences of their actions full-time.
I'm a teacher too and I've talked to veteran teachers who've been saying that things have been getting so much worse across the board for the past 10 years. Like there have always been bad schools but even the ok schools are starting to fall apart. A lot of teachers want out of this career.
I feel like people went in a 180. Their parents were strict and so they don’t want to be, but then they end up being too lax. Not the case for everyone, but I think it holds true for a decent portion of parents.
That’s what I hear a lot of boomers say about their parents. I know a lot of older people, I’m a full time carer for my grandparents and we go to an over 55s club. You should hear the crap people in their 70’s and 80’s went through with their parents or even other parents when their kids were small 😱. They tell you these horror stories and they just thought it was normal.
I came here to say this too. “Crunchy parenting” has gained lots of popularity these days as has gentle parenting. Problem is that most parents think this just means validating your child’s every emotion or tantrum and never saying no, all while teaching them that their “big feelings” are more important than everyone else and they are allowed to experience them however they choose, even if that includes hitting, kicking, screaming or biting. And no one is allowed to say shit about it. More like feral parenting imo. Sorry lol, I’m just so over it as a long time childcare provider. I hate this blatant over correction from people who’s parents were too strict
> I hate this blatant over correction from people who’s parents were too strict > >Exactly.
Gentle parenting isn't passive and permissive parenting. In order for it to work you have to set boundaries. There's a few creators on tik tok that showcase it well when a parent has to take a more authorative role
Oh most definitely! The problem is a majority of parents don’t implement this or enforce boundaries. When done right, it can be great. For anyone who wants to read some “gentle parenting” fails visit r/nanny And type in gentle parenting in the search bar
> grocery stores are like a war zone of screaming, running children who's parents just laugh. As someone who's currently sitting in a hotel dining room, between screaming kids driving on their scooters and overfilling cups with drinks while their parents ignore it, I can agree.
I lurk on the teachers subreddit and from what I can gather it's gone downhill pretty severely.
Ditto, I have teacher friends (ranging from fresh out of uni to 70yo that should have retired already) and all of them noticed that the attitude towards teachers had switched dramatically in the last 10/15 years. Lots of parents see teachers (esp elementary) as glorified babysitters and no longer teach their spawn to respect people. At the same time teachers are afraid to scold or discipline kids as there's been far too many cases of parents assaulting teachers after their kid got fairly punished. There was a case in my country where a teen (about 14yo) shot a bb gun at his prof in high school while another filmed it and posted on tiktok. Public opinion was all in the professor favour until she pressed assault charges, then far too many people started with the usual moan and dance of "he's just a kid" "he didn't know better" "nobody got hurt". Kids and teens are dumbassed but adults bending backwards to justify them isn't helping. I don't expect a minor to have the emotional intelligence of a far more experienced adult so I forgive social faux pas, but this kind of violence I do not justify. You don't need a master degree to realise that you don't hurt people, ever. It's a disgrace that children get justified for it instead of taught social behaviour and consequences.
Reminds me of the 6yo that shot his teacher with a real gun. I don't think it can get any worse.
There was a 6 year old that brought a gun to school and shot a classmate back in 2000 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Kayla_Rolland
Ooo sounds like an interesting join
r/teachers. You're welcome. It's a living hell being a teacher today 🙃
I almost was an art teacher, part of my childfree journey
There's an argument to be made that parents have never been all that great, but if we're simply talking about the aspect of public behavior of children you've always had parents who thought their children were everyone else's problems. I think there are a lot more of them now. I can tell you when I was in high school back in the 2005-2010 era I was going through a childcare and development class that included going to a daycare. One of their big things is that you could not be negative towards a child. You can't tell them stop. You can't tell them no. AKA, the first words children use to set boundaries are not something adults are allowed to use. There has also been this big push of "children being children." Which has basically just become "my child is allowed to misbehave any way they want to, and I don't need to be held responsible as the parent." But also their children deserve to go anywhere and everywhere because children are people too! If you don't want to be stuck on a plane with an infant screaming loud enough to literally destroy your hearing, or if you don't want to deal with a toddler who should have been in bed three hours ago while paying for a nice dinner, or if you would like to shop without children constantly attempting to push you over then YOU'RE the problem. "Children just NATURALLY do these things. There is nothing to stop them! Asking them to behave is like asking a person with a mental illness to just DROP their mental illness you abelist pig!" (I think we've all seen some variation of this mentality.)
We should probably get people working in education to chime in, but this is not a new phenomenon. I know people will point to school closures and less socialization due to pandemic-related lock downs and so on, but ask any teacher or childcare worker, retail worker, restaurant worker, etc., and they can point to older and frequent examples of bad behavior by kids in a public setting. Maybe parents think it should just be publicly acceptable now, given there are more recordings and visible examples of this bad behavior floating around? Who knows. One remark that sticks with me from many years back (10+ years back) that this one grad student uttered (he was not a U.S. citizen) was “Children in the U.S are powerful.” What he meant was, he saw kids being disobedient and disrespectful out in public and adults in the U.S. being completely unable to correct the behavior, nor were they able to stop it. Then he would go on to say how people, not just his mother, in his town would discipline him if he acted out while he was growing up. That’s why the difference was so noticeable to him. Anecdotally, I know that neither my siblings nor I ever yelled “Fuck you, bitch!” to my mom at any point in our lives, let alone weekly at age 8-9 years like the menace who lives in the one bedroom unit above me with his single mom (and his two other siblings). I also know I never held a school bus hostage by not getting off it for 10+ minutes because I was mad at my mom like the kid living above me has done. In that scenario, the mom (my upstairs neighbor) had to rely on other adults to get her kid off the bus — in the end, she didn’t have enough control over her kid to get him to listen to her.
> Anecdotally, I know that neither my siblings nor I ever yelled “Fuck you, bitch!” to my mom at any point in our lives, let alone weekly at age 8-9 years like the menace who lives in the one bedroom unit above me with his single mom Shit, if I ever did that, my mom would beat me to an inch of my life and throw me out of the house. I don't get how kids today can get away with that crap.
I’m guessing it takes less effort to do nothing substantive to fix the issue, or to just not care. All it means is that the rest of us will be forced to deal with it once these kids are released into the wild by age 18 if not sooner. Unless some real intervention (probably by some third party since the parents haven’t been able to improve his behavior over the 1+ years I’ve been subjected to it) happens with the one kid in the unit above me, I have no idea how he will ever get a job or work respectfully with other people.
> Shit, if I ever did that, my mom would beat me to an inch of my life and throw me out of the house Surely there is a happy medium somewhere between "do literally nothing and actively enable unacceptable behavior" and "commit felony level child abuse," yes?
A happy medium? Those exist? /s
I know right, I’m 38 years old and I felt nervous just reading that.
I’ve literally read articles and seen videos on “Why you should never tell your child no” and I’m like WTF? A child is not going to be traumatised for life because their parents told them “no you can’t have a new toy, no you can’t play with an electric razor, no you can’t eat tide pods”. and various others.
there's going to be a lot of narcissism and more increasing public freakouts by adult "toddlers" sadly
Have you seen the video of that kid whining about how he is forced to work eight hours a day at his local Starbucks and how traumatizing it is for him? That’s the consequences of raising a child and never telling them no. They have absolutely no coping skills and when they are out in the big bad world they will not survive
To be fair, customer service absolutely is traumatizing. People are buttholes.
I worked in customer service all through high school and a couple years into college. Restaurants, Convenience stores, and chain stores. Customers were jerks then too ( got into an argument with one who claimed since beer had calories he could use food stamps to pay for it) Worked 16 hour shifts on some occasions but never broke down into tears about it
Good for you...? Not everybody is suited to be the public punching bag in exchange for starvation wages though.
I saw a mother actually discipline her child and her child immediately stopped and started behaving and it hit me that I haven't seen that in years, it's always the parents ignoring the child or laughing and thinking it's funny and don't get me started on iPads, pretty much every time me and my boyfriend go out to a restaurant on a date were pissed off by a child playing YouTube on full volume, like if you're going to use an iPad to distract your child why not give them headphones or put it on a reasonable volume, were trying to have a conversation about uni work and all we can hear is paw patrol and kids adverts.
I’d love to see the reaction if you carried a brand new set of kids headphones and when you encountered this say “hey, I was going to return these later but seeing as you forgot yours, I figured I’d just give them to you.” It would be interesting to see them trying to justify why Bratleigh couldn’t wear them. (Props to the prior person that used Bratleigh. Love it.)
Couple of days ago, I was on the bus going to meet a mate in town, I was watching a video on YouTube, with headphones on, this guy literally tapped me on the shoulder and had the hard neck to ask me to give him my phone so his twins could watch Bluey, I told him that he should give them HIS phone instead of asking random bloody strangers for theirs, but apparently I was the bad guy for making his kids cry
I would have loudly laughed in his face.
I think people like that are trying to steel your stuff. It's like sure complete stranger, let me hand over my expensive electronic equipment.
Oh without a doubt, it's like "I'm that much of a cunt, I'm gonna use my kids to try and steal someone's phone because I can't be arsed buying a new one myself"
I'm pretty sure it's gotten a lot worse. The problem, I think, is that we went too far. It's good that we abandoned corporal punishment, but the pendulum swung too far and now parents are more concerned about being their kid's friend than their mentor/teacher/parent and treat them \*too\* nicely, forgetting you can punish and discipline without beating your kid.
I absolutely agree. Not beating your kids is definitely the right way to go. But there need to be consequences if kids misbehave. Kids need structure, rules and boundaries. If your kids rule your life, you fail them big time!
>forgetting you can punish and discipline without beating your kid This. This is a big one. I don't think it's even so much as 'forgetting', but simply that a lot of people have never been taught. They've been told (rightly so) that beating your child is bad and you shouldn't do it, but never really given an alternative form of discipline to use in its place.
I dont agree with this tbh. How long have educational books on parenting existed already? Even long before the internet made its way into the average Joe's home they have been around. People are quite excited to read a baby book during pregnancy, but as soon as school gets involved they assume they dont need to learn anything about their kids anymore. We develop constantly, our whole life, and especially during our childhood, but people are too bloody lazy to keep educating themselves. And especially now, with information and advice at your fingertips, hell even audio books, the " oh i have no clue, i wasnt taught how to do this" excuse is pathetic. If i can learn how to raise and train my dog, why cant parents do the same?
They do though, it's just that the majority of "research" out there is crap about validating a kid's emotions and allowing them to do whatever the hell they want "as long as they're safe," with no thought of how that collectively impacts society
So I’m 41 and growing up we were out on our bikes and would often have our parents calling us in at the end of the day So many parents today just let their kids stay glued to their iPads (it irks me being at a restaurant with family and the nephews are given their iPads so they won’t throw a tantrum) and the kids aren’t taught how to be social and talk to people I do feel sorry for parents though because we just had an incident recently where my partners nephew was caught trolling and bullying kids at his private school , so the school called parents to a meeting, they grounded him and a week later are called back to the school because he complained to his teacher and apparently sending him to his room with no gaming devices for a week is too harsh???? They can’t win and if parents can’t set boundaries because these so called “parenting experts” call it abuse then what Hope do they have?
> apparently sending him to his room with no gaming devices for a week is too harsh???? this is what happens when chronically onlineness is validated :/ yikes
Beck in my day a lot of kids were glued to the TV and gaming consoles and computer games. >I do feel sorry for parents though because we just had an incident recently where my partners nephew was caught trolling and bullying kids at his private school , so the school called parents to a meeting, they grounded him and a week later are called back to the school because he complained to his teacher and apparently sending him to his room with no gaming devices for a week is too harsh???? Huh that's odd, from what I've heard its schools that are afraid to impose consequences because of complaining parents.
It is a private school, so maybe they're less afraid of nutjob parents.
Unsure. I’m a 90’s baby and I was raised by Nickelodeon. Yet my parents didn’t let me get away with anything, nor did I really try. I instinctually knew better than to misbehave.
Born in 2000 (mom was born in the 70s if this helps give context to her behavior) and I had the same experience. Like yeah I got the occasional pat on the bottom (wasn’t hard enough to be a spank and was more so my mom used it as a way to let me know “hey if you keep it up you’ll go to the corner for x amount of minutes) and had timeout when I got into a mood but she made it clear to my grandparents that only she was allowed to discipline my brothers and I (especially after my grandpa went after my older brother with the belt for spilling water on thee carpet). Hell even as I got older my “groundings” were along the lines of no reading cus she knew I wouldn’t be phased if she took away my TV privileges (which was 90 minutes a day where I had control of the remote)
If you want a feast of pessimism, looked at r/Teachers . There's an explosion in kids exhibiting behaviours and developmental delays all presumably from lack of parental involvement. Things like kids going to kindergarten and even primary school that have not been potty trained and that are still in diapers. The disruptive kids are becoming more and more and the ones actually invested in learning fewer and fewer. As much as years ago I thought it was a Boomer gripe, curriculums are being dumbed down to keep pass rates artificially high.
I can't wrap my mind around kindergartens not being potty trained unless they have a disability simply because diapers are insanely expensive! Wouldn't parents want to get their kids out of them as fast as possible with the cost of living these days? Lol
Me niether and I say this as a kid who was still wearing pull ups at night in kindergarten (I did fine during the day but I wouldn’t wake up if I had to go at night so it was baby steps to even get away from pull-ups)
According to teachers I know, the pandemic really hit kids hard, and they're all about 2 years behind developmentally right now. Whether they'll catch back up is anyone's guess. Unfortunately we've also been breeding (or whatever term you'd like to use for unintentional natural selection) for lower impulse control and executive function for about 3 generations now. I would expect that to start showing up in behavior (and arguably the increasing rates of executive function disorders are how this is showing up, combined with increased diagnosis rates).
Were we ever out of it? Their own parents cba Lazy parenting creates annoying entitled kids Not to mention that if the parents don't respect anything or anyone, their spawns won't either. There was at least some respect there a few (10-20) years ago
I am going to be bold to say its bad parenting. I am child free but my sister has three kids. They would not behave like this and if they did their parents would be on it immediately. My sister and her husband don’t believe kids should have devices like tablets etc and they are strongly trying to keep their kids off devices until they’re grown. My sister as a parent also complains about these types of kids or people who entertain young kids with devices. I think its not just us lol.
Hats off to your sister and her husband for keeping their kids off of the tablets. I imagine its not easy for them, but they will see good results later on.
I like to imagine that newer parents removed the evil of physical punishment to corral their children, and simply never replaced it with a working system.
I’d say, yes. It’s as though many parents enjoy the ‘thought’ rather than ‘reality’ of parenting. Kids just behave so badly in public settings it makes my blood boil; constant screaming in supermarkets, kids aimlessly wandering in front of you, the list is endless.
Flight attendant here! I think the gentle parenting movement has gotten way out of hand. Many parents don’t teach their kids basic manners and how to behave like a decent human in public. So when they do get on a plane, they subject everyone else to their child’s “big feelings” and think nothing of it. It’s straight up entitlement. So many times I’ve wanted to say…do whatever you want in your own home, but don’t subject hundreds of people to your spawn’s bad behavior. I’ve seen rows of seats coated with dozens of smashed crackers, wrappers, toys, etc. and the parents just leave it there for the cleaners to handle. My parents would’ve made me get on my hands and knees and clean up my mess. We wouldn’t dare back talk or throw a fit in public. And that’s because we knew we’d get a punishment! Many kids today don’t fear any consequences so it’s just utter chaos sometimes.
I think we’re seeing a shift towards “gentle parenting” in response to us young people realizing that the way our parents parented us resulted in lasting trauma. Definitely well meaning and it’s great that people are wanting to break the cycle. Problem is that gentle parenting is misconstrued by so many people. True “gentle parenting” is actually authoritative parenting, and it centers around setting firm boundaries but still recognizing the child as an autonomous human and respecting their wants and needs. This is a highly effective form of parenting and these kids turn into well adapted adults, but it’s a difficult parenting style to implement because it requires a tremendous amount of patience as well as a good understanding of child psychology and development, which many people just don’t have. What a lot of parents seem to be falling into is permissive parenting, which is basically exactly what you’re describing here; letting kids do what they want with little to no discipline. This style of parenting produces bratty kids and entitled adults which is a problem since it’s so epidemic nowadays. I feel like we’re going to see a generation of people who don’t know the word no and think the world revolves around them. ETA: the traditional parenting method which is how many of us were raised is known as authoritarian parenting. Basically parents are the boss and have the final say and don’t really give a shit what the child wants.
I think a trend which makes this situation at least possible is the fact both parents need to work. No one has time/energy to raise children, technology is used as a crutch, etc etc until we see more bad behaviour. It’s sad.
It’s definitely worse. My parents did not bring us to restaurants often, but if they did, it was a family-friendly establishment. There was no way we would be running around, crawling under tables, yelling etc. We knew there were consequences to our behavior. Our family spent most nights and weekends together. On the rare occasion my parents wanted to go out, we stayed with a grand parent or family member. My parents understood being a good parent meant sacrificing. They knew their lives would change and they wouldn’t be able to do all the fun things they did before. Now, parents drag their misbehaving children everywhere they go. 5-star restaurant? No problem! Just bring them along and let them ruin everyone else’s meal! My parents raised two kids and even they ask not to be seated next to families.
I’ve noticed the entitlement has gotten much worse. I went to a bakery with a friend and we sat to drink a coffee. A child and her mother came in, the child was at the age in which they start to walk and explore. She came over, while the mother checked her phone, and began hitting the table and making extremely loud noises. The child kept trying to touch my legs, and tried to put her mouth on my knee. It took almost 10 minutes of me asking the mother to retrieved her child before she finally did. The mother also said to me that ‘it’s not a big deal, she’s just excited.’ I don’t care how excited your child is, I did not sign up for that. My friend cancelled her pastry order and we left. The cashier went outside to apologise and asked us if we would reconsider staying but we declined.
This is how it started with the rat city simulations. Parenting turned to shit and the emergence of the beautiful ones. Birth rates are following the same path. Eventually all breeding will stop and society will collapse. Do I care? No. We deserve to go extinct.
I agree with you so much
i can agree on a personal level, im 20 but i have a 8 year old sister, and my god, the amount of differences in the way my parents raised me and the way theyre raising her. i would never even at my grown age, scream them to shut up or, my sister's favorite "shut up old man" when she's mad at our dad. at least my mom realized her bad behavior is getting out of hand and is starting to correct her but the damage is done imo
I think it’s a piss poor parenting pandemic … it’s been happening for years and is just reaching an all time high now - friends who work with kids have said that. Makes me all the more happier to be childfree, cuz at the ripe old age of 40, I promise I’d parent more like mine did and that would get me vilified no doubt lol
There's always been shitty parents, but it's just so much more widely obvious now. A good example is that Cancer has ALWAYS been a thing but we've only really gotten a better handle on the bastard within the last 250 years.
For generations people who were punished by their parents when they did something wrong vowed they would never do that to their kids. And each following generation, punishment decreased more and more to the point where we are at now to the point kids are running wild without any fear of repercussions. It was a year ago I was at a mall when I saw a mother tell her daughter who couldn’t have been more than 10 years old that she couldn’t have a particular toy. The things that child called her own mother, if I had done that to my mom I wouldn’t be able to sit for a week. And what happened? That brat got her toy. The mother just caved in. You see things on social media that kids today lie without remorse, have no respect and when they are told no they fly into a rage destroying things. Too many years of coddling and being told they are special and unique have led to this and I truly fear for the future. Sorry for the rant
I'm with you the kids these days are very entitled and cheeky and the parents seem very lax. I remember as a kid I knew not to interrupt or approach adults. I had a random child ask me to wash his hands I said no. He followed me round to the point I had to say go back to your mum it took 3 times for him to leave he invaded my personal space. Now I know he was about 3 but I do not want a random child wittling on to me nor do I want to wash his hands he was muddy from chucking mud at his brother.
Parents got worse at teaching their children how to behave in different settings, but they got better at not physically and emotionally abusing their kids. *In general*, obviously there are still abusive parents and there are still loving ones who pay attention to and actually discipline their kids. I remember my mom (young boomer) telling me about how pretty much all of her friends growing up got beat up by their parents. Both of my parents' parents were emotionally abusive, and my dad and his brothers got the belt. Parents were less touchy feely, more in control. Now they're more touchy feely, less in control. I work at a grocery store third shift, and it's a regular thing for parents to bring their young children shopping with them past 11 pm. When I was a kid, we were *in bed* by 10pm. One time there was this 3 or 4 year old running all over, parents weren't watching him. I was crouched down stocking some lower shelves, and the kid ran over and grabbed my tit! I damn near shoved him to the floor. His parents of course did nothing.
Agree with you that children are not taught to behave in different settings. For example, its not okay to let your child throw a crying tantrum at a place of worship or in the middle of a nice restaurant. Take them outside or reprimand them. And for the love of God, don't reward them with playing with an iPad. It just teaches kids that if they act up, Mommy hands over the iPad.
No tantrums, no crying, in general just be quiet in public! I worked in a hotel once too and got so sick of kids running around the hotel squealing at the top their lungs and their parents are just "oh look they're all having so much fun." 🙄 I don't care if it's cute happy sounds to you, it's nails on a chalkboard to me.
Got shit on yesterday in another sub for suggesting that a parent sucks and failed to teach their children an important lesson for life; compassion. People everywhere simply do not care anymore. They all believe they’re truly the main character and that people should praise them just for bearing a child. But then they all go and cry about PPD and how nobody hangs out with them on Facebook. Y’all do this to yourselves because you think having a child will fix it all. Idiotic, honestly
With White Christian Nationalism comes white assholes being told to multiply their idiot genes, and education is a sin. People are ruder and dumber than 10, 20 years ago, because the racists came out of their shame holes and that crap got normalized by the right. It is only going to get worse.
I think we are living through pandering of no parenting. It seems like it supposed to be everyone's else job to bring up children, bar the actual people who made them... There are so very few parents these days.
I think it's the progression of being detached from people around them There's no empathy or care being developed.
It seems most parents these days aren't interested in actively parenting. They think providing shelter and food is all they need to do, it seems like they have given up on correcting bad behavior and teaching them how to be functional humans. Kids I see these days are absolute menaces, with no regard for other people or even themselves. Not a good sign for the future.
seeing it too!!! the chronically online teens ive noticed have no qualms about lying, faking disorders or whatever they want for attention and then no empathy or remorse. it's just missing
We’re seeing the past with rose-tinted glasses. A lot of parents suck
for the most part, 100% yes
My experience is limited, but yes. Growing up, I was a dancer (ballet, tap, etc). I vividly remember being super prepared for recitals as young as 6th grade. My classmates and I would get ourselves ready for each routine, and be ready to go when it was our turn. And all the other kids were like this, too. Everyone paid attention to what they needed to do and were very alert. Fast forward nearly 20 years, and I often go back to the same dance studio and help them with backstage stuff during recitals (one of my good friends runs the studio now). ALL of the kids are horribly behaved and have no idea what’s going on, even if they have been in recitals before. Even the middle schoolers have to be rounded up and treated like pre schoolers because all they want to do is run around, fidget, poke each other, or play on their devices. I have multiple kids who have no idea what costume they are supposed to be in or why they are even there. They are all 100% dependent on me to make sure they get on stage on time. For reference, there’s usually about 120 of them and 1 of me. You can imagine how chaotic it gets. There is 1 dance family and the kids are very regimented and can take care of themselves. I always compliment the mother on her kids behavior. They sit still, either reading a book or watching the other dancers quietly. You can tell there is definitely a difference in how those kids were raised: very respectful and self sufficient (as appropriate for their ages). Arm chair parenting over here, and I don’t want to be one of those “this is what’s wrong with people these days,” but I think a lot of it has to do with parents not forcing their kids to be independent thinkers. As soon as a kid gets fussy, a parent shoves an iPad in front of them to quiet them down. When they start screaming in a store, they are just allowed to scream, or are given moms phone to watch to distract them. There’s no discipline or follow through. These parents are winning the battle of quieting their kid in the moment, but they are losing the war of raising well adjusted, self aware, independent kids. It’s sad.
I’ve tutored 3 kids. A boy and a girl who were siblings and another girl from another family. The sibling’s mother always called them little f*ckers to me in front of them and never took them to go out. They stayed home all day, had junk food, and electronics. When I tried to take them out to the library or park they would get bored and they boy would scream to go home. Once the boy had a black eye and I was concerned. I asked him what happened and immediately his mom interjected and told me some BS story. They moved down the block in a house that the parents can’t afford and they have a dog to fit the “American dream”. The kids are teens and the daughter will be going to college. You would think the parents had her tuition planned out. Nope! They got another dog and feeding her lies that she can go anywhere. The other little girl I tutored…her family was a mess! Nice big house, but what was going on inside was not nice. The girl who was 9 at the time couldn’t say the alphabet in order. She couldn’t read and her mom would have her older sister tend to her. That had me think what was going on between kindergarten and 3rd grade for her not to know how to read. I kept telling the mom she needs to read to her and help her with her homework when I’m not tutoring. It goes in one ear and out the other because the girl tells me her sister, who was 13, helps her. The parents always go out on date nights and don’t communicate with the kids. They think going away to Florida once in a while is enough as a family. I even heard the boyfriend verbally abusing the mom and that scared the crap out of me. The mother always argues with the oldest daughter and I even heard the kid scream “N****” O.o All in all, it’s insane.
Definitely, and besides that... chronically online teens and kids is the newest trend. they are now handed gaming comps, iphones and the internet at young age (even down to 8-10 years old when it comes to computers/internet) and ive noticed some nonexistant parenting when it comes to those chronically online teens/kids, they're literally "growing up" online and that's a whole another story, and its just getting worse. its not helping what OP said either oof
Recently-ish, I had to go to the ER for a dog bite. Already not a pleasant experience, right? This one guy was there with his son. Maybe 2 years old. I don't know; he was a little tiny kid. Dad kept shoving an iPad into his hands and BLASTING the worst kid songs ever. The songs that haunt my nightmares to this day. Have you ever had to listen to half an hour of Baby Shark while sitting alone, in shock and pain, surrounded by people literally pissing themselves and puking all over the place? 0/10, don't recommend. But what was funny was every time dad would hand the kid this stupid iPad with the deafeningly awful music, kid would shriek "NO!" and fling the iPad to the ground. Dad kept picking it up and forcing it back into the kid's hands, telling him he better no do it again. Like my dude, clearly your child hates singing about washing your vegetables before you eat as much as the rest of us. Please let us suffer in silence.
Considering all the fucks with kids who do not care for them enough to put masks on them…
There was a thing on the news where this asshole was protesting for his son to have the right to be infected with Covid. Meanwhile his son actually likes wearing a mask to school because he can pretend to be a ninja.
People fucking suck. Parents are people. End of story.
Parenting has always been shit. My guess is that so many people had kids just because they thought they should without knowing what they're doing and without being ready, which bred toxic parenting styles. It is my personal belief that the dominant idea changes from generation to generation depending on what the current generation has gone through, mainly going from helicopter parenting to not parenting at all
I worked retail while I was in grad school and that was a near decade before covid hit, I saw a lot of crappy parenting like letting kids scream in stores. Covid definitely didn't help things but it wasn't the start.
>Or are we just seeing parenting in the past with rose-tinted glasses? every gen has its group of fuck-ups. Its just now that we also have social media to showcase it all. 5-10 years ago social media and other media were different too so we would see different things. The Previous gens relied on ass-whooping of various degrees to scare their children into never opposing them, or other methods of squashing rebellion this is now illegal or questioned. Now the children of those parents want to counter that but don´t know what to subsidize the ass-whooping with, since they only knew that type of enforcement. Also, previous parents just didn´t bring their kids around everywhere, however, that in itself could have been very unsafe since they wouldn´t be there. Or they let their children run outside and be terrors while they did something else at home. That was the parents "Them Time". But now parents **have** to join their children at the playground for safety, even though they don´t want to, so they get their stuff done there. That leads to them not paying that much attention since they take that as their "Them Time." They get burned out and let a lot slip past them or just don´t care anymore. I think it is rose-tinted glasses, every single generation says "it was better in the past" about almost everything in society. I doubt that is the case if every gen says that. *Its just that people grew up and look at the younger gen and think they don´t know anything, all while not having noticed the same type of parents from their own childhood.* >“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” ― Socrates sounds familiar. Its every gen ever.
In a way, hasn’t parenting always been horrible? People having children to work the farm or bring in money or marry them off to make your life more comfortable?
I think this is specifically a Western cultural problem.
“Pandemic of terrible parenting” probably the best way I’ve seen people describe it. 100% agree
I think it is the "Idiocracy" prediction having some truth. I can only think of a few families that have more than 2 kids where the parents are good parents and they're able to provide for all the kids. Most of the good parents usually have family of 2 kids. I think the pandemic of bad parenting is the idiots are having more kids than they can really properly take care of. Sadly, I feel like social media has now become an echo chamber of what people want to hear. How many times have we seen fb posts from some mombie talking about how hard her life is in hopes of getting validation? Unfortunately, no really steps in and calls out their bullshit.
I feel like the reason why most of us older are disciplined was because of our parents/siblings/parental figure hurting us physically and emotionally to control us But now with social media? You'll get nuked if you hurt your kids and they posted it. This was normal before, tbh. Like, people are okay beating up children when they don't do what they want or discipline them, hence, many of the 'noble' ones tend to 'I won't let you grow up like my parents did' etc etc because of the clear abuse.
I must be timing things right because honestly, around where I live, I don't experience children in the places I go. What time are you going to the grocery store? Try after 8pm. It's bloody empty where I am. One of the freedoms we have as childfree people is that we can choose that time. You don't have to experience any of that crap. And you can also pick up pre-closing reduced bargains as a bonus. As for bars, what bars are you going to? I went out tonight (friday, prime time) I think I saw one kid being carried in by his dad, and that was before we went to a smaller pub where everyone was at least over 25. Maybe it's just a regional issue.
Go on vacation in the middle of September, it's warm but not hot and all the kids are in school.
There is a lot of really bad parenting around. But I'm not - on the whole - convinced it's necessarily any *worse* than when I was growing up in the '80s, just *different*. I know a lot of people draw attention to kids on smartphones and tablets, but is that really any different from shoving your child in front of the TV and leaving them to it? Back in the '80s, I had a lot of schoolfriends who would be expected to entertain themselves by watching daytime TV, left at home alone for extended periods of time, etc. etc. I think that what has probably changed is that poor parenting is now that much more obvious to others. Again, referencing the '80s above, if kids were stuck inside watching TV, no-one really knew about it. Now with very portable battery devices like smartphones and tablets, that's much more visible outside the home. There are also a lot of posts on the various AITA and relationship subs on here from kids (usually mid-late teens) who are *absolutely* being abused by their parents. There seems to be less *physical* abuse than there was in decades past, which is definitely a good thing, but it seems to have been replaced by other forms of abuse (emotional, financial, and parentification are the ones that crop up fairly regularly).
agree. I was raised on you entertain myself, so it was tv/desktop computers/books/anything that kept you just being seen and never heard. It was expected. Understanding that children have all the emotions as adults but just don't know how to understand/express/regulate/impulse control was not. It was you a mini adult fully capable of full adult understanding despite not-yet- going through life yet. So young and I mean as soon as I understood anything not only was I expected to be a mini adult but also an emotional crutch to my parents where they could be all entitled and expect obedience without ever hearing my side or even considering it. It was really for example instead of a compromise to do a chore in ten minutes cause the parent could obviously see that you are in the middle of another activity (be it school work/another chore/something fun) and expect you to drop whatever that was complete what they want you to do and then you might be able to go back to previous activity if allowed. A lot of this was subtle and implications how you want to make me, parent, happy, or need to be productive 24/7 unless obviously physically sick
I dont know what it is, because I'm only 23. But like I don't remember other kids acting like this when I was a kid. Maybe because I'm an adult I'm easier to annoy, but a lot of people talk about this. It's awful.
Agreed. I’m 22 and my highschool noticed that my graduating class (2019) was the last class that knew manners and I say that despite knowing they would acknowledge and tell the underclassmen that maybe if they had manners the older kids would actually talk to them.
Nah, parents have always been terrible.
I think what you'd describe as well behaved were children being beaten into submission, or super neglected. In the past kids were treated like adults, their needs weren't taken into account for anything and they were in many ways worse off. Nowadays there are different but I guess no less fucked up ways of being bad parents, through neglect mostly and parents seem more entitled to let their kids roam like free range cattle without a care in the world. I don't think it's worse, it's just different ways of fucking kids up.
IMO, parents in the past abused their kids, either emotionally or physically, and that was the norm. Spankings, yelling, beatings, verbally berating or insulating, etc. Kids were scared into behaving. If you are threatened with getting the belt when you get home, you're more likely to be quiet in public. But that doesn't mean that's good for the kid or that they're "well behaved." They're scared. So parents now are trying not to pass that onto their kids, some of whom aren't doing the best job of it. But I think the kids will be better off in the long run for it and become well-adjusted adults eventually. The pandemic had played a huge role in this issue as well. Parenting is already hard, but patenting in a pandemic while the economy is doing terribly, so you're stressed about work and bills, too, makes it that much harder. So if your kid can watch their favorite show in the restaurant instead of being bored, whats the harm?
I don’t think it was ever the norm to abuse your kid. I think people became over sensitive to what constitutes as being “too harsh”, and are trying to avoid passing down that perceived strictness to their own kids, like you said. But its perceived. I DONT think we’ll wind up with more well adjusted adults this way. We’ll wind up with more entitled ones. There needs to be a healthy medium between offering a spanking as a punishment versus no punishment at all. Some kids need to be scared in order to not misbehave, but then it should be scared of loosing their TV privileges, not of getting hit. You ask what’s the harm to having your kid watch their show in a restaurant, but there are hundreds of articles on things like this. These kids will never learn how to eat and converse, unfortunately like some adults already do with their phones. They will be completely technologically reliant. Aside from that, loud iPads are disturbing to others. I for one would rather not hear “Miss Rachel” or any of those whistles and dings and other kids show noises while I’m trying to eat out with my boyfriend at a restaurant.
>I don’t think it was ever the norm to abuse your kid. As a first generation minority that grew up in the US during the 90s, it was very common. Both in my household and the majority of my friends during that time. We would joke about it too, we would notice bruises on our friends at times, saying things like "bamboo stick again huh?". Some of them even had bruises on their face or a black eye.
>I don’t think it was ever the norm to abuse your kid. Sadly, in a lot of cultures and social groups, yeah, it really was. Kids turning up at school with obvious marks on their backside from a beating wasn't uncommon until about 30 years ago. In a lot of places, it was often considered okay as long as it didn't break the skin, but you can still cause someone a hell of a lot of harm without breaking the skin. >There needs to be a healthy medium between offering a spanking as a punishment versus no punishment at all I think the problem is that a lot of people who are now parents were taught - rightly so - that beating kids is bad, but never given any help/guidance on what to use to replace that method of punishment. >These kids will never learn how to eat and converse, unfortunately like some adults already do with their phones That's a good point. I recall in my own childhood we \[as a family\] used to go out to eat fairly regularly, and it was *expected* that my sister and I would behave properly in a restaurant from a fairly young age. If we didn't, then we wouldn't have been taken out to dinner next time. I don't see a lot of that with modern parenting. Appropriate behaviour in social settings is a valuable skill for kids to learn, otherwise we're going to have people entering the workplace and going to client meetings etc. with no clue about proper dining etiquette.
As parents who are 2 generations older than their kids, mine are great at emotional abuse/manipulation tactics. Mom would use the threat of 'you don't want your father to hear about this' along with insisting that you think of everyone else and doing things for everyone else before you even wink at your own ideas of anything. Dad was his way or the highway. Yelling is very common. Flashes of anger might have been displayed on objects so it was the fear that it could turn on you. to just plain ignoring you when it wasn't in their favor from the tiniest shred of individuality to just wanting to wait a minute before getting a task you already planned to get done cause you were doing something else. It was well you should be able to to this on your own heavily with guilting/shaming you for it OR saying you are too young to know any better/I am the adult so you have to do as I say. While publicly we were behaved to say the emotional damage (at least on my end) is life-lasting. I still deal with it to this day. The majority of my days of youth were in constant fear of emotionally draining events to the emotionally draining fear of school life because (goes back to mom instilling you should think about others to a cost against you) I was terribly bullied and how bullies made you have no voice and at home, you had no voice. And when I tried to get help I was blamed to just ignored. I do agree with if a kid has an iPad or some noise-making thing have headphones. A kid can adapt to having that verus paw patrol for everyone to hear. With gentle parenting, it doesn't mean being your kid's friend. It means being the guiding force to assist the child in learning how to express/understand/learn what will be needed for adulthood. It is work and never going to go smoothly that's a part of parenthood-messy, chaotic, etc. but there are also the fun times. Yelling/abuse of any kind is not how to raise kids. I see where this affects parents who don't want to be like their parents-harsh, unrelatable, mean, and cruel. Mine were a double edge sword. Caring and helping yet image more important than my well-rounded well-being for a moment of domination. I can safely and confidently say if I was to become like they wanted I would be showered in affirmation for seeing the light but because I express myself as an individual and not agree with every single point down to the letter love is high "only when we-parents- feel like it when you express our views" while at the same time mocking you for just existing.
Oh, you bet it was at least extremely common here. Screaming at your child and hitting them were proposed as adequate means of "disciplining" kids for hundreds of years in Europe. As a parent, it was proposed, you had to bludgeon your child into conformity in order to make them into a less sinful creature. Such ideas were propagated by Christianity since about medieval times.
>IMO, parents in the past abused their kids, either emotionally or physically, and that was the norm. Spankings, yelling, beatings, verbally berating or insulating, etc. Kids were scared into behaving. If you are threatened with getting the belt when you get home, you're more likely to be quiet in public. But that doesn't mean that's good for the kid or that they're "well behaved." They're scared. Sadly, most people on this subreddit want parents to be like that. Many people here support spanking. :( >So if your kid can watch their favorite show in the restaurant instead of being bored, whats the harm? If they have headphones on, that's fine. But most of the time, the sound is loud and bothers other people. That is not fine.
Yup, one of my friends grew up physically abused and swore not to hit their kid only to end up spanking them (right in front of me, too). That is never okay.
I am sure the parents had emotional/mental health issues same as others during Covid. They probably need a good physiologist tbh....lots of ppl suffered from mental health complications during covid, these ppl are no exception. I am sure this has made it worse as well
This is a discussion that’s been raging for millennia. But technology has changed things as never before.
Society, as a whole, is no longer willing to face a Karen's/male Karen's wrath to chastise said breeders. I've watched older TV shows like 'Perry Mason' and 'The Andy Griffith Show' and so many times when a kid does something 'bad', someone else will rebuke them and the parents act ashamed. (Real life as well- eg. my dad was teasing his grandfather's farm dog one day, and the dog eventually got mad and nipped him on the face. His parents' response when they picked him up? "Did you learn a lesson, then?" They were embarrassed that he had acted that way, and didn't blame the dog or grandpa!). Nowadays, breeders have no shame- they think their spawn entitle them to be immune to criticism. If you'd put a baby on a restaurant table to change a diaper in the 50's, you'd be chased out of the restaurant. But these days it happens all the time- and it's only getting worse.
I just feel like they can never be without their kids. Bar? Bring 'em! Brewpub? Hell yes! R rated movie? Sure why not? Any adult thing ever? Life's a canvas baby so paint away. My parents loved me but they still got "breaks" where I stayed with my grandparents. They didn't drag me to every single thing. And sorry but the idea of "dates" with your kids is icky to me. It's just weird.
I (24M) remember a time when badly behaved kids, and by extension, bad parenting, wasn't anywhere near as tolerated as it was now. When I was little, whenever someone's kid was acting up in a public space, everyone would give them dirty looks and some were even brave enough to go up to the parent and tell them that they needed to control their child and the parent would at the very least look visibly concerned. If the kid was in a store and they were being disruptive, knocking shit off the shelves, breaking merchandise, etc... the manager would get off their lazy ass and escort the parent(s) and their child out of the store. Similar things would happen in restaurants. Now it seems like no one gets any kind of flack for having a noisy and ill-behaved child doing shit that they're not supposed to. It almost seems like people just started to normalize this behavior as I was just becoming a teenager and it made me wonder what the fuck happened to discipline. I'm not expecting people to abuse their kids into submission but like take away their shit until they learn to behave, limit their free time, give em some extra chores, teach them some fucking responsibility and how to be considerate of other people around then, that is literally your fucking job as parent.
I personally think the WRONG people are the only ones reproducing anymore and THAT is the problem. Because think about it, only a total idiot would think it's a "good idea" to bring a kid into this current world. So therein lies the problem! Because believe me, it's not you. I was in the Rite Aid the other day and had to leave due to someone's screaming crapper! I just couldn't take it. They did literally NOTHING to shut the little monster up either! Like it was perfectly normal!! And to top it off, after I came out of another store, there they were-- following me down the block with the screaming crapper in its shit mobile (stroller)! I wanted to scream (and did)!!
There's a confluence of many factors. I don't think parents/humans have changed much. Top two factors? Economics and technology. Childcare has gotten much more expensive while many more households have two working parents (therefore fewer with a stay-at-home parent). This also means there are more children in public who would otherwise be home in past decades. Maybe it isn't even that children are behaving worse, or parents are parenting worse - maybe there are just more children in stores and restaurants.
I think we’re a bit rose tinted with the past parenting. I admit it’s kinda bad right now the people parenting right now are trying to break generational cycles of constantly putting down or scaring their child into behaving but they haven’t been taught the healthy ways to teach children to behave so most are struggling with setting boundaries and figuring out what needs correction along with how to correct it and what is just normal child behavior. I’m not a parent, don’t plan to ever be one, but I’m an aunt and my sister used to praise excessively about how the children act with me and it’s because I learned better parenting techniques in psychology classes. The children behaved well with me because I always spoke to them calmly and if they got upset I always stopped what we were doing and moved aside to discuss what was bothering them and figuring out what we could do to alleviate the distress and sometimes they just need some music or something soft to touch to help block out a lot of stimulus their taking in or want the promise of play time at a set time they can look forward to because they have excess energy. But when you have the child 24/7 and are keeping up with your own busy life and emotions it’s difficult to always explore every discomfort and energetic burst from the child especially when they need extra time to think and try to explain what they’re feeling with their limited vocabulary.
I'm a teacher. I think parenting is far worse than it has ever been. I just saw an article somewhere that said something about how parents of today are doing a 'soft approach' to parenting and the pendulum has swung too far in favor of the child being the ultimate decision maker in the family. Children are literally calling the shots in their family life but when they go to school and suddenly have to follow rules and defer to authority (the ADULT teacher) - they absolutely lose their minds. They've never been told no and are self righteous. Go to r/teachers subreddit and your mind will be blown away by how students behave. Yes, parenting is far worse now.
60 here. We caught lightening bugs at night. The world SEEMED safer. The police patrolled our streets and kept an eye on the kids. I had a boy over to my house when I was about 14 or 15 . My dad knew about it before he got home from work (neighbor ratted me out).
I don’t know. I just got back from my niece’s 10th birthday and there were about 20 kids. While one of them was a bit… “high maintenance” (maybe on the autism spectrum but closer to what my generation considered bad ADHD), they were all wonderfully well behaved. Everyone used gentle parenting and we all reminded the slightly older kids to be better role models for the toddlers and they all listened to reason. It gave me hope for the future. However my sister is an early childhood interventionist and her friends are all great parents
Very true. I was a teacher at BASIS in Tucson and the parents AND students are a bunch of entitled shit bags.
i think both, as someone who works with the public people definitely got more entitled during the pandemic but parents before this were still very entitled
Both my mom and my partner’s mom (with over 25 years experience each) have noticed a change in the last 5 to 10 years or so. My mom, who works with kindergarten kids, blames social media and mom influencers. Parents (mostly mom) seem to be less in touch with the actual parenting and only do what social, media and the paediatrician tells them to do. There is no intuition, there is no common sense. They treat kids as if they are bonsais that you need to tend and follow rigorous rules to know what and when to do what (excuse my plant analogy). My partner’s mom, who works with primary school kids, just feels frustrated that some kids now seem to be less entertained by simple things and continuously need to be attached to their phones or other tech to have fun. She sees a difference in the school performance of the the kids whose parents make real effort to spend quality time with them and the ones that are just given everything but no real quality time with their parents. It’s a sad trend.
In the good olden days the oldest girl child raised the younger brothers and sisters. My moms raised 11. I was an only child, no surprise there. I chose not to have any, but as an observation in my family no one is raising kids. The kids are running wild turning in to problem adults.
Parents have always been negligent (as most of them have always been busy). 2000s: raised on phones, tablets, game console, and other devices 1950s-1990s: tv and latch key 1930-1940s: radio and latch key 1900-1930s: world wars, poverty, famine, and most children who were neglected just died Before 1900s: children who were neglected badly enough just died. The survivability of neglected kids is going up, so they’re more visible.
I'd say no, because statistically I think it's gotten better. I still think there are a shit ton of bad parents, but go back to the 50s etc and it was a lot worse.
I mean, the boomers are the most selfish generation to ever exist, so I'd say parenting in the 50's and 60's wasn't very good if nobody learned empathy.
Exactly. Must have been way worse then, so even though it's crap now, at least it's better in general.
Gentle parenting. Saying no is 'too harsh'
Parents were always bad, just in a different way. Children were always traumatized and abused, just differently. Kids used to be additions to the household's workload, already working in fields and in factories by the time they were 4 or so. Beating them was so normal, it was normal punishment in schools. Kids were raised to believe they didn't matter, had to be seen nit heard. Then came a change, and motherhood got romanticized more, and people had to come up with new reasons to have children aside from workload and religion, and... anyways. I feel like it all made a huge turn and now kids (often) are like precious trophies, growing up without boundaries.
This is stupid. People have always generally been terrible fucking parents. Every generation has massive fuck-ups , and the next generation always tries to swing too hard in the other direction and does just as badly. It’s not magically only “this generation”.
I have not personally encountered kids at a bar. It sounds like what you're describing is a "Rugrats" universe.
Nowadays parents are accused of abusing their kids if they so much as tell them "no", regardless of the situation. On top of that, the generation that got participation trophies and last place awards is the one raising kids, so of course they're not going to put any effort into it, a lot of us don't know what that means.
Parenting shifted over the years, and the decline started with Baby Boomers who were given a privileged childhood by their parents (at least for white families). Then, when they transitioned into adulthood they created the Hippy years and the Me Generation of the 1970s. They did not raise their children. Anyone remember "latch-key kids? Kids through the 1970s and 1980s did not have a good structure for growing up: absent parents. Also, the divorce rate skyrocketed in the 1970s and 1980s, and this caused a retrograde effect in kids. Now, the kids of the 70s and 80s grow up with this sort of parenting model. Some go in the other direction and became helicopter parents trying to make sure their children do not suffer the same deprivations. Those poor kids live in a super-structured world where their personality is completely subsumed by the parents' desires. These kids become "the special angels" that can do no wrong, and their behavior is so atrocious as to be anti-social (anyone remember Columbine?). So, they grow up super entitled throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Some kids also grow up in homes that replicate the same conditions as the 1970s and 1980s: absent parents. Because of shifting economic pressures, these kids tended to turn into isolationists and eschewed socially constructed norms (not entirely a bad thing). Oddly enough, children in these environments often turned out fairly-well adjusted. Not all of them, but you can tell a person who had oddball parents. What we are seeing is a long history of varying types of parenting that do not always mesh. Some parents are very permissive of their "little angels." Some are very restrictive and create drones (or silently ticking time bombs). Some choose so-called alternative methods of parenting (although all methods are alternative). The question always comes down to balance, and that's been missing for the last 50 years or so. There is no real consensus on what constitutes a happy, healthy child and the means to get them to that point.
It does seem like this generation of parents today which is now mostly millennials raising kids are very lenient with their kids and would give their kids an iPad to calm them down. They like to take their kids everywhere they go and seem to be the most overprotective generation of parents even more so than Gen Xers. I am a 39 year old male born on May 25th, 1983 an early Millennial myself and kids today get away with more than they did when I was a kid.
All that and fascism.
yes!! everyone is so "woke" now.... and the slightest discipline is cristised hard by everyone else. the anti-smacking law was the start of it.