Why Giving Birth and Raising Children Is Not Getting Easier, Even as the World is Changing

The modern mother is a miracle woman. In a world where women study and work, the birth of a child is considered a feat that is postponed indefinitely in order to first "get on your feet" yourself. Our mothers and grandmothers remember how it was with the birth and upbringing of a child 50 years ago. Then everything was different, today we live by the latest technology, in every house there is hot water and a couple of indispensable gadgets in everyday life. Women used to do everything with their own hands. They cooked the food themselves, without any multicookers. They washed things by hand, ironed diapers and cleaned without robot vacuum cleaners. But has raising children become easier?



“In my time, there was no such thing,” a person of the older generation will say. He will not want to accept that the world is constantly evolving. And it needs to comply, you need to be able to understand technology, be able to use virtual services, have time to keep up with the times and at the same time raise children.



Writer Irina Govorukha told a story from life on her Facebook page: “One day I cried to my mother-in-law that I was cooking a vinaigrette with Tonya in my arms, since my daughter is neither in a chair nor in a stroller.” She was significantly silent and cut off that her children were in chairs for three hours in a row, like cute, fell asleep under the record “Once upon a time there were hedgehogs” right in the arena, and the fact that you lay for several hours is solely your fault. I don't see any reason to complain. The apartment has hot water, a washing machine and central heating.”



Looking for support and understanding in the face of her mother-in-law, Irina found only condemnation and disrespect for her work. We all need the support of loved ones, but even relatives because of a different worldview do not try to understand us.
Irina Govorukha is right when she says that raising children has not become easier. Previously, the tasks of women were clear, hence the stereotypes about female and male responsibilities. Today, many single mothers, working wives on an equal basis with men, who for some reason are released from household chores.



Of course, you can leave the child to sit on a chair for 3 hours and do their own business. But modern mothers try to raise their children smart, decent, caring. And for this, you need to spend all your free time with the child. In the continuous flow of information, it is easier to find answers to exciting questions. Only questions become every day in hundreds, thousands of times more. There are more opportunities for parents and children, but also more uncertainty. Everything you need to have time to understand, filter the necessary information and present it to your children.



Is it easier? Previously, they did not care about the psychological health of the child. Moreover, mothers did not sit on maternity leave for 3 years, they went to work, so it was necessary. And now mothers understand how important it is to raise a psychologically balanced person, a happy person. Despite the fact that mothers have to go to work and deal with children at the same time, they manage to feed, cook, clean, check their homework, send their children to additional classes and sections.



How many people who grew up in Soviet times are now trying to figure it out at a psychologist’s appointment? Parents want to be best friends with their children. They raise grateful and loving children. They communicate with children on an equal footing. Parents want to raise a personality, a self-sufficient all-round developed person, and in many ways this is the merit of mothers.



You can’t just take and devalue women’s work, mother’s work. This is what the older generation and even the new generation are doing. Stereotypes about women remain the same. They were added to the care of the child and its comprehensive development, work, because a woman can not be sure of either the future or a spouse who can go to another. So that the spouse did not go to another woman, did not cheat, continued to admire, young mothers need to immediately get in shape after childbirth, be beautifully dressed at home and not tired after work.



It is necessary to prepare delicious food for your husband and diet for yourself. While cooking, you need to stir borscht with one hand, and braid your daughter's braids with the other. A modern mother must enroll the children in kindergarten in advance, otherwise there will be no places. Now it is necessary in front of the garden and school to bypass all doctors by the hand with the child to make a certificate, so that the school was allowed. The presence of equipment in the house does not eliminate everyday life, from unbearable fatigue, which provokes insomnia, anxiety, irritability. Together with expanded capabilities, you need to be able to maintain balance, and not many people succeed. There's too much to do.



At any time, maternal labor is complex and should not be devalued. At any time, it is necessary to kneel in front of young mothers to stand and thank them for their courage, for their determination to bring a child into the world and educate him for the rest of his life. But everyone's priorities are different. And all that remains for us is the support of loved ones, without which it will be difficult to cope with an easy modern life. Do you think it is easier to raise and raise children?