Is Motherhood Harder Today Than It Used to Be?

When I speak with other moms, there appears to be a growing consensus that motherhood is harder today than it used to be. Of course, it’s impossible to say for certain because many of today’s moms weren’t mothers 20-30 years ago, nor were any of us alive 200 or 2,000 years ago. Interestingly, it’s not just moms who feel that motherhood is more challenging today. According to researchers, 70% of Americans—not just moms—believe motherhood is tougher than it used to be.

I’d be surprised if each and every generation of mothers didn’t feel that they had it hard. Each generation has faced unique challenges, and it’s impossible to compare these. However, there certainly are distinctive challenges that today’s moms face. What are some of these?

Challenges faced by today’s moms

Having an overwhelming amount of knowledge

Have you ever heard the adage that ignorance is bliss? There’s a lot of truth to this statement. We have so much knowledge about child development and safety that it creates a lot of stress for moms. Don’t get me wrong—I’m grateful that we know so much. Child mortality rates have decreased dramatically over the last two centuries (source), so this knowledge has paid off. However, it comes at a price. In the past, moms didn’t give much thought to if their child should be drinking whole, 2%, or plant-based milks. They just fed them what they had. Parents didn’t stress about selecting the right sunscreen, using the right car seat, choosing the right amount of screen time, and putting babies to sleep on their backs to prevent SIDS.

Prevention of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) provides a particularly notable example of how ignorance is bliss when it comes to parenting. SIDS is the sudden, inexplicable death of a healthy baby under age one. Research on SIDS indicates that babies are less likely to experience it if they sleep on their backs. Therefore, in 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics began recommending that babies be put on their backs to sleep. In 1994, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development began it’s Back to Sleep campaign.

The campaign worked. In a decade, SIDS deaths fell by half. This is fantastic, but the decrease in SIDS was accompanied by an increase in maternal exhaustion. Many babies (perhaps even most babies) don’t sleep well on their backs. They startle less often and sleep through the night earlier when placed on their stomachs. Consequently, mothers get less sleep when they place their babies on their backs. I’m so glad we have this knowledge and that SIDS rates have dropped, but this advance has clearly been accompanied by an increase in stress and exhaustion for moms.

Seeing the news 24/7

Though I just mentioned some concerns that we have because of increased knowledge of health and safety, there are many concerns that parents have always faced: kidnapping, natural disasters, injuries, war, etc. Though these latter things have always been possibilities, today we tend to be hypervigilant (constantly assessing potential threats and dangers around us) because we frequently hear about these. In the past, families only heard of a kidnapping if it happened locally. Today, because of 24/7 news coverage and social media, we hear about these daily. Likewise, we see constant, detailed coverage of war, disease, and disasters. It seems natural to me that we’d be concerned about our kids’ safety when we are continuously bombarded with images and accounts of all that could go wrong.

Seeing “perfect” moms on social media

In addition to spreading news, social media presents moms with images of what motherhood “should” look like. Because social media users get to choose what images and stories they share, nearly everyone selects images and stories that show them in a good light (hitting the gym just weeks after having a baby, taking family pictures with everyone dressed in immaculate outfits, feeding their toddler an organic broccoli smoothie, etc.). This isn’t what motherhood often looks like! It’s messy. It’s draining. It’s full of difficult decisions. We all know what it’s really like, yet we still compare ourselves to what we see on social media.

Spending more time with our kids

Even though today’s moms work outside of the home at high rates, researchers have found that we spend more time with our kids than moms did in the 1960s. To be honest with you, this surprised me. I figured that moms today would be busy with other things, but researchers say that moms currently spend almost twice as much time engaged in interactive and routine child care activities (things like changing diapers, bathing, helping with homework, and reading bedtime stories) than moms spent in 1965.

Receiving minimal support from family and communities

For most of human history, individuals were born, lived their lives, and died within the same geographic area. This meant that, for better or worse, most moms had support and assistance when raising their kids. This isn’t the case today. Many of us live thousands of miles from our family members. Moreover, whereas neighbors and others in the community once could have substituted for family, this really isn’t the case today. Many of us aren’t closely connected with our neighbors, nor would we trust them with our kids.

When we look beyond individual families and view our states and the nation as a while, it’s easy to see that state and federal policies do nothing to address this lack of support. The United States is the only developed country that does not have a national paid parental leave mandate (source). Childcare is outrageously expensive in the U.S. even though our quality standards are low. Our minimum wage does not account for inflation or cost of living. I could go on and on.

I approach this from the perspective of a Christian. I know many in the church who don’t want the government to use their taxes to provide support for families. They say it is the job of the church to help families, not the job of the government. The problem with this is that the church isn’t doing it. With nobody providing this support, moms simply do it on their own.

Balancing paid work and motherhood

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 71% of moms with children under age 18 work outside of the home. This means that the majority of moms are balancing employment and care for their children. This brings about additional stressors including the search for quality childcare, having to cover the “second shift” (the housework that must be completed in the evenings), and needing to maintain caregiving ideals despite putting in hours of work outside of the home.

Trying to meet society’s high expectations

Over half of Americans (56%) believe that today’s moms are doing a worse job than moms did 20-30 years ago (source). This is interesting because only 47% of Americans believe fathers are doing a worse job. Therefore, in addition to facing all the challenges described above, moms are facing the challenge of “shaping up” because their parenting is viewed as inferior to that of past mothers.

Moms also carry the burden of being held responsible for their children’s welfare and the cleanliness of their homes. Though men often contribute to the care of the home and kids, it is women who are routinely judged by the appearance of their homes and their children’s wellbeing (source). This is no surprise given that women complete a disproportionate amount of household chores and child care tasks. One would expect this in households where moms stay home and dads work, but in households where both work full time outside of the home, moms still complete the lion’s share of laundry, grocery shopping, meal preparation, cleaning, and routine child care (source).

Final thoughts

Before I say anything else, I want to acknowledge that many of these same challenges apply to fathers. In fact, research shows that men are much more involved in everyday child care activities than they used to be, which means many men may resonate with what I’ve written here. I’m not disregarding the struggles and contributions of fathers. However, I’m specifically focusing on moms because I’m a mom and most of my readers are women.

As I noted earlier, I don’t think we can accurately compare the challenges of motherhood across generations. More importantly, it doesn’t really matter because it provides no benefit to do so. What is beneficial is to look at the challenges that we’re facing today and figure out how we should respond. Here are my thoughts on this:

• Motherhood is tough. Most of us are trying our best, so we need to extend grace to ourselves and to others, especially when other moms choose to raise their kids differently than we are raising our own.
• We need to ground our expectations of moms in reality, not in some unattainable standard. We need to avoid romanticizing how things once were (“the good old days”) and stop viewing moms through a lens of expectations set by digitally-altered social media images.
• We need to advocate for family-friendly policies, including parental leave. This advocacy can be with local and national government leaders, as well as within our places of employment and our churches.
• We need to stop sweating the small stuff. Our kids will be fine if we buy frozen lasagna instead of making a homemade one, if we haven’t yet taught our 7-year-olds how to tie their shoes, and if the beds don’t get made today.
• We need to engage in self-care. Our society tends to celebrate self-sacrificing, all-consuming motherhood. This isn’t healthy. As our expectations of motherhood have increased over the past 20-30 years, so have the rates of anxiety and depression in kids and teens (source). I highly doubt this is coincidental. Remember that self-care isn’t selfish—even the Bible teaches about the need for rest and solitude (Exodus 34:21, Mark 6:31, Luke 5:16, Hebrews 4:3-4, etc.).

Whew, that ended up being a much longer post than I intended! Fellow moms, you are not alone! I hope we can learn to better support and encourage each other as we face these challenges.

What unique challenges do you think today’s moms face? What things can we do to make sure moms and kids are thriving amidst the challenges?

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Busy Monday and Encouraging Hearts and Home.