" My toddler could have a random meltdown , and someone could lash their phone out and record it and shell it online for him or myself to be torn to shreds . "
It’s no secret that a parent’s childhood experience is starkly different from their child’s modern life for many reasons, including child-rearing decisions, technology, societal pressures, etc.
So, we recentlyasked parents in the BuzzFeed Communityto share the biggest differences between their upbringing and their kids' modern lives. Here are their eye-opening responses:
1.“My parents raised me in a heavily Christian religious home. As a little girl, there were a lot of expectations on me around ‘purity’ that really played with my head as I grew up. It ended up dramatically affecting my self-worth when I didn’t keep up with the unrealistic expectations. Now, I won’t let my daughter anywhere near that particular religion. Or any organized religion, for that matter.”
— Anonymous
2.“I’ll never be able to relate to my kids. By the time I was their age, I had dealt with my parents' divorce due to domestic violence, moved about a half dozen times, and went to eight different schools before high school.”
" My husband and I have been wed for 17 year , and our kids were born and raised in the same home , town , and school organization . My husband had a like upbringing to mine , and we always promised each other that we would break the cycle . And we did . "
3.“The biggest difference has to do with technology. When I was growing up, we had to call people on our landline phones and make plans for when and where to meet. There was no texting, and we had to take a lot of faith. I don’t know how my mom was able to relax when I was out, never knowing where I was and if I was okay. I have peace of mind that my kids can text me.”
4.“When I was a kid, we could go to the park and school without being afraid of being attacked by other kids.”
5.“My daughter is about to be 1, and the craziest thing is how much she’s allowed to eat. I specifically remember babies, even in the 2000s, weren’t allowed anywhere near peanut butter, eggs, fish, and sometimes dairy, and my mom can recite the old rules she had to follow with us: Introduce single foods separately as a puree, veggies first, and wait three days before introducing something new.”
" When she was babysitting , she asked me if my daughter could have strawberries , and I was like , of course she can ! Nowadays , it ’s so much more relaxed and fun ( as long as your tike does not have allergy ) . My girl has try all sorts of nutrient , and really , the only big no - no is no honey and no choking hazards . My husband and I can also say babe food has gotten a million times yummier . They do n’t make out how lucky they have it ! "
6.“Access to jobs. When I was growing up, you could just walk in and ask for an application or even talk to a manager. Today, it’s much harder for anyone to get a job. The process is online and has lots of hoops to jump through.”
" receive a bachelor ’s degree used to be a guarantee of a good living ; now , it ’s the unsheathed lower limit for most incoming - level occupation , but those jobs do not pay well enough to deserve asking for those qualifications . No wonder shaver today are making patsy of themselves on YouTube or TikTok for money ; it seems to be that the only way to be able-bodied to yield homes . "
7.“Sports are so competitive at an early age now. It’s not just for fun or team building. You have to be above average by 7 years old, which means we parents have to pay for private lessons year-round for a single-season sport.”
" You have to buy the right equipment , pay the best private handler , pay to play in the conference , and hope your kid is enough enough not to sit down through a two - hour secret plan check your child ride the pine . And to make the schooltime squad , you necessitate to make youth travel before you ’re even in middle schoolhouse . It ’s expensive , nerve-racking , and in the end , it come up down to politics . "
8.“Food security. My son will never have to worry about when his next meal will be or if he’ll get to eat again soon. He’ll never open the kitchen cabinets to find nothing but seasonings and condiments. He’ll never open the fridge to find it completely empty. My life goal was to break the cycle of poverty and give him a better life. I get emotional thinking about the life I’m protecting him from.”
9.“How I talk about my body. My mom was obsessed with weight, losing weight, and size for everyone in our family, including herself. She meant well, and I think it equated to health in her mind, but it left lasting scars on how I view myself and my weight. I can be very insecure about my body and the space I take up. I have a 12-year-old daughter, and I have been conscious her whole life about how I speak about myself and how I speak to her.”
" Healthy food and exercise are n’t about losing free weight but about keep our trunk and thinker hefty and strong . habiliment size are n’t expert or high-risk ; they ’re just numbers that help oneself us find things that will tally our body . The world will essay to make her experience self - conscious and ashamed of her body ; she does n’t need to get down hear it at base , no matter how well - intentioned . "
10.“Privacy. We had privacy when I was growing up. If you did something bad or embarrassing, it eventually died. There was no record (unless it involved the police). Eventually, nobody knew, and you could exhale, grateful that thing was behind you. Bullying, when it existed, was local. There was a downside, of course, which was abuse stayed hidden, too, but overall, privacy is better than social media/publicity. Living life in public, when strangers can weigh in and be cruel, is exhausting, demoralizing, hurtful, and sometimes deadly.”
— NYC4EVER
11.“I remember watching TV as a kid, and I’d flip through the seven channels we had (didn’t have cable), and when I didn’t find anything, I’d shut it off and go outside. Today, my kids start on one streaming service, and if they don’t find anything, they just move to the next platform until they find whatever they like. Not finding anything to watch is a foreign concept to them, and going outside seems like a death sentence, despite my one-hour limit of screen time per day.”
— thegassygoose
12.“The way we’re disciplined. My husband and I got spanks, slaps, and hits. Knowing how messed up that was, we decided our children would only get talked to so we could explain what needed to stop and how to stop it with no mindless and reasonless pain.”
13.“I would be thrilled and preoccupied for the day (or more) if I got a new pack of pens or markers. You couldn’t get me away from it. Now, kids just ‘color’ on iPads.”
14.“I grew up in a time when ‘free-range’ parenting was the rule rather than the exception. As long as my parents knew basically where I was and who I was with, they didn’t worry. We roamed around the neighborhood and made our own fun. When the streetlights came on, we came home. Trite but true.”
" My son turn up in the ' 90s when parent were terrified of ' stranger danger ' and felt they needed to structure their tyke ' meter . Kids were not allowed to just stop by and see if their ally could occur out to play as we did . You had to make a supervised drama date . "
15.“My parents were selfish, narcissistic, homophobic, racist a-holes. HUGE house, Jaguars/Mercedes, NHL season tickets, their own vacations, etc. But never money for us, no family vacations, etc. They made me start paying for all clothes, school supplies, and everything else at age 12, so I’ve been working a job nonstop since then. While I was still in high school, they said they were tired of having kids and kicked me out. That first year, I was destitute and even went a full week without eating.”
" They refused to conduce money for college , and I had to work full - time to devote for school , so it took two spare geezerhood to graduate . Dad died , discovered they were bankrupt , and their net worth was virtually zero . It was all a show to instill others . Mom is now inhabit in a dumpy apartment . My sister and I have dwell below our means as adult , saved money , slowly built wealth , supported our kids , and raised them to love others . Even though we never discussed it , we each set out to raise our kid the opposite way from our parents . "
— GmanCan
16.“How very much engaged we need to be. I love being involved in my teens’ lives, but by comparison, my parents were far in the background when I was their age. Since there were no phones back then, checking in wasn’t a thing; your parents had to trust that you were making good decisions.”
" Now , we can hover over our kids via an app and pass over their movements . It seems quite a foreign concept , even now . I ’m hop today ’s kids can light upon personal growth and independence , matter they ’ll need to become successful adults . "
— applesauceandchops
17.“The instant gratification of technology. If you need to find out something about Ben Franklin and where he lived, just look it up online. Instead, for me, it would have been first looking at the encyclopedias we had, and if we didn’t have that book yet, we’d take a trip to the library where, depending on age, my mom would drop me off or I’d wander the aisles alone looking for it.”
18.“The differences are night and day! They have everything on demand. Whatever they want to watch, eat, or play with is readily available. My life revolves around them and their schedules. After school, weekends are filled with sports, activities, birthday parties, and play dates. But growing up, outside of school, my life was dictated by what my parents needed to do.”
" I can recall going to perchance three or four natal day political party sum up ; weekend are filled with family obligations , grocery shopping , and errands until I was old enough to stay home by myself . "
19.“My parents worked (and continue to work) incredibly hard to build a better life for our family. This meant long hours and many things missed. It also meant opportunities for us that they never had. Now, I am able to work part-time (my husband works full-time) and am able to be home with my son four out of seven days a week.”
" Being able-bodied to be more present in my shaver ’s life sentence is only a hypothesis because of the life they provided for me . When I was younger , I would be so angry that they were n’t capable to pass as much prison term with my siblings and me . Today , I am grateful for their sacrifice and palpate incredibly blessed to be capable to drop so much time with my child . "
— bravewolf321
20.“How unsupervised we were. I remember, as young as 5, being able to go out of the house to the playground up the street without so much as my brother, who was only two years older than me, to keep an eye on me. We had to come back when the streetlights were on and stay within a certain block radius. That was it. Other than that, my parents didn’t know if I was at the playground, or my friend’s house, or this other friend’s house. Meanwhile, my son is currently 7, and I have trouble letting him play in the side yard if I am in the house.”
— stylishminion27
21.“The biggest one for me is that ‘I love you’ is said freely (those words were never uttered in my home as a child). However, I now realize that my parents SHOWED me love as they didn’t know how to verbally express it.”
And finally…
22.“There’s a LOT I could list, but the one thing I’ll give for this is phones/cameras always being out and people ready to record or take a picture over any tiny thing. Some perv could be wearing techy glasses and recording my kids; we won’t even know it. My toddler could have a random meltdown, and someone could whip their phone out and record it and blast it online for him or myself to be torn to shreds.”
" Every prison term we ’re out of the home to do anything , I ’m so nervous about someone immortalize something about my nipper and it perish viral . Or even worse , pervs get their jellies off by looking at their picture that I did n’t know they had . It ’s so nerve - racking . "
— sleepingminion78
reception have been edited for duration / lucidness
