ALISON STIRLING
You were in your teens.
IAIN STIRLING
I was easily in my teens. Oh my God.
A SHORT BIT OUTLINING HOW PARENTING HAS CHANGED
To help us understand how parenting has changed over the generations I’m going to use some terms to talk about each generation specifically. Once we’re all on board with that code we can plough on with my hilarious content! The three main generations I’ll be looking at are millennials (that’s me), who roughly speaking were born between 1981 and 2002, Generation X (my parents’ generation), who were born in the years 1961 to 1980, and finally baby boomers (my grandparents), who were born from 1941 to 1960. There, hopefully that’ll save some time.
Parenting has seen massive shifts over the years. For me, the biggest affecting millennials is the shift from a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards a much more hands-on modern approach. Indeed, Generation X were known as the ‘latch-door kids’ because their baby-boomer folks were often out working or socialising, so the kids had to let themselves in when they went home after school or being out with their friends. Many Generation Xers lived with their parents in a manner more akin to flatmates than legal guardians. Take my mum, for example, communicating with her own mother through a blackboard like some sort of post-war WhatsApp messenger.
In fact in the 1980s parents’ need to be away from their children and near their peers led to the construction of many age-restricted communities where adults could hang out in child-free zones, such as holiday resorts, and the rise of the infamous ‘kids clubs’ that are still popular to this day. Parents could go lie on a sun lounger while their kid was taken off to play with some out-of-work actor in his mid-twenties dressed like a clown or a prince (royalty, not the pop star). To many this might sound like sloppy parenting, but I bet it sounds like heaven to the modern kid who constantly has to keep their parents updated on their movements via their mobile phone, or can’t post anything online because they know their parents have set up secret online accounts just so they can keep an eye on their comings and goings. Want to go to the cinema on your own? Of course you can! Well, I mean, Mum and Dad will be there, obviously, but they’ll sit a few rows back.
KIDS ARE SHIT AT STUFF
On the face of things it would seem that this overprotection is born out of a parent’s need to protect and serve their precious little ones. But I mean, how can I, or any millennial for that matter, hope to embrace adult life when Mummy and Daddy are still willing to do your washing when you’re well into your thirties? In fact, after the podcast was recorded with my mum, she made us mac and cheese while I was on my phone.
But a sort of misplaced love isn’t the only factor at work here. Although it is an undisputed fact that children are beautiful and fragile presents from God that need to be protected and nurtured, there is no getting away from the truth that they take fucking ages to do stuff. Watching a child getting dressed (and please only do so if the appropriate social and legal norms are in place) is one of the most excruciating processes in the history of mankind. They don’t know which hole to stick their head through in a T shirt, socks are approached with a level of concentration that should be reserved for bomb-disposal experts and you can dream on if you think these dafties are getting anything on their person should that garment involve buttons. So at the end of the day it is much easier for Mum and Dad to dress the dithering idiot themselves, thus saving an invaluable half an hour. This time can then be spent doing fun ‘parent’ things like not sleeping or wishing you still had disposable income.
If any of you question whether or not parents dress their children out of love or necessity, simply watch a mother putting shoes on her toddler. It remains one of the most barbaric acts I have ever seen performed by one human on another. And I say that as a man who’s spent two long weekends on lads’ holidays to Amsterdam. Viciously smashing Thomas the Tank Engine strap-ups onto the soles of unsuspecting three-year-olds is not the action of someone in love, but rather of a women who is 20 minutes late for a swimming lesson.
This same notion applies to all aspects of life. You name it, kids are shit at it: setting the table, taking in the washing, doing homework. All activities can be sped up tenfold by simply doing them yourself. But this ‘overprotection’ comes at a price. Millennials are growing up not learning necessary life skills that will help them function in the real world and that will help them move out and go on to live their own independent adult lives.
Similarly parents can find solace through constantly caring for their offspring and this can cause them to turn into someone who not only creates a reliance on their services but craves it – the ‘devouring mother’. Having served others for so long she becomes obsessive, controlling and even violently scared of the idea of being alone. Mum might complain about my dirty pants and constant iPhone antics, but what would she do without me?
Disney films always manage to capture this idea brilliantly, whether it be the Evil Queen in Snow White or Ursula in The Little Mermaid. The lengths to which the devouring mother will go to maintain control over those that once relied on them are not to be underestimated. Admittedly the actions of our Disney characters aren’t exactly the same sort of thing you see happening as a result of a Gen Xer’s over-parenting, but to be fair to Walt (Disney) I think we can all agree that The Little Mermaid wouldn’t be nearly as good a film if Ursula’s evil deed was agreeing to pick Ariel up from the bus stop every day after school because she didn’t like the walk … sorry, the swim. If Ariel had been walking she wouldn’t have wanted picking up – that girl bloody loved a good wander!
As children begin to rely on their parents more and more to give them assistance through life, so parents begin to rely on their children to give them purpose to theirs. This cycle can lead to children not leaving home until much later in life. It is mutually beneficial for both parties so long as life is preferable ‘in the parental home’ or ‘under the sea’, depending on what literature you’ve read on the subject. And then there are several changing social factors:
A rise in house prices means children don’t move out until later in life.
Parents are having fewer children, so that each child gets more attention.
Parents are having kids older, when they’re more settled, so are more likely to stay in with their kids than go out and socialise.
An increased focus and pressure on giving children the correct moral compass.
Parenthood is something I think about more and more as I get older because for some unknown reason my friends keep insisting on having bloody kids. Making babies, on purpose. How adult is that? ‘OK, babe, I’m going to start leaving it in.’ I mean, they possibly put it in a slightly more romantic way, but you get the idea.
As a comedian who is forever trying to rid himself of his dreaded ego, other people’s children can be a real stumbling block on my path to enlightenment. Mainly due to the fact that most of my friends seem to like their children more than they like me. Me! How long have you known your kid? Like a couple of weeks? We’ve been friends since freshers’ week, you ungrateful bastard. What has your kid ever done for you? Every day you have to tell that thing to stop crying, wipe its bum and put it to bed. You’ve only had to do that for me twice. It was my birthday and you had given me a bottle of rum as a present – in many ways you only had yourself to blame. I mean, this shouldn’t even be a competition. Your baby can’t talk, I’m the voice of Love Island. I’m objectively better. That baby has never ‘cued the text’ or ‘paged Dr Marcel’. I should be top of your list all day, every day.
I guess I just question anyone who can feel something so strong towards someone who’s done so little. I know I’m a Liverpool fan and will follow them wherever they go despite a relative dry patch, trophy-wise, over recent seasons, but boy do they play good football and Jürgen Klopp is a total BABE. Seriously, even if you aren’t a footy fan you need to check out my main man Jürgen. The guy is like the dad you’ve always wanted. I mean, who wouldn’t want a dad called Jürgen? Am I right? Even if, like