Is Parenting ACTUALLY Harder Today?

Last last week an advisory was released saying:

"Surgeon general's new warning: Parents are stressed out"

I was between tennis games at another late night match during the first week of school for 3 of my high school daughters when I received this article notification on my phone.  My first reflex, before I could even think, was an honest lol moment.  OK, it was more of a sarcastic chuckle.

Was this news to anyone?  Did any parent, especially of adolescents, out there today not know this?

After showing this headline to another couple of the other moms in my vicinity, who promptly shared in the same reaction I did, I settled into the thoughts that came streaming into my consciousness.

Parenting has always been hard, so what is so special about now?

Is it actually harder to parent right now than it has been in the past?

The article says, "Being a parent has never been easy, but it's become perilous helping kids navigate a brittle social media landscape with outsized peer comparisons, along with stressors like gun violence and loneliness". 

But the social media landscape, the gun violence and the loneliness are just parts of a much larger picture here.  I want to explore 3 areas of parenting that have massively changed in the last couple of decades and you can decide for yourself if you think this job of being the builder of the "beginning of someone else's life" is truly harder now than it maybe ever has been.

1. MORE INPUTS

In 2024 there is ~402 million terabytes of data created daily.  I will be honest and say that I am not even capable of understanding how big that number is except to say it is mind blowing... literally.  We are in an age where there is an endless amount of inputs, influencers, information, guidance, advice and "how to's" at our finger tips all the time and we can never be finished. 

There is a notable beautiful side to this.  As a life long student I love the idea of always being able to learn and grow.  No matter what I am looking for I can find it, but therein lies part of the problem doesn't it?

NO MATTER what I am looking for, I can find it. 

• If I want to find anything to support anything I can find it, whether it is true or not. (there is no truth if everything is true and no false if everything is false.  We loose the anchor of stability)

• If I want to study quantum mechanics until I rival Einstein or drive myself to becoming a lonely, mad hermit in a homemade lab, I can find the material and dive in.  (this is a contributor of overwhelm, overwork, comparison, never enough-ness and potential false information substituting true education)

• If I want to build or do something dangerous I can easily find it.  (no one can feel safe when everyone has access to everything)

• If I want to waste my time and fan stalk my fav celebs I can (this is infatuation, distraction and idolatry all wrapped together, not to mention a waste of time)

• If I want to numb my mind from the overwhelm of the real world I can find a million cerebral sedatives in the form of videos, games, audios etc. (in short doses this can be a calming measure and in larger doses this is an avoidance strategy that leaves problems unaddressed and growing under the surface)

• Lastly, If I just want to check in on the life of that elementary or middle school friend I haven't talked to in years I can.  (this can lead to a false sense of relationships when your life is actually quite lonely and our youth are forgetting, or never learning, how to connect face to face with people which is essential for collaboration and the future work force.)

There is no limit to the data being dumped into the information ether and that can be dangerous to the parent brain and the child.  For the parent this is all dopamine brain candy which makes us pay less attention to what is happening around us and more numb to the job of raising humans before us.

But it is even more dangerous to growing, shaping, more chemically sensitive and maturing brains that do not yet understand how to be grounded in their identity, how to establish healthy boundaries and so often think they don't have to listen to parents when they can easily listen to someone else that gives them the advice they actually want to hear.  It is taking selective hearing to a whole new level.

There are so many "cooks in the kitchen" of your parenting now and most of them you have never, and will never, meet.  It could be through technology, the parents of a friend, the person on the other side of the world in a gaming console, a teacher, boss, coworker, friend, movie director, random person, coach, governing body etc.  

So many more people than you think have a seat at your family table.  The next time you are at a family dinner, just ask yourself how many more, outside of those physically sitting there, have influenced you all just that day on and offline.  The room would fill up faster and to more capacity than any other time in history.  Parents can so easily become a diluted and faint voice.

2. MORE RULES & EXPECTATIONS

Because there is literally a phone/camera everywhere today that means that the speed of knowledge is nearly instantaneous.  It is much faster than the phone tree of 1986 that my mom had when something happened.  If you or your child messes up it is out there and not just the pervasive and exponentially exaggerated gossip, but images, videos and everyone knows.  That is a level of shame, blame and embarrassment no one has ever had to face before AND, thanks to AI, no one knows what is real anymore.  The lessons are harder, trust can seem like a unicorn concept and the consequences or evidence of bad choices (or good choices others don't agree with) persist much longer than they have in the past. 

What about the pressure of after high school?  They have to pick a "track" in late middle and early high school.  Are they going into the military, a gap year, the work force or college?  College acceptance rates have gotten astronomically competitive compared to even the 1980's.  Harvard itself, one of the first universities ever in the US, used to accept 16% in the 80's and now accepts just over 3%.  The competition reaches into sports, grades, extra curriculars and even service. Service! The one area that is definitively altruistic at it's core is now a competitive market because it is another thing that "looks good on a resume or transcript".  Anything to help give an edge to those college transcripts and/or to validate worth in a child who is emotionally and mentally out of breath from the hamster wheel of "am I good enough yet?".  

There are more rules and regulations today, but against the usual character of "rules", these new guidelines are to be less restrictive in some areas while getting more restrictive in others.  They can't have a tear in their jeans at the knee, but the person sitting next to them can have an emotional support bearded dragon in class on their shoulder.  

The teachers tell the kids to come to class during finals week (even if they don't have a final) while shaking their heads no because no one actually comes and the teachers don't want to babysit.  

Leadership, dictatorship, coerciveness, manipulation, tearing people down, wars, 24 hour news cycles that focus on shock value over human triumph and rich character, school shootings, less time outside, more time achieving (how much is healthy and to what end?), and the pendulum relentlessly and feverishly swinging from one end to the other on rights, racisms, religions, making the bad good and the next day the good bad until everything rises on pedestals one day and crashes down in cancel culture the next.  Stability is foreign outside the doors of your home (...which is why it is even more imperative to have within it).

This all leaves parents and children in constant confusion and survival mode with high adrenaline (emergency) and cortisol (stress) levels looking for dopamine (happy) and oxytocin (connection) fixes that are all too available as we've already talked about in the first section.

3. LESS TIME

There are 6570 days in 18 years today.  There was 6570 days in 18 years decades and even centuries ago too, but we are actually using less and less of it today in families across the industrialized world.  Hustle culture has robbed us of our family dinners and family connection points as we rush from one event to another.  Technology has robbed us of our inquisitive and deep talk times.  Influencers have robbed parents from so much of their leadership capabilities and, as a culture, so many are letting go and letting culture raise their child.  I have seen girls turning 12 and their parents posting, "You are all grown up now and ready for the world!".  No.  She is not.  Culture is not stable enough to raise a human.  The waves of change are fierce and frequent.  It is like giving your child over to a schizophrenic 5th cousin you do not know and as long as you get a snap shot of her once a day with a partial smile or hear the word "fine" you think you are good to go and made it through another day.  Another checkmark toward that 18 year old drop off point.

(PS- I do not say this sarcastically or with anything against those suffering through schizophrenia.  The nature of this mental illness correlates to the degree of the issue at hand.)

Parents are leaders, architects and builders for and with their children first and always, but the world has told us we have to be a friend first.  It is easier.  It ruffles less feathers.  But, to what outcome? 

A parent who cares deeply for their child, but didn't know how to captain the ship when they needed to and now the ship has run aground and has big damage that will take time and intention from all to mend before it is sail worthy again, if ever?

A child who isn't ready for the world or his/her work and calling in it because they were distracted, weren't lead the way they needed to be, were overwhelmed with expectations, confused by rules and regulations, norms and standards and ran out of time before it was their turn to be real, bona fide citizen of this world? 

No way!  As for me and my house we will lead, as brutally hard and exhausting as it is at times because we anchor in the joy, wins, love, truth, hugs, laughs, growth, and, for us, most of all, Jesus Christ and His teachings.  

This is a hard world and our job as parents, the black and white truth, is to love and lead them to a place that they love and lead themselves so they are equipped for what is to come.  This requires a grounded foundation of worth, esteem and confidence that is built from the inside out.

I don't know about you, but... yes.  After going through this exercise I know parents are stressed, for good reason, and it is, in many ways, harder to parent today than it has been in the past.  

As for what to do about it?  Well, that is what every other article I write, talk I give and book and journal I release is all about along with the work of some beautiful colleagues of mine out there doing this effort daily with you and for you to serve our future generations. 

This is not impossible.  We can raise a stronger generation, but it is, and will be, a challenge.  But... we all we have the potential to overcome for the now and future of our children.

Know them. Love them. Build them.