A Millennial Mom Quizzes Her Mom About Raising Kids In The ‘80s
How did they survive without Google?
One could argue that raising kids today is way harder than in the ‘80s or ‘90s. With social media pumping out every single suggestions for the “right” way to do things to advancements in research on what’s best for kids, there is a lot of pressure on today’s parents compared to parents in previous decades.
One millennial mom quizzed her own mom — who raised her in the ‘80s — on how she did things and why she did certain things. Seems like being a mom back then was way less stressful...and maybe unsafe?
TikTok creator Taylor Wolfe sat down with her mom and filmed herself asking her mom some questions about being a mom in the ‘80s. Her mom’s answers were pretty surprising. She starts off with the biggest question of all: What did you do without Google?
Her mom asks what kind of things she would have had to search for on Google as a parent.
Wolfe’s response: Everything!
“For starters, poop!” Wolfe says before her mom follows up, asking why that would be something to research.
“Cause you have to know if the color is an okay color, if it's healthy,” Wolfe replies.
“I was a nursing mom, so if the poop came out green, it was because I ate broccoli,” her mom responds.
Next up, Wolfe asks what her mom did without a video baby monitor.
“I was the monitor, going in and feeling you,” she replies.
“How did you sleep without a monitor?” Wolfe asks.
“We just slept,” her mom replies.
Wolfe follows up and asks, “How could you monitor the nursery temperature like to make sure it's at 68 to 72?”
“It was whatever the house was. If you were hot, you slept in a diaper. If you were cold, you had a blanket around you,” she replied.
Wolfe then asks her mom if she felt pressure to “only have 18 summers” with her as a kid. Wolfe is referring to a popular TikTok sound where sad music is set to a narration of someone explaining that, as parents, we “only get 18 summers” with our kids which, of course, just adds pressure and stress to parents to make every single summer memorable.
Wolfe’s mom’s answer is hilarious and perfect.
“In summer, I still have you,” she says.
The two then go back and forth about baby led weaning, to which Wolfe’s mom replies, “What are baby led weenies?”
She then admits that all her kid’s first solid foods were McDonald’s french fries. Oh what a time to be a parent!
Wolfe asks her mom about how she dealt with judgement or “trolls” who are on watch for any wrong move she made as a mom. Her mom denies any judgement from anyone, seeming extremely unbothered.
She also admits that she never felt any pressure to “soak in the moments” when kids are young as Wolfe famously quotes, “The years are short, but the days are long.”
“The days were long!” her mom replies.
Though there are obviously pros to being a parent now (better safety regulations and medicinal advancements), it seems that there was something more simple about being a parent a few decades ago.
Social media and the internet in general has made the moms of today anxious and worried and on information overload, feeling an enormous amount of pressure to “do it right.”
I’m going to go off on a limb here and say something that might be a little out of the box. Maybe it’s time to dial it back a bit and take some tips from our own parents because despite the obvious and glaring issues that boomer parents exhibited, there definitely seemed to be a more laid back attitude and instinctual nature to raising kids that millennial parents could benefit from.
However, please still keep going to therapy.
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