[thatfrenchguy]

Even for upper middle class parents, "using a screen as a babysitter" just means you're more stressed and have less hands around. My kiddo has not seen a screen at the age of 2, but that's just because he has two parents at home at 5pm everyday.

[pmarreck]

I made the error of wasting my time (ahem... it was fun while it lasted, at least) not having a kid until I turned 49... which meant our parents were too elderly (or dead) to help (my mom had me at 35) in any significant capacity, and the rest of my relatives (as it just so happened) already had plans to move away to FL before he was conceived.

This has resulted in so much stress (especially in the 3's and 4's, because he still doesn't sleep through the night in his own goddamn bed) that I arguably lost a job from it... 50+ year old bodies are simply not well-capable of handling toddlers for the more-than-fulltime-weekly hours that they require

I'm sure there are fringe benefits though but damn

[dempedempe]

I don't think child rearing is supposed to be as difficult as modern society makes it.

As you pointed out, you don't have a lot of help in raising your kid. You're expected to do it mostly with your partner (or god forbid alone).

They've done some studies of hunter gather tribes to determine who handled babies the most. Turns out the kids' actual parents only handled the kids for about half the time (I think even a little less)! The term for it is "alloparenting".

Evolution did not prime us for this level of child care. Good luck to you!

[rationalist]

Even without going that far back, I imagine it was easier when parents kicked the kids out of the house and told them not to come back until dinner time.

[graemep]

> Even without going that far back, I imagine it was easier when parents kicked the kids out of the house and told them not to come back until dinner time.

Did people ever do that with under-twos? Or under-fives?

The big difference in more recent times was community and extended family help, and at least one parent having more time at home.

[eszed]

I'm of an age to have grown up like that, and one of the real drags was having to take my 3-5 year-old sibling along on whatever activity the rest of us were up to. ("But mom, we're building a fort - do I have to?") The other kids with younger siblings did the same. As I recall, at five I wasn't to leave the yard by myself, but as a mixed-age group of ~3-11 year-olds, yeah: we ran around all over the place together. The older kids took on responsibility for the younger ones.

So, yeah, that's eighties suburbia, and my sister wasn't less than two. On the other hand, if there'd been a larger age difference (and, maybe if I'd been a girl? My mum was more progressive about gender roles than most of her contemporaries, but still) I expect she'd have been entrusted to me earlier. Starting at the age of ~4 I'd been left alone with my sister for up to an hour while she napped, with the instruction to run next door to get my mother if she woke up.

By the way, I think all of that was fine.

[graemep]

It was not like that in the London suburb I grew up in in the 80s. I think it was more common in smaller and poorer towns - maybe because people had less space at home. I agree the age gap probably affects it a lot. Keeping an eye on a younger child at home with help near by is very different from going out.

Kids spending a lot of time in front of the TV was already a concern in the 80s so screen time was definitely a problem back then. IIRC the average amount of time children spent watching TV a day was about five hours a day in the UK.

[jdsnape]

I don’t have hard evidence, but when I was a kid I enjoyed the children’s book ‘Five children and it’, written ~1900

The children cart their two year old sibling around with them everywhere (sans parents) and it’s totally unremarkable.

[amanaplanacanal]

Evidently there was quite a bit of handwringing in the 1950s that the "nuclear family" was bad for children and would lead to more divorce, since there were no longer grandparents and aunts and uncles around to help with childrearing.

[pmarreck]

They were not wrong.

I'm EXTREMELY jealous of my partner's older cousins who are now grandparents and specifically stipulate that their kids drop their grandkids off at their house every other weekend (!!!!) so that they can devote it to themselves.

If that's not a good-marriage hack, then I don't know what is! And their parents KNEW it! Because when that's NOT happening, the weekends are almost 100% kid-focused. It is absolutely overwhelming, even with breaks here and there.

[graemep]

Interesting. If so, they were right.

[expedition32]

In a lot of old pictures you can see a "big sister" carrying a toddler around. Older kids helped mom and dad.

Now? Good luck getting a teenager to clean out the dishwasher.

[graemep]

That stage does not last very long and kids require a lot less attention as they get older. if you are still at that stage I imagine its tough, but it will get a lot easier pretty soon and it is definitely worth it.