And the Survey Says (by Elizabeth)
Julie Moos wrote an interesting piece on Dot Moms today, reflecting on a new survey by the Pew Research Center. This was a national survey conducted Feb.16-March 14 among 2,020 Americans.
Julie's title, "Motherhood is harder these days and it was harder back then, too," sums up the findings nicely. According to the survey, "today's parents are not measuring up to the standard that parents set a generation ago. Mothers are seen as having the more difficult job, but they are also judged more harshly than are fathers."
However, as Julie points out, when we "dig even deeper, it turns out we don't feel quite as badly as the mothers before us. While "most women (71 percent) say it is more difficult to be a mother today than it was 20 or 30 years ago ... in 1997, an even greater percentage of women expressed this view (81 percent)." Thus her personal finding that motherhood was hard then and it's hard now.
But the survey itself also says: "older women are more likely to say today's mothers are doing a worse job, they are also more likely to believe the job has become more difficult. Roughly eight-in-ten women ages 50-64 (81%) say it is harder to be a mother today."
Darn right it's harder to be a mother today if you are between the ages of 50-64! Could it be that at least a certain number of the respondents are actually mothers in their 50's who are still in the thick of parenting younger children (below the age of 18)? And if that's the case, I believe that we believe we don't know what the heck we are doing!!! Hence, we have it harder, and no, we're not doing a very good job.
Throw in our potential problems with parenting challenging children, and of course the previous generation did a better job. If fact, doesn't your mother, or mother-in-law, or older lady next door, tell you that she would do a better job discipling that out-of-control child of yours?
Regardless of age, I believe that mothers today deal with diffiuclt issues. Whether we have it better or worse than a generation or two ago is irrelevant. Motherhood is what it is and I believe we all deserve a pat on the back for putting one foot in front of the other in order to make it through the day.
