Motherhood is harder these days and it was harder back then, too

By Julie Moos

New survey results released yesterday by the Pew Center confirm what most parents know: We think we have it harder than our parents did. The survey of about 2,000 Americans (conducted from mid-February to mid-March) also found that we think we're doing a worse job than they did.

A little more than half of Americans surveyed (56 percent) say "mothers are doing a worse job today than mothers did 20 or 30 years ago."

Here's where it gets interesting.

"Women's views about how well mothers are doing their job have changed little over the past 10 years. In a 1997 Pew Research Center survey of women, a majority (56 percent) said that mothers of children under age 18 were doing a worse job as parents than mothers did 20 or 30 years ago; in the current survey, 54 percent of women express this view."

And when you 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)."

So, nearly three-quarters of women say it's more difficult to be a mother today than it was in the '70s or '80s. But 10 years ago, a greater percentage of women said it was more difficult to be a mother in 1997 than in the '60s and '70s.

So, who wins this bitterness battle? Not our families, I'm guessing.

Julie lives in Safety Harbor, Fla., with her husband and her 11-year-old son.

Comments

[Elizabeth]

First, I love your title. I believe that the role of mother is tough regardless of generation. But I also feel that as a member of this generation of moms, I often miss my cues more frequently than my own mother, and I forget my lines, merely because there seems to be so much at stake. When I was a teenager, my mother's biggest fear was I would get pregnant or smoke pot. And now... let's just say the list of worries grew tremendously since the 60's and 70's.

Thanks, Julie, for your piece and your point is well-taken.