Parenting Wars: Boomer Grandparents v Millennial Parents

Welcome to the 100 or so new subscribers and to existing ones, 

It's been a busy June for me speaking on the future of work to HR experts, talking about widows to wealth managers and dissecting Millennial parenting trends to investors. This week I'm off to Berlin to give a speech at a McKinsey gathering of European Tech CEOs helping them understand demographic change and how they can adapt their business accordingly.  

Are you a Millennial parent or a Baby Boomer grandparent? Do you disagree over parenting styles, discipline and priorities? If so, then do read my latest article on the generational gap in parenting and why it is the cause of so many arguments within families...... and why the history of parenting can help you understand the multi-generational workforce.  

If you know of anyone who might be interested in subscribing, they can do so here. Scroll to the bottom to know why we are all influencers, Bitcoin falls and why Love Island feels so outdated. 

Forget the Workplace, Parenting is where the Generation Gap is Most Profound  Each generation thinks it has the monopoly on what good parenting looks like.... 

Admit it, we’ve all done it; made snap judgements of others’ parenting. But it takes a brave soul to vocalise it.

I have been called both a bad mother and a good mother by random members of the public. On one occasion on a hot, packed tube - the day of an England World Cup match no less- I and my then two-year-old son were engaged in quite a rough tussle with a slinky. I was interrupted by a man who informed me that I was overstimulating my child and that it would be best if I left my son alone. My reaction was naturally incandescent rage. The man may have been right but he didn’t know the context: my father had just passed away, it was one week from my wedding and I hadn’t seen my son all day.

On another occasion, I was in a cafe playing ‘guess which hand it’s in’ with the only suitable item in my handbag, a tampon, in order to distract my very hungry daughter while we waited for our order. A lady passed by and informed me how nice it was to see a mother entertaining their child with something other than a screen. Again, she was unaware of the context; my daughter had spent the morning in front of Cocomelon while I worked. It is worth pointing out that in both incidents this feedback on my parenting came from older generations; probably parents, possibly now grandparents.

But far more often, these awkward exchanges are happening within families rather than between strangers. In a recent US poll, 43% of parents said they had conflicted with grandparents over the parenting of their children. And many of these conflicts remain unresolved; with 53% of grandparents refusing to change their approach even after a plea had been made.

In the UK, grandparents save families thousands per year by providing informal childcare and with the rise of multi-generational living and Millennial financial dependency on the Bank of Mum and Dad (a lot of which is spent directly on the grandchildren), the stage is set for an intergenerational collision in parenting priorities and styles. Nowhere is this clash more pronounced than in first/second generation immigrant families where the economic power play may be less, but the expectation of adhering to tradition is more intense. 

So what are the areas of dispute? It depends which generation you speak to. According to one US survey, grandparents bemoaned the lack of parental discipline as well as differing priorities on manners, respect and money. Grandparents overwhelmingly believed that parents gave their children too much power. According to parents though, 40% said that disagreements occurred because grandparents were too lenient on the child. They can’t even agree on what they disagree on. Such tensions are not felt by all families of course, I’m sure there are many who live in a harmonious multi-generational bubble. For many though, this tussle can feel undermining and unresolvable on both sides. And quite often, it is the major source of intergenerational, predominantly female, tension within the family. But why? 

The reason is part personal, part social. Becoming a parent required, for me at least, the forging of a new identity, and given I was well into my thirties when I had my first child, it took me a couple of years to find my confidence and style.  It certainly didn’t happen the moment I got pregnant, or gave birth, probably only when I was faced with a recalcitrant toddler with his own voice and teeth. It is a fact rarely acknowledged, that in this era of multi-faceted and fluid identities, motherhood too requires a transition, possibly constant transition, as your children grow. And because it is so intimately personal but on public display, it comes with an inevitable degree of defensiveness and quite often results in an unspoken yet real divide within the sisterhood. Put bluntly, any criticism or observation, however small, cuts deep. 

And, as much as parenting is about nurturing the next generation, it also naturally prompts a reconciling with one’s own childhood. Every parent seeks to learn from (even if they are doomed to repeat) the mistakes of their parents. And this desire is particularly felt by the Millennial generation, who, for good or ill, have been nurtured in a culture of self-analysis and self-improvement. Yes, it may be optimistic but Millennials feel compelled to break negative intergenerational cycles more than any other generation before them.  

The reason also lies in the new social context in which we are now operating. The 21st century parenting landscape of gender reveal parties, hypno-birthing and ‘sharenting’ on social media is understandably incongruous to older generations. But then today’s parents reflect in disbelief that doctors once were accepting of smoking during pregnancy, parents used to put babies to sleep on their stomachs and were encouraged to train away left-handedness in their children. Is there an area that is more subject to changing advice and evolving trends than parenting? 

Millennial parents are navigating challenges that their Boomer counterparts did not have to contend with; principally 24hr hand-held interconnected tech. It’s a burden they feel keenly. In a poll conducted before the pandemic, two-thirds of US parents said that parenting is harder today than it was twenty years ago, a fact the majority put down to technology. But consider that the next generation of parents may have to deal with something even more challenging; a world lived entirely through an all encompassing virtual headset. The point is there are broader and evolving forces at play; tech, economics, the built environment, working culture, changing gender relations, not to mention global pandemics that are equally as pivotal as the personal in determining the kind of parent you and your peers become.  

So if Millennial parents find themselves preaching on the amount of sugar in Baked Beans to the generation for whom it was a household staple, or on the dangers of micro-plastics to the generation whose toys was laced with lead paint, or calling out racist, body shaming or gendered language to a cohort raised on Benny Hill, then this is in part because parenting is the moment when societal shifts become ingrained in the individual, when one generation finally breaks out to align with the next. Each generation of parents feel compelled, quite rightly, to not only learn from past mistakes but to prepare the child for the world as it is, not as it was. In other words, the generation gap in parenting is not only real; it’s the natural order of things. 

And in a society where families are smaller, women are having babies later and therefore find themselves completely divorced from the world of birthing, breastfeeding, education and being young by the time they have children, it is little wonder that parents have increasingly turned to experts for help. Between 1975-1990s the number of parenting books increased five-fold. For the Millennial generation, it’s now become a maxim that Google has replaced grandma. Each cohort of parents seeks out their gurus to show them another way, helping us figure out our generational parental identity. 

It was in fact the Boomers who, as babies, were the first generation exposed to parenting experts. In 1946, Dr Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care set the scene for a new style of post-war parenting that rejected the previous belief that children should be seen and not heard and instead prioritised the emotional wellbeing of the individualised child. Out went outdated notions that breastfeeding was animalistic, that babies shouldn’t be fed on demand. Trust your instinct, shower them with affection and treat them as an individual was Dr Spock’s advice in a book that leaned heavily on Freudian analysis and would go on to become the third best-selling book of the 20th century only behind Shakespeare and the Bible.  Twenty-six pages of advertising would also accompany Dr Spock’s seminal text proving there’s nothing new in the commercial exploitation of anxious parents.  

When Boomers themselves became parents it precipitated a new wave of advice. Heidi Murkoff kicked off her publishing phenomenon in 1984 with What to expect when you are expecting setting in motion a culture of maternal bodily self-regulation and responsibility; out went smoking and in came listening to Mozart to improve the babies’ brain function. Boomers were encouraged to be more investing and individualistic in their parenting with educational attainment the ultimate aspiration. The 1990s gave birth to the helicopter mum always hovering near, monitoring progress and safety in a structured environment. Running parallel was a new fashion for maternal naturalism pioneered by Dr William Sears with his attachment parenting theory which advocated co-sleeping and breast-feeding into toddlerhood. In all this, were we getting any closer to raising the perfect generation of kids? No, these experts were merely reflecting new needs and anxieties of their chief audience, and a growing one at that: the degree-educated working mother. 

And today, as Millennial parents take the helm, a new consensus and fresh expectations are being forged. Parents who see the current mental health crisis in teens and are committed to building emotional resilience in their toddlers. Parents who themselves bear the scars from the ‘sink or swim’ education system and are instead encouraging creativity, play and an acceptance of failure. Parents who fear the dependency on screens and fixate on forest school as the antidote. Helicopter parenting is out of fashion, only to be replaced with ‘pilot parenting’; the idea that parents share in the experience alongside the child whether it be craft making or watching TV.  Today, working mothers spend just as much time with their kids as stay at home mothers did in the 1970s. This new expectation on 'quality time’ is social tyranny;  costly in terms of time and money, socially exclusionary and increasingly impossible in dual-working households during a cost of living crisis.  

One certainty is that yet another reckoning will come; probably when Generation Alpha enter the workplace and their Gen Z managers are confronted with a workforce they neither understand nor can manage (just as they themselves become parents). And all this points to an overarching truth, if company bosses really want to understand how to manage the generations they would do well to look at the history of parenting for it is in the evolving trends where each generation is forged and the generation gap truly begins. And for those parents and grandparents clashing over parenting styles, I recommend that both seek comfort in the words of Philip Larkin: 

This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats. 

Stuff I've read....

1.  The movement for mandatory paternity leave and corporate support for childcare is gaining momentum as the only effective way to close the gender pay gap. Read here as the brilliant Joeli Brearley of the 'Pregnant then Screwed' campaign is interviewed by the World Economic Forum on possible solutions. 
2. A distinctly millennial phenomena: the rise of unique dog and baby names. Read why we choose names and what's behind the trends.  
3. Yes, we are all working harder, question is why? Sarah O'Connor of the FT investigates in a piece that is yet further evidence of how the conversation about work is changing. 
4. We're all influencers now! How 'influencer creep' infiltrated all professions from carpenters to cleaners, from financial advisors to academics....terrifying but brilliant article.
5. I recommend subscribing to Ed Zitron's Substack, his take on the collapse of crypto and corrosiveness of corporate wellbeing culture are both worth a read. 

Feast for the Senses....

1.READING: The E-Myth Revisited. I'm not usually a business book type but as my business is about to grow in a profound way it forced me to ask some pretty basic questions about what I do and how I do it.  
2. LISTENING:  Reshma Saujani founder of 'Girls Who Code' being interviewed on Diary of a CEO. This clip has rightly gone viral but her work on a Marshall Plan for Mothers in the US is worth hearing about too.  
3. WATCHING: Love Island for research ....obvs. Although with adverts like this in the break, the hit UK show now feels incredibly outdated. 
4. VISITING: The RAC Club in Pall Mall (worth a peek if only for the changing exhibit in the atrium) for a dinner of impressive female CEOs and Rt Hon Theresa May. 
 

And finally, I was honoured to play a small part in the fabulous future leaders project run by Ivy House. Led by industry experts and free for schools and students, The Future Leaders Project is focused on empowering  students to become leaders by connecting schools and the world of work. The Project brings together knowledge and opportunities from some of the most influential young leaders and biggest brands in the world including Deloitte, Google, Netflix, Nike, and Microsoft. Find out more here. 

Thanks for reading, Eliza