It’s Tough To Be a Good Parent After the 90’s
Harder with every generation
Let’s start off by saying that parenting, regardless of time period, has always been a tough job. Each generation seems to be maturing and mentalities changing faster. It’s a job in which your objective is to teach, guide, and enable your child to not only survive in the world they’ll be living in but also be a functioning, self-sufficient member of society. It involves imparting wisdom and knowledge you’ve gained yourself growing up and teaching “right” from “wrong”. It is also an acceptance that the world has changed since you were a child and you can’t take the exact same approaches your parents used on you and expect them to always work.
However, the 90’s introduced changes into society that helped increase the level of difficulty in being a parent unlike previous generations. I’ll share what I view are the 2 biggest contributors to this shift as well as the 2 actions I am trying with my own children (ages 7 and 9) to adapt in hopes it can help other parents trying to raise children in today’s society.
The 90’s helped make parenting more difficult
While parenting in each generation got increasingly difficult I believe that the 90’s was a decade in which that difficulty started increasing at a much faster rate. Why am I picking on the 90's? It’s because before the 90’s there were still some “norms” that parents could depend on as they navigate their parenting journey. These norms allowed them to make certain assumptions about their child’s environments and interactions.
Some examples of these norms include:
- Parents were the primary source of information about how to navigate through life
- It was safe to assume that certain things were kid friendly, like cartoons and prime time television shows
- Kids within the same age group generally had a similar level of “innocence” to them
It all started with cartoons
The 90’s introduced 2 significant changes into society that started affecting the norms that parents could rely on. The first change was delivery of more adult oriented content through traditionally kid friendly mediums. It all started with The Simpsons. As noted in “A Brief History of Cartoons for Adults”, The Simpsons introduced the world to cartoons which weren’t exclusively targeted for consumption by children. Its episodes presented jokes and situations that are arguably better consumed by adults rather than kids. Its success enabled the introduction of more cartoons that were more targeted for adult consumption than kids. As the 90’s continued we started having shows like “ Beavis and Butt-head”, “ South Park”, and “The Ren & Stimpy Show” just to name a few. If you have ever seen a few episodes of these cartoons you’ll agree that they aren’t exactly kid friendly.
With the introduction of these type of cartoons no longer can parents safely assume that a cartoon that their child wanted to watch was ok for their viewing. To give a real world example, I remember going to watch the South Park movie with my university buddies and we saw a mom and her young child walk into the same theatre. My buddies and I looked at each other and had the same thought, this mom probably thinks she was bringing her child to watch some kiddie cartoon he wanted to see and didn’t know what South Park was. Needless to say, within a few minutes of the opening scene we saw this same mom and her child walk out of the theatre.
Night time TV standards seemed to be more lax as the decade went on
I remember growing up in the 80’s it seemed like the type of shows being shown during prime time TV were pretty tame by today’s standards. There was a lot of censoring of words, less violence, and shows generally didn’t deal with more mature themes. However, as the 90’s progressed, there was increasingly less censoring and more mature themed shows appearing on prime time TV. I am by no means a prude or overly conservative but now that I am a parent with 2 young boys I find that I need to be more mindful of watching prime time shows that I am interested in live in favour of recording and watching when they are asleep. I even find myself sometimes having to explain questions and answers that appear on Family Feud. One theory behind this shift is the introduction of the content rating system that was introduced in 1996. The content rating system enabled broadcasters to show increasingly less child appropriate content during prime time hours by prefacing them with a rating and viewer discretion advised warning. This had the effect of shifting content filtering responsibilities to parents. Not saying that it isn’t right but it does increase the responsibility of parents to be more aware of the content their children is watching, even during prime time.
The dawn of mainstream Internet
The second big change that happened in the 90’s which contributed to making parenting more difficult is the dawn of mainstream Internet. As the 90’s progressed, the Internet was becoming increasingly accessible and opened up whole new experiences and human interactions. The ease of information access and interactions it enabled has fundamentally changed human society. This is effectively a double edged sword for parents. On one hand our children now have easy access to information which enables them to learn and be exposed to so much more knowledge from around the world. The downside is that this ease of access to information and experiences enables them to be exposed to things that can be harmful to their development and requires increased levels of critical thinking and maturity that they may not be equipped with. Adding to the challenge is that this exposure can happen without any parental knowledge.
How committed parents are to managing and monitoring their kid’s activities on the Internet has a direct impact on what type of content and information to which their child is exposed. Prior to the Internet it was easy for parents to manage the sources of information for their children. With the Internet it becomes much harder because it isn’t always possible to monitor and manage every permutation of how a child can be exposed to information on the Internet. Younger generations have also adapted and leveraging the Internet to establish their own societal norms and lexicons.
Children with parents that are more lax with monitoring and managing their kid’s online activities tend to be exposed to less kid appropriate experiences and knowledge. They then take these experiences and knowledge to school where they can potentially be “cool” and share them with other kids that may not have been exposed to the same experiences and knowledge at home. A parent can now do all they want at home to monitor and manage their children at home but their child could still be exposed to child inappropriate themes and information at school through their friends.
So what is a modern parent to do?
There is no way to go back to the way things used to be for parents and the only viable strategy is to shift from reactive parenting to proactive. It’s a shift from parenting where you set the rules and expect compliance or wait for a life situation to occur in order to protect and teach your child to one where you have to equip them with critical thinking and maturity at a much earlier age. Here are the two primary actions I am doing in order to adopt a proactive approach to parenting with my own children that may be helpful to other parents.
Keeping up with the younger generation
I spend at least 1–2 hrs a week reading up on terms that I hear my kids and younger co-workers talk about as well as what I hear on Top 40 radio stations and the latest entertainment news. Why Top 40 radio and keeping up with entertainment news? It’s because these are good sources for information about pop culture, which has a significant influence on children of all ages as they are less isolated from it these days. You’ll become aware of various names of celebrities and “influencers” that your child may talk about. For example, do you know who Charli D’Amelio is and why she is popular? Do you know what type of game Fortnite is? Did you know BTS is a Korean boy band that has a large passionate fanbase referred to as an army? What about Mr. Beast?
When I come across acronyms, slang, or terminology that I’m unfamiliar with it’s off to Google or Urbandictionary.com to find out more. My aim for keeping up with pop culture is purely driven by my desire to be aware of various influences on my children and what they may be exposed to at school via their classmates. I don’t want to be the parent who took their child to watch the South Park movie without really knowing what South Park was.
The birds and the bees
The other thing I do with my children is spend time with them watching some of the things they are interested in watching as well as watch content that is technically rated for ages older than they currently are. The main motivation is to be there immediately to address and discuss anything that might be less age appropriate for them. To take the time to explain the context or how to process some of the things they are seeing and hearing. I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t be able to keep my children from being exposed to material that is less age appropriate these days and so I decided to mitigate its impact by proactively engaging in discussing and explaining it to my children. I admit it can be a bit awkward and uncomfortable at times but the alternative is to let them figure it out on their own with their friends or the Internet as guides.
It’s not just in your head, things are harder
At the end of the day everyone is trying to figure out how to navigate parenthood during these times when traditional norms are quickly changing or disappearing. It isn’t a stretch to say it’s harder to be a parent than when your own parents were raising you. The changes in society since the 90’s has created challenges previous generations didn’t have to work through when raising children. Modern parents will have to commit to more effort in keeping up to date with the world their children are growing up in and become more proactive in equipping their children with knowledge and mindset to navigate it. It isn’t all in your head, things are harder, but remember you’re not alone.
Originally published at https://realtimerevisions.com.
