1950s: Adult-centric family structure, where children were part of the family, but not the focus of the family. Adults and children lived parallel lives, with parents interacting with children for discipline and life lessons. Children were sent off to play on their own. 1960s: A continuation of the 1950s, with a move towards more permissiveness and creativity. As the world began to grow more open-minded, so did parents. 1970s-1980s: As divorce became more common and women entered the workforce, children began to take on more responsibility for their well-being and day-to-day needs. Latchkey kids became more commonplace, and the traditional family structure, with mom waiting with milk and cookies after school, became less typical. 1990s- 2000s: With helicoptering, over-scheduling, and fears about safety, parents became more and more involved in their children’s lives, from morning until bedtime, than ever before.
Millennial parents are responding to their own upbringing with new attitudes and lifestyles. That has meant the emergence of several trends unfamiliar to older parents.
Waiting Longer to Start Families
For many reasons, including financial constraints, career decisions, wanderlust and more, young adults are waiting longer to have children than any generation before them. Access to more reliable birth control, along with conscious choices of when to start a family, have helped to raise the age of first pregnancies and births. In 2017, the average age a woman had her first baby was 26.8, according to the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green University. Compare that to 1970, when the average age of a first-time mother was 21.4 years, and it’s clear that the age when parenting begins is climbing up.
Sharing on Social Media
Social media is part of everyone’s lives, but perhaps none so much as parents of young children. From the first sonogram to high school graduation, most parents in the 2010s and 2020s are not shy—or conflicted—about sharing their children’s lives online. Parenting blogs, which started in the early 2000s, are now everywhere, covering topics ranging from co-sleeping to family travel. Parents use social media as a way of communicating with family members, whereas earlier generations of parents would make phone calls and mail photos to far-away relatives.
Creating New Family Structures
Single parents and LGBTQ parents are changing the notion of what a traditional family looks like in the new millennium. Married couples comprise 68% of parents in the 21st century, compared to 93% in the 1950s. Additionally, as of 2017, between 2 million and 3.7 million children under age 18 had an LGBTQ parent, and approximately 200,000 of them were being raised by a same-sex couple. Many of these children were being raised by a single LGBTQ parent or by a different-sex couple where one parent was bisexual.
Choosing Unique Names
Baby boomers tended to name their children so they would fit in with other kids, resulting in classrooms filled with Karens, Lisas, Michaels, and Stevens. Unique names were not typical until more recently. Millennials, who as a rule like to do things their own way, are finding unusual, special and varied names for their babies, leading to grandparents who have learned to keep their opinions to themselves and classroom teachers who may have to guess at pronunciation before the first day of class.
Accessing an Abundance of Parenting Advice
Millennials have an enormous amount of resources to draw on for parenting tips, thanks to the internet, social media and the instant contact of texting. Unlike their parents, who relied on experts like Dr. Spock and T. Berry Brazelton for advice beyond their own moms and dads, millennials can—and do—seek out experts in every field of parenting, gathering information from both virtual and real contacts. There is no end to the amount of advice available, but savvy millennials are able to weed out what works for their children and what doesn’t, and in turn can offer advice to new parents when the time comes. With extensive communities including Facebook groups, Instagram hashtags and more, millennials have many ways to learn about caring for children.
Prioritizing Family Time
It may not make sense, given that 46% of parents today are both in the workforce, vs. 31% in 1970, but those parents spend more time than any previous generation with their children. Fathers, in particular, are spending a lot more time—59 minutes a day—with their children than in the 1960s, when dads spent an average of only 16 minutes a day on parenting. The commitment to a structured schedule that many millennials have for their children’s activities means that parents are often with their kids, from Mommy and Me classes for toddlers to after-school sports team practices where parents volunteer as coaches. Many activities become not just about the children but about the parents, as well. There is homework to be managed, carpools to drive, and many other ways parents sneak in time together with their families. With more people working from home, parents are much more readily available for last minute chores, commitments, and school activities. Millennial parents are far more child-focused than parents in past decades, and that’s how they like it.
