When I spotted a Buzzfeed post comparing how extra, creative and fantabulous Millennial parents are when it comes to showing off their child rearing skills compared to our parents, I had to laugh because it is sooooo true.
I have a sister who is in this generation who has had a gender reveal party, an elaborate well-coordinated, themed birthday party for her daughter and does the very creative monthly photo share on social media.
I did none of that stuff with my kid as a GenX parent. It’s not that I am not as creative but I just didn’t have the tools, the other people’s lives to copy off of, nor the resources or platform to pull it all off.
There was no such thing as a Pinterest to curate all these cute ideas when I was first building my family.
There was no social media for our parents to use to show off high fashionable family photos. Our folks would take photos of us using their 35 millimeter camera and sent the film off to the drug store to get developed and we’d see the photos months, sometimes years, later when they finally picked them up from the store.
And even then, photos ended up in a family album, only to be gawked at by actual visitors who came to your home. No Facebook around back then to show off and use as a tool to make friends jealous and envious. If you are a child of the 1970s, your parents might have had a Polaroid camera and so you got to see your pics right away. They still ended up under a coffee table in a photo album full of your baby pics, birthday party photos and other memories.
Ahhh!
The simple pre-boast life. If you wanted to show off the fabulous birthday party you threw for your baby to your friends, you had to invite all of them to come and hope the ones who made it spread the word to those who couldn’t attend. That’s a lot of risk to take spending all that money and time especially if you don’t have that much money or time. Not worth the hassle. ha!
The GenY generation get a lot of heat for a lot of things and they can add, being the “extra” generation when it comes to parenting to that list.
Maybe the folks poking fun at Millennials are just jealous they didn’t have all these beautiful, carefully crafted, planned and orchestrated memories. Maybe. 😉
Here are my fave pics comparing the Millennial Parent to our parents and you can see the rest over at Buzzfeed HERE!
First, how millennial parents prepare their kids lunch compared to our parents; go on vacation compared to our parents; and find out their sex of their baby compared to our folks! LOL!
Next, how Millennial parents document their baby’s first year, take family photos and celebrate birthday parties…compared to their parents! Too funny!
