Parenting as an Elder Millennial
I did not know when I decided to become a parent at age 30 following a lifetime of saying I never want kids, that this would be one of the hardest decades of my life. This wasn’t meant to be this hard, was it? I am not even talking about the actual parenting part per say, but more becoming a parent at the start of a pandemic and then losing my job right after becoming a parent to kid number 2 and finally being a parent during the fall of America.
If you are a Millennial Parent especially us elder millennials born in the late 80s, this feels like too much. I want the parenthood my parents had without the stress of technology consuming my children whole. I want my kids to play outside until the street lights come on and not have to stress about what might happen to them. I want my kids to be able to read whatever book they want, because they haven’t been banned by crazy MAGA/MAHA moms from all the schools and libraries. I want a society that feels like it is getting more progressive, not turning the clock back to the 1940s.
I want a mortgage that I can pay off before I retire. I want childcare to not cost more than my mortgage payment. I want a government that isn’t bat shit crazy. I mean we did live through the Bush era, but somehow that feels like 10x less horrible than now. I want to fly with my kids in pre-911 airports/airplanes, where we keep our shoes on, liquids are okay, and we are served meals on flights over 2 hours.
Our parents had it easy and yet somehow we are all still damaged by their parenting styles and have to overcome our generational traumas that they stuffed down and ignored. We are expected to calm parent through the storm without an umbrella. We are meant to raise the next generation of kindhearted men and fierce women, while our President is a pedophile who is heartless. We are Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill and that boulder keeps rolling over us and we have to still get back up and keep pushing.
The amount of times I have hid in my bathroom from my kids so I could cry at the state of the world is absurd. I am at my whits end! The difference though, is I am in therapy. I am actively working on my traumas, which are my mom’s traumas as well and trying to better my mental health so I don’t damage my sons’ mental health. It is exhausting work. I was exciting to raise kids in the DEI woke world we were creating for the next generation and then Trump bulldozed that. Will we ever get back there? I will continue to read my kids books about anti-racism, intersectional feminism, and LGBTQIA rights. I pray that they won’t even remember these years outside of the little world I have created for them in our home and at school and will go on to be outstanding men who are full of empathy. I am glad they are young and unaware of the reality on our tv screens and out in the world, because it gives me a fighting change to create a better reality for them.
I did tell my son that a greedy bad man is running this country and I hope that we can defeat him. I really hope I don’t have to pack up my kids and leave the country. I am aware of our white privilege and for this reason I am staying until the bitter end to fight for a better future for all the kids. The black, brown, indigenous, immigrant, and trans kids deserve to feel safe in this country just as much as my boys do. I will fight for them!
I can’t say we as a generation have had the hardest time as parents, but it sure feels like an uphill battle since COVID. I hope somehow our children emerge from this more empathetic, more sensitive to the realities of the world, and kind. That is all I hope for my sons. Success and money are nothing if they aren’t kind, caring, and empathetic human beings. I will feel like I failed otherwise.
