In thinking many modern parents take the easy way out

well I'm on the side of the young mums here ,,I couldn't sew to save myself so buying a costume would have been a life saver for me ,why shouldn't they spend a tenner if it saves them time and stress? Maybe they spend loads of time doing other things with their wee ones? You dont know the circumstances so you shouldn't judge.My lovely daughter has multiple health issues ,she'd love to be able to make costumes for her kids the way she did before she became ill ...sadly she can hardly lift her head off the pillow most days.I hope no ones judging her for her bought costumes .There are far more important things to worry about

Times change and their 'simple things' are just not those you remember. Having said that yours will not be exactly the same as all the other mother's at the time you refer to. All life experience is different - which is great.

A friend told me this afternoon that her GGS , a few weeks old is fed by bottle by a machine, which ,when a button is pressed produces a bottle of formula, ready mixed and after feeding the bottle is disposable. I think the mother or whoever does actually have to hold the baby and physically feed it.
She said it costs in 3 figures. The baby will take the feed cold!!!

Most mums do not sew, do not own a sewing machine or even a sewing box. Households with dishwashers do not have many dish cloths.

Having worked full time myself while trying to make daughter's dance costumes, plus sourcing props for her song and dance act. It is all very time consuming compared with sitting together knitting dolls clothes, or reading with them or just sitting talking with them.

DGD has had the most beautiful costumes made for her, not by her mother but by her aunt, single and childless (by choice) whose hobby is needlecrafts of all kinds. She has absolutely loved rootling through charity shops for suitable clothes, curtains and fabrics, then designing and making the dresses - but she has the time to do so, no childcare, no transporting children to dancing, drama, music lessons, checking school bags for letters, sorting school clothes etc etc, while holding a demanding professional job.

If you read the last sentence of my posting paddyann you would have realised my question was ... is it the money-rich, time -poor or the CBA?. Your daughter has health issues... I'm not talking about her....... I'm quite sure she would be delighted to be able to do everything, twice over. There is a certain level of society ( which you would probably say inhabits the 'soft southern ' end of the country) who are so pre-occupied with work that the solution is to throw money at the problem.
I sincerely apologise for being someone whose family has always been in rude health, but I have known what its like to be on my uppers with a young family, and although I don't know one end of a sewing machine from another I always managed to cobble something together for a nativity or a fancy dress competition..... I had to....couldn't afford to hire anything even if it was available.So please don't preach to me.

I am always wary of blanket criticism of "modern parents" because many moons ago I was a modern parent (as most people on here were) and would have been heartily pissed off if I thought I had been in the frame for this.

It is a different world for Mums and Dads now - some of those differences seem good to me, and some less so - but it is their time and their generation. On the whole the young parents that I meet (and my own DDs) impress me in so many ways with their parenting - some of it is not what I would have done, but so what say I!

Cutting down a dressing gown? Absolutely not - pass it on to a friend or give to charity shop.

I must admit as a not-so-modern parent my heart used to sink when the DC came home saying that they needed to go in fancy dress/a nativity outfit/ can you make 12 outfits for the dance show (not all for mine but we were all allocated a certain item to mass-produce).

It must be so much easier nowadays and perhaps these shop-bought outfits can be passed on, swapped around in future years.

It used to be part of the 'fun' of being a parent, I always thought. Well, not when I was informed 5 minutes before bedtime that somebody had to be a Roman soldier the next day.

Yes, often it was last minute - 'oh, by the way Mum.....'

No school diary texts in those days, just notes that got lost at the bottom of a school bag or used as a paper dart

Willmadnan you're judging whatever way you look at it,my daughter is ill ...many people wont know that so they might say she's a cba...parent.You know what they say about walking a mile in someone else's shoes ?

Oh MissAdventure I remember those days so well. Notes that got left at school, thrown in the bin or scrumpled at the bottom of school bags only to emerge at the breakfast table.
My most horrendous was the recipe for Cookery Class produced at 8.15 which demanded an egg and we’d just used the last one for breakfast. DD was sent down to the chicken shed and literally snatched one up from underneath the hen as it was laid.

Friday

There are many things that I wish I could have had to give me more time, or an easier life. I like the sound of the bottle preparer/disposal. I remember that the first job every morning, while baby cried (first one was a crier) was to fill Milton steriliser and hold bottles under cold solution, then deal with the nappy bucket and rinse Napisan out by hand. Not to mention drying them. Yes many things are easier for each generation, and I don't begrudge them.

annsixty these bottle prep machines have been around for a little while now and I guess if you're not breastfeeding then they're an easy way to make up a feed.

I think I must fall into the CBA category. I was in a supermarket yesterday which had inexpensive nativity-themed dresssing up outfits for little ones. I said to my Dh 'I wish they'd been available when our children were small!'

I am reasonably handy with a sewing machine and a needle but it was never a pleasure trying to cobble together something that would be acceptable to both school and child. Invariably, I wouldn't have some item or other and would have to track down an alternative without spending a fortune.

Buying off the peg would have been brilliant!

I think anything which makes life easier is a good thing. Its too short to worry about how to make 2 net curtains and a coat hanger into 'A Super Hero' costume.

DGD once won a prize at a Halloween party for a witch's outfit improvised entirely from black bin bags!

I have managed to get quite good results with kids fancy dress competions over the years.
Most such competions are set up to get people to see what they can create without spending lots of money.

DD is now doing this for her little boys . An imagination is needed. You can do a lot with just crepe paper and a few other things that come to hand.

I always enjoyed sewing and did like to be a bit creative with fancy dress for my lot. But there are so many lovely costumes available now for less than the cost of making them, it makes sense to take advantage of this and just be thankful for the time saved. Fruit gum crowns were pretty effective though!

This was my DDs idea. Some black tights stuffed and tied to make a spider with legs.
She is clearly a chip off my old block as far as this goes.

Personally, I love the homemade ones.

paddyann "You dont know the circumstances so you shouldn't judge."

It wasn't a judgement - was more of a question.

Oh, and we all judge, all the time. Every single one of us so no need to take the moral high ground. It's how we form opinions. I pick things up in the shop and judge whether it's nice or tacky, or a rip off. I judge the woman who swears at her kids, I judge the litter-dropper. It might be a silent judgement but we do it. Just as we find something sweet - like a young man showing good manners, for example. Don't they say at interview etc, or on first meeting, that first impressions count for a lot? We all judge, all of the time.

It seems to be the way of the world that badly made costumes for every occasion are available for parents to buy now. I am in the 'tea-towel on head plus old stripey shirt tied with dressing gown cord' shepherd costume camp. I have noticed lots of children being kept quiet in supermarket trolleys with screens - hand held devices. And parents seem to pay for party venues instead of providing sandwiches, jelly and ice cream at home. I know I had to budget quite carefully when mine were small but many parents today must be better off than I was.

Woman were often ‘housewives’ in our day ...you try making fancy dress at the eleventh hour when you are working one or two jobs, travelling distances to and from work, looking after the house/children, and not living anywhere near any relatives to borrow grandmas headscarves
It’s a very different life now and I don’t blame mums from buying something quickly, the days for sitting around the family fire whilst sewing up tea towels is gone and I think it’s unfair to call Mums ‘ can’t be arsed’ when many of them are really rushed off their feet