In thinking many modern parents take the easy way out

must be how you read it"overthehills* just saying what I thought.I have heard someone say a young woman I know was a lazy cow...because she had help in the house ...they didn't know she had serious debillitating illness.Really ,what other families do is none of your or my business....unless you are paying all their bills ..then you MIGHT be able to complain about a tenner for a costume .Some "older" folk are every quick to judge...living in the past when they need to move with the times ,calling people CBA parents is neither necessary or helpful

All these differing opinions!!! I was born 1950..supposedly mother’s sitting there sewing , knitting, crafting !! ( what the hell is that anyway) ?? My mum had 3 jobs ...count them ..3 jobs and 6 kids in 15 years.She had to sit and sew ( hated it) she had to sit and knit( hated it)...she wouldn’t understand ‘crafting’ at all! The only time my mum sat down was when she was doing these hated ‘jobs’ Don’t try telling her they were a joy! Her day started at 5 am and finished around midnight. She was a lovely mum, but how we wished she could’ve stopped what she was doing and play a game with us. She never played with us... we fell back on each other. Her life was hard... stressful ( in the true sense) and mundane. I didn’t even know she had a brain inside her head until I was a young woman.!! When I saw the first batch of tinned food in our house I thought the end of the world had come, it hadnt , it just meant my mum could take a little , very little time to herself. Not much to asked you’d say!? Viva convenience foods , viva anything that allows women ( and lets face it it’s usually women) crawl back out of the kitchen . Anyone who idealises motherhood has too much time and energy on their hands. Keep buying the outfits on line....Amazon forever!!

By the way....all us kids and NO washing machine or fridge...how did she manage to get us all through childhood. Women now fall apart if the’ leccy ‘goes of for ten minutes.

The school I worked in had a prop basket full of dressing gowns/robes (of various sizes), tea towels, Alice bands (to keep the tea towels in place), kings and pages outfits. In fact every costume you could need for Christmas and Easter (Catholic school so we crucified Jesus in our Good Friday assembly....really.....well not with the nails but little ones cried). Sometimes parents would make costumes and donate them after their child had used them so we were able to get rid of the old and use the newer but we never asked them to. We rarely asked for anything more than a plain (cheap) teeshirt and/or pair of tights. Halos, crowns, gifts etc. were made small group time with a TA. Our Nativity and Easter events may not have been posh but it didn't matter. The children loved performing and the parents loved watching.

Certain items were kept separate in order to protect them from being used willy-nilly. Unfortunately the 'safe place' wasn't as safe as the TA in charge thought. I'd needed some lacy fabric and to my joy found a wonderful piece in the art cupboard. I promptly chopped it up and used it in class only to be shouted at later by the TA as I'd chopped up Veronica's veil (Stations of the Cross). She never really forgave me for that

Day6 I agree with everything you have said. As an outsider looking in, I got the point of what willsmadnan was saying. Shoudn't it be about using the imagination? rather than spending money that you do not have just to keep up with the Jones?? My DS doesn't earn a great deal but DIL spends like there is no tomorrow on all sorts of rubbish. They live in a new apartment which is about six years old and they have had four new ovens and a new kitchen in that time. Judging I guess I am.

It’s not what you say Paddyann, it’s how you say it.

Finding time with kind of work ethic employers expect these days is a pressure on parents.

When my youngest was growing up, businesess were changing and expecting far more from us, for far less then them.

We often found the requests for school costumes quite difficult as they would always be late requests. I'm lucky in that I can sew and find something. One year, a request was made for a Christmas jumper (the day before the event), so I sewed a cheap santa hat on to the front of an existing jumper.

I can sew, paint, make jewellery and create crafty things so I'm lucky that I have a stash of stuff to fall back on and have some imagination I suppose.

Without getting political, I don't envy young parents these days. Each generation has had different pressures to cope with, but little is done to help families in terms of time off and understanding from the government and employers.

And the main thing we didn't have to struggle against was the internet and all that goes with it. I don't know how we would have coped with that. Though we did limit TV to 2 hours a day for a few years.

My three year old doesn't Caren wether I spend time making his costume or get it off Amazon prime.
He just cares that he is an awesome sheep and the best sheep that's ever been!

I'm not going to waste time doing something I don't enjoy just to say I did it.
Just like birthday cakes. People always ask if I'm making one. No I'm going to buy one and eat it.

I don't care if it's 'lazy' I'd rather spend the time with my children doing something fun that we all enjoy.

We are all different, we all made mistakes as parents and we don’t all like the same things. I personally loved being a stay at home Mum, I loved sewing and baking and wouldn’t have missed a minute of my kids lives. That would have been others idea of hell, each to their own. This generation have many things easier than we did, but also many things have had to be sacrificed. I have seen the most disgusting signs of parental neglect etc No one can generalise, life is a total mix of the good, the bad and the down right ugly.

My great grandson won his school fancy dress day with his James and the Giant peach costume, he had forgotten to tell his Mum that it was dressing up day until that very morning, so, she grabbed some cardboard and string, made him a sign to hang round his neck, which read 'MISSING - One Giant Peach! If found please call......'
He won first prize and there were some blooming expensive costumes around then apparently.
I think these days, without wanting to spoil your child, you do have to think about them being bullied. If you send your Wise Man to the Christmas Nativity with a Great Yarmouth Tea-towel, well, back in the 80's that was fine, but these days, you will have kids looking down on them, and yes, you shouldn't do things to 'please' others, but you still have to pick your battles as it were.
My daughter works, has four children, and believe me, does a heck of a lot more things with her children than I did.

I'm not sure it IS that different for parents today. I had two children and worked full time at a youth &community centre when they were small. The eldest went to a nursery across the road and the baby was in a pram in the office with me. I made all their clothes, and mine, including coats, (self taught using an Essex miniature sewing machine before I was able to buy a proper one) and did not have a washing machine. My friends were in similar situations, one worked on a market stall (she took the baby) and one cleaned a suite of offices (she took her baby too). Do today's parents REALLY have it so bad?

It’s a very different life now

Many of our generation worked full time as well as raising children. I was one of them. We also needed two incomes in order to get by. I didn't have the luxury of choice unfortunately. I became a single parent when my marriage ended so I suspect many, many of us know how exhausting working, childcare and being a single parent can be. I sympathise with those struggling today but lots of us can say 'been there, done that, got the T shirt' can't we?

In fairness, we didn't have supermarkets full of ready made costumes, nor did we have computers or ipads for our children to use. We are all products of the times in which we live. I had to make all the costumes for mine when they were in school plays and you somehow find the time and energy to do it, when you have no choice.

Choice is a good thing - if you have the finances to access them. I didn't have much disposable income either as my children grew up, so I daresay today I'd still be making costumes. I know my children are able to buy costumes for their little ones for school plays but I am very tempted to say "Let's improvise!"

Thrift and wanting value for money is a hard habit to throw off.

Well said Hollycat. I agree.

Many of us had it very hard when we were bringing up our children. Life was very tough.

Busy working parents need all the help they can get. Ready made costumes, automatic washing machines, frozen pastry, you name it. If they can afford the easier option who can blame them, and if it leaves a bit more time for cuddles and play it’s win win.

" If they can afford the easier option who can blame them, and if it leaves a bit more time for cuddles and play it’s win win."

Hmmm.
I am thinking out loud really but frozen pastry does not equate to more time for cuddles and play - does it?

I think some of us are going down the ad man's 'happy family, mum dad, two kids, (one of each, natch) holding hands and grinning like idiots as they visit B&Q' road. Sick bucket please.

Spare minutes aren't for getting out the tin foil and sticky back plastic and become engrossed in our children, in reality - they are for cleaning windows, grabbing a cup of coffee and for flicking through a mag.

Let's not paint any parents as paragons of virtue just because they have a ready made costume to hand. They aren't necessarily better, more involved mothers. It's the equivalent of using the ghastly "yummy mummy" phrase.

It's nice to have time saving measures to hand, always, but they do not necessarily mean child care improves or becomes top quality. Realism rules.

I remember standing at the school gate with the other mums waiting to hear what role our children had been allocated in the nativity. Mary, Joseph, Angel, shepherd or king- easy, but the dread of having to make a costume for a sheep, donkey or camel was met by all mums with a heavy heart. Oh to have been able to pop to the supermarket for a ready made outfit, lucky mums today.

Pleased to say DGC's school keep all the Nativity clothes in store from year to year, saves parents a lot of hassle. Of course not everybody made the costumes but in the past there did seem to be more people able to do it. Having said that DD's seem to be quite inventive on occasion.

My daughter is a f/t teacher with a 6 year old and one at 16 months. My SiL works from 5 30am to 4.30pm. When the kids are fed, bathed and in bed she starts marking/prep. She would love to be able to stay at home and be an old fashioned mum but doesn't have a choice! I find this post thoughtless and blinkered

I don't know how parents of young children cope these days. Often both working they have to fit in dropping kids off at school breakfast clubs, do a days work, pick them up again, feed them and take them to various after school activities let alone coping with illnesses, very young babies and heaven knows what else! If supermarket costumes are available for a few pounds that's surely a good thing. I don't actually remember ever making a costume for either of my sons - both were shepherds at infant school and the youngest was a chimney sweep when he was about 11 but the school must have supplied the costumes. Neither went to after school activities - they came home and played with their toys or when they got older with (a very early) computer or in the case of the youngest sitting in the garage bashing away on a £10 drum kit (stood him in good stead as he's made a career of that) I do remember him frequently informing me on cookery morning that he needed ingredients for some such dish - one particular day we both stood in the pantry looking at the sparse array of tins having hysterics over nothing at all - pure hysteria lol.

I wonder though why the schools wouldn't ask the parents to recycle and donate the costumes so that the children could use them again the following year. This would save the others mothers a lot of time and money, shopping or making more outfits year in and year out. I am sure they would appreciate having the costumes provided very much.

I was on the receiving end of a Mum who 'made everything' for school plays and I have never forgotten coming home and telling her I was to be Mary's Little Lamb in the school Christmas play. There I was, dreaming of wearing a pair of new white tights, black shoes, white shorts and a long sleeved white t-shirt with a very cute and cuddly little lamb face mask. No - Mum set to work with a white hearth rug she cadged from someone, a couple of metal coathangers and two large plastic dolls eyes left over from a long gone dolly. She did produce a very realistic lamb head, it weighed a ton and I am sure gave some of the smaller children who watched the play nightmares. It was a pig of a thing to wear as well, made me so hot! After that I was only ever given parts in the choir - I think even the teachers were taken aback at my Lamb head! I did make costumes for my two children, we did skeletons for Halloween one year and they both wore black leotards and tights with white paper bones tack stitched on to them. Never attempted anything in the realms of Mum's handiwork though! My daughter mixes and matches - she buys some bits and we make other bits of costume ourselves -but I usually do any sewing needed

willsmadnan

I agree with you that the current situation is sad and that too often, money becomes the only expedient solution.

The real reason is that we live in a time where it's no longer safe for children to play independently, the way we did once upon a time.

It's also true that this is a First World problem. In today's highly competitive environments, education, high marks and well rounded skills and talent, are being given more attention than ever before. Today's parenting requires an inordinate amount of ferrying to numerous activities, a lot of parental intervention and plenty of adult supervision. Almost every waking hour in the life of a child has to be watched and monitored, whether it be a parent, teacher, coach, instructor or somebody else's parent.

Many children today are also being raised by a single parent. When a mother has to work outside the home, the logistics become more demanding still. Indeed, it was lovely when mothers had time to sew, read or bake cookies, while the children played outside (for hours), but alas, those were much simpler times and sadly, they are gone now.

There have always been in variety of lifestyles. Isn't it a little arrogant to think people should still live the way one poster in particular did things decades ago. I imagine that around any one person, whether it be way back when or now parents will be parenting in different ways.

The odd one would have had a nanny - who I imagine did the potty training - now we have more parents who can make use of shared nannies, child care, and even one offs like potty training, etc. Some will have leant over the fence and gossiped about how everyone around them behaved - others probably didn't notice or were not so judgemental.

I expect there are still some who gossip and some who don't. But that is all this is. A 'Psst, have you seen what she does' comment. Except the OP is happy to be able to enjoy the changes in society which allow her to enjoy that gossip on a large forum instead of over a fence or over a cup of tea so obviously progress is something to enjoy when it suits you.

It's interesting that no one here, that I can see, has mentioned anything about dads running up a quick outfit for the Nativity play. It all falls on mums, it seems. Food for thought.