Did parenting feel less stressful when your kids were young?

RedRidingHood I am 67 and my friend is . At the time of having my first mobile phone I was 45 and recently widowed. This was 2004 and you didn't have to pay per letter in those days.

I think M0nica hit the nail on the head. Parenting has always come with its stresses - it's just that some of those stresses change from generation to generation. The explosion of social media has brought a whole new range of stresses now though.

I don’t remember being overly stressed at all when mine were small, but I’m sure a large part of that was because I was able to give up work when we started a family in the 70s.

I loved being a mum. At the time we were living on a new housing estate where it was all young married couples starting families, and I soon made friends. I don’t remember any of the women working.

Although we moved on from there I still have very happy memories of those times.

My children were born in the nineties. I was able to stay at home with them while they were small and it was a magical time. I made friends with others who had children. We didn't have much money but I wouldn't have missed that time for the world. Of course there werr some difficult times. As he approached school age, it was obvious that something was not quite right with my oldest and we had to fight tooth and nail to get the correct diagnosis, autism, which wasn't widely known then, and the right schools. I did not allow televisions in bedrooms and we did not have the gadgets that are taken for granted today. My husband's parents lived abroad and sent us a cheque for the whole family for Christmas, 1991 - our oldest child was six months old at the time - and we bought a microwave, which was very expensive at the time. In 2000, we were able to buy a nearly new dishwasher.
Anniebach, l am so sorry to read about your husband.