I saw a post on Threads today talking about how parents of Gen X kids were toxic because we were sent outside to play until dark and were ‘latchkey kids’. The poster claimed this was ‘toxic parenting’.
While my mum was a stay-at-home mum until I was an adult, my siblings and I were sent outside to play after school, either in the back yard or with the other kids in our street.
I am a parent, my kids are adults… so I can see a lot of this from both sides.
I was one of four kids. Things like emotional regulation wasn’t spoken about, and having active kids, keeping a house, juggling the demands of being a parent is dysregulating. I imagine that so much of sending us outside to play was my mum’s way of getting a bit of quiet so she could do things like cook dinner, as well as get the bickering of kids out of her space for a while.
When it comes to the whole latchkey kids thing, mothers were being encouraged to go back to work, however there weren’t the after-school care options there are now. Even now, there is no after-school care for kids in secondary school.
What are the alternatives here?
Mother’s not going to work? Sometimes it was a financial necessity. I realise what a privileged position my parents were in that mum could stay home. We weren’t rich and I know my parents kept a close eye on their budgets. The flip side was that mum was home after school most days to give us snacks, help with homework, cook dinner, take us to after-school activities. And yes, she did send us outside to play a lot.
When I see posts like the one I mentioned at the top of this post, I wonder if that person was a kid in that time, and if they are a parent themselves. It strikes me that the only way to avoid being seen as a ‘toxic’ parent is to make the world completely revolve around your child (even that has issues), or simply not be a parent at all.
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