MODERN MUM WORRIES

Marianne Hill - 14 Mar 15

The other day my children and I were busily drawing at the table and chatting about their day while in the background, providing the soundtrack to our afternoon was a TV music channel.

After some time I tuned out of my boys’ happy chatter and as I looked up I caught a glimpse of the the video that was currently being being played. It featured a minimally dressed, perky young lady gyrating around a not so perky, ageing man dripping in gold jewellery. It was only half past two in the afternoon! Half past two!

I quickly turned it over to something far more suitable for younger eyes. As well as instantly feeling very ancient and rather old fashioned that I was reacting to a music video in such a disapproving way, it did make me think how that kind of thing would never have been on the TV mid-afternoon when I was a kid.

Maybe I’m seeing things through rose tinted, nostalgia infused glasses and I’m probably looking back on those days through the innocent eyes of a child, but try as I might I can’t recall my mum ever having something like that playing on the TV in the background during my childhood years.

But times have changed massively. Modern times have created modern issues for parents today to worry and stress about. I know that some of the things that I worry about as a mum are things that wouldn’t have been an issue at all for my own mum when I was growing up.

My boys are only young, they are 6 and 4, but I am a natural worrier. I worry about everything. If I’m not worrying about something then it worries me. I envy friends who go through their lives relatively stress free. They encourage me not to worry about things that I don’t have any control over, but the mere thought of not having control over things makes me worry even more!

So, in the spirit of sharing, regardless of how deranged a light they could paint me in, here are a few of my ‘modern mum’ worries that I find myself thinking about:

1. YOU TUBE BROWSING
My youngest child is fascinated by You Tube. He spends hours watching short films of adults doing strange things. That sounds bad. It’s really not. Let me explain. There are people out there who upload videos of themselves doing such pointless things as opening Kinder eggs to see which toys are inside. Or, there are people who film themselves playing with children’s toys. Or making Play Doh creations using a variety of Play Doh kits. As strange as I find these, my youngest loves to watch them. He would watch them all day if he could. But You Tube can be a fickle friend. In just one click he has been known to stumble upon inappropriate videos such as ‘The Top 10 Sexiest CGI Characters’ or screenshots of video games in which people give a running commentary while they are playing. These films can occasionally be punctuated with unexpected curse words whenever the game play goes wrong. Sometimes I gaze upon my angelic cherub, thinking how cute he looks as he is absorbed in his own little techno world when I’m roused from my reverie by a ‘son of a b****!’ or a ‘holy s***!’ and I have to hurry over to turn down the volume and change the video back to the PlayDoh lady. I’m quite confident my own mum didn’t have the same worries of me hearing such words when I was being entertained by playing Kerplunk or watching ‘Blue Peter’!

2. APP HAPPY
I’m also pretty sure that my mum didn’t have to worry about me unwittingly spending a fortune on in app purchases when I was playing Manic Miner on our ZX Spectrum. These days you hear stories of children doing just that, running up huge bills for their parents through purchasing such ‘essentials’ as buying extra lives or unlocking new levels and characters. Knowing my kids, one day you could well see me gracing the front page of a national newspaper; my shocked, stunned face framed by some bold headline such as ‘unwitting mum driven to emotional breakdown by extortionate in app purchase bill!’ This is a distinct possibility.

3. FACEBOOK SHAMING
When I was a kid if my mum told me off, wouldn’t let me do something or in some other way managed to upset my fragile, temperamental teenage mind I would more than likely have a stroppy tantrum and flounce off to my room to bemoan my tragic existence. It was all very over-dramatic and typically teenager-like behaviour but it was also private and it was kept to a minimal audience. Nowadays, in these times of public forums such as Facebook, it’s not just being embarrassed by a posted photo or video that I find myself worrying about. There’s the very real possibility that my children, when older, will inform their online friends of my failings as a mother via their Facebook statuses. I’ve seen it before. A daughter of one friend has recently posted ‘my mum is such a b**** she won’t buy me an iPhone!’ and “I HATE my mum, it’s no wonder my dad left her.’ When you take into account that her daughter has around 500 Facebook friends that’s a pretty public humiliation!

So those are a few of my ‘modern mum’ worries. You might think that I’m worrying over nothing, or maybe you worry about the same things as I do when it comes to your own children, you might even have other modern parental worries of your own! Whatever the case and whether you identify with my neurosis or not, there is no doubt that having children, whatever the era, is fraught with worry and stress.

As parents we can only do our best in bringing our children up and in my case, hope that my children turn out to be more balanced and less neurotic than their mother!

Motherhood is different for all of us… if you’d like to share your thoughts, why not join our Network & start posting?

Tweet the author:@marianne4373
Tweet the editor: @Molly_Gunn

Image: Worry neon sign art by Martin Creed (Don’t Worry)

Marianne Hill

Marianne Hill is a primary school teacher who, in those rare, quiet moments when she is not surrounded by children at work or at home, can usually be found either writing articles or blog posts, reading, listening to music or posting on Facebook. Alternatively she could be out running or cycling around the Estepona area of the Costa del Sol of Spain, where she lives with her children Sam, 7 and Henry, 5. Twitter - @marianne4373

View profile for posts, events and more info