Last weekend my youngest daughter was having a playdate with a friend (she’s 7, I also have another daughter aged 12). I was sitting next to the mum on the sofa, drinking tea, while the girls played noisily around us.
This kind of happy chaos is a regular occurrence, and the mum and I talked about the challenges we’d faced back in the newborn days. We’d both struggled, and reflected that we’d needed more support and someone to remind us that we were doing our best. I had my kids in my 40s, with my youngest born when I was 46. This mum had hers in her early 30s.
Listening to her I realised that we shared a lot of common ground, but there were also some key differences. She had more regrets in terms of the things she was missing out on since becoming a parent. She wanted to go out more in the evenings for instance. She also seemed more anxious about whether her daughter was doing well enough at school. She talked a lot about how some parents didn’t seem to be helping their kids with their reading enough. I was empathetic but also felt in that moment that being older had brought some benefits to my approach.
Pregnant Sienna Miller, 44 (she’s already mum to two girls: a teen and a toddler) recently talked about how having a baby later worked for her because she no longer had that urge to go out in the evenings. “It really suits me because I want to be in bed by 9 o’clock. I’m really lucky. I can work intensely and then take some intense time off,” she said.
She added: “I think you’ve gone through a lot of the neurosis that you go through, and after the biological clock of your 30s, which was really loud and really intense for me, I was just kind of like whatever.”
I related to these sentiments A LOT; the idea being that you’ve mellowed a bit when you’re older, that you don’t get FOMO around evening socialising because you’ve got most of that out of your system (I still like the odd night out now and then but it’s not something I feel I’m missing out on if I go to bed early).
Less judgemental
I’ve also noticed that I’m far more laid back than some younger mums. Interestingly I also feel I’m less judgemental. Sienna raised this too in the interview. “I think in whatever form motherhood takes, you know, we just have to stop judging people,” she said. “I’m doing it my way and I’m loving it.”
© Getty Images for BFCThis idea of doing it ‘your way’ is one I really relate to as an older mother. I don’t believe that there is ONE WAY of being a great mum, and that we all have to aspire to being perfect. However when I talk to younger mothers, I’m struck by how hard they are on themselves, how they strongly believe there is an ‘ideal’ way to parent, how they’re reading lots of books and watching social media content to try and get the right formula.
They are also more critical and judgemental of parents that are ‘getting it wrong’. Because I’ve been around the block a few times (I’m 52) I’ve learnt that there is no such thing as an ideal parent, that you just have to do what works for you, and that you will have days when you feel like you’re nailing it, and days when you’re barely hanging on. I don’t judge a mum who loses her temper with her kid because I know that we all do it, and as long as we apologise afterwards, it’s OK.
I grew up in a time (the 80s) when parenting was not as angst ridden as it is today. It was very hands off, and you were basically left to your own devices a lot of the time. In primary, I was walking to and from school on my own which is obviously unthinkable now!
Hands-off parenting
The fact that my parents were relatively hands-off means my benchmark of what constitutes a great parent is different. It’s made me more of a ‘good enough’ parent, someone who acknowledges that I’m not perfect. If someone comes home and needs to do some work then of course their kid might need some screen time. If your child wants to read ‘Dog Man’ (a comic-style book which my youngest is crazy about), don’t worry that it might mean she’ll never read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ when she gets older. It’s not a race. Kids do things at different times. Things change and evolve (just like other life circumstances).
When I talk to younger mums I want to remind them that no one is perfect, that what works for one, might not work for another (I never bothered with baby-led weaning as I just didn’t have the bandwidth when I was working and juggling another kid). Like Sienna I’m far more diplomatic now, and don’t want to lecture people.
I wasn’t like this in the beginning, I was a nervous wreck when I brought my first child home. But now that they’re older and I’m older too…well I want them to fit into my life (I was made redundant two years ago and have been fully freelance since — this means my weeks are always different and I’m often either super busy or like tumbleweed).
I don’t sweat the small stuff — or I try not to, my tween is testing me a bit — and I can see the benefits of being older. Like Sienna I feel more chilled. I might actually be enjoying it (I’m scared to say this as usually this invites some kind of drama into my life…so I’ll whisper it instead).
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