If there’s one thing you learn from raising multiple children to adulthood, it’s that parenthood is humbling. And it can be many other things – wonderful, joyful, delightful, frustrating, confusing, and exhausting – but humility is probably at the top of the list.
In the early years of parenthood, humility is not always present, which is why a debate among mothers on social media erupted about whether parenting is hard or not.
It started when a mother of four children under the age of seven wrote on X: “So many parenting guides say how incredibly difficult it is to be a parent. But I have not experienced that at all. My children are 1.5 to 7 years old, I have four myself, and there are certainly difficult moments, but I would not describe parenting itself as difficult. Am I the only one who feels this way?”
Is being a parent really as hard as people say?
People started sharing their experiences, explaining that they too thought parenting was easy until they had a more difficult child. Some parents said that if mothers think parenting is easy, it just means they have easy children or a lot of help. Others said that if parenting is difficult for you, it’s a question of skills or attitude, which sparked a heated debate about how much of your parenting experience is in your hands.
Many of the people who claimed parenting was easier than expected only have young children. That explains some of their mindset, especially if they have relatively easy-going young children. But it’s also a reflection of how the discourse around parenting has shifted in recent years, becoming more blunt and unfiltered, thanks in large part to the era of the mommy blogging scene. Two decades ago, when I was raising my own young children, blunt honesty about the challenges of parenting was a breath of fresh air for those of us who’d only ever heard how wonderful motherhood was. Now, “real talk” is the norm for an entire generation, likely swinging the pendulum the other way, bombarding new parents with messages about how hard parenting is.
There’s something to be said about expectations. If you go into motherhood expecting it to be hard, it may not be as difficult as you imagined. If you go into motherhood expecting it to be all giggles and cuddles, you’re in for a rude awakening. Messages make a big difference in this regard.
What do people mean when they say parenting is hard?
Of course, “hard” is also something completely subjective. How do you measure that? Some moms who said parenting isn’t that hard said things like, “There are hard moments and sometimes it’s frustrating and definitely tiring, but it’s not hard.” But some of us would absolutely equate “frustrating” and “tiring” with “hard.” So some of that is just semantics.
“Hard” really just means “requires a lot of effort or skill,” and I suppose most people would agree that raising a child requires that. However, one of the mothers mentioned above suggested that if parenting is hard, it means you’re not good at it, which understandably upset some people. The same goes for the idea that attitude is the main reason raising a child is hard.
But whether parenting is hard or not isn’t even the right question. The question is whether hard = bad. I would say it absolutely doesn’t. In fact, I think “parenting is hard” is completely compatible with “parenting is wonderful” and “parenting is fun.” That parenting is hard doesn’t negate the joy and wonder of it all.
Running a marathon is hard, but people do it anyway because they love running and because they enjoy the challenge. It’s exciting, exhilarating and exhausting all at the same time. The effort – the hardship – is a big part of the experience.
Running a farm is hard work and is celebrated as such. It seems odd to imply that saying “parenting is hard” must mean there is some kind of moral failing. Isn’t it just inherently hard?
Is parenting really easy?
Parenting isn’t supposed to be impossible or painful, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be a walk in the park either—at least not if you try to do it well. bad Being a parent is easy, at least for a time, but good parenting requires continuous, conscientious effort. There are a million circumstances, from age and developmental stage to individual temperament and family support to your own upbringing and expectations of parenting, that can make it easier or more difficult. But until you’ve gone through the entire arc of raising multiple children through adulthood, you just don’t know what unexpected surprises might be in store. Humility can be chosen early or forced upon you later, but I’ve never met an experienced parent who hasn’t become humbled at some point through parenting.
When my children were young, I had a very different approach to parenting than I do now, when I have two young adults and a teenager. Different parents find different aspects of parenting difficult, and that’s OK. I love being a mom. Motherhood has been the greatest gift of my life, and I love my relationship with my incredible children, but being a mom was – and in some ways still is – hard. There’s no getting around it, and I’m not ashamed to say it. The hard work of sowing good character, moistening their hearts and minds, weeding out negative influences, and nurturing them as individuals has allowed us to reap the fruits of our labor in a beautiful family life.
Maybe those who find raising children “easy” simply have their own interpretation of “hard” or “difficult.” Or maybe they haven’t reached a difficult stage of raising children yet. Or maybe they really have hit the jackpot by having easy kids and tons of support, and that will never change. Who knows. All I know is that raising good kids is hard, but that hard and great and joyful and wonderful can go hand in hand.
