"We Do Not Need This": 31 Things Millennial Parents Deal With That Their Boomer Parents Could Never Have Imagined

Yahoo

21-05-2025

Recently, millennial parents shared things they have to deal with that their parents didn't, and it gave me a lot of food for thought. Here are some of the top responses:
1."The expectation that work never ends and you should be reachable after work hours and weekends."
—Beberuth1131
"The problem is that everyone is doing it. So you look lazy if you don't, or you fall behind because everyone else is doing more than they should. We gotta all tone it down in unison."
—I_Want_A_Ribeye
2."I've been stressed about losing my job since 2008. My boomer dad could quit his job back in the day and have another full-time job the next day, enough to raise a family on without a high school diploma."
—No_Refrigerator_2489
3."Having grandparents who don't help. My grandma helped, and I spent months with my grandparents during the year."
—SandiegoJack
"And heaven forbid that you want them to watch the grandkids on YOUR schedule. They need their free time to play golf or socialize and all those things they left you with the grandparents to do.... Apparently, we have to find other solutions if we want a social life."
—ATATMom
4."My kids expect me to play with them ALL the time. I'm pretty sure I wasn't allowed to talk to my dad while he was watching TV."
—Dadbod646
"I was allowed at commercials after I waited for whichever parent it was to acknowledge me. But I was not allowed to interrupt while the show was on or while they were on the phone."
—LostButterflyUtau
5."Prices of stuff in general. My mom managed to raise three kids on one income at a gas station, and we always had everything we needed. Did she struggle? Of course, but it was still doable. It is beyond impossible now, even at my $20/hour paycheck."
—Old-Capital5079
"True. Situations like this that I remember from when I was a kid occur to me fairly regularly. I am raising three kids on one income as a single mom. I am an engineer. The fact that my friend's mom did this as a waitress in the '90s says a lot about the state of the economy."
—whatsmyname81
6."Momfluencers."
—Puzzleheaded-Sphinx
"Social media in general!"
—ATATMom
"Back then, it was my paternal grandma judging my mom face to face."
—nimo202
7."The amount of school dress-up days. It's upwards of 40+ a year at our district. Flashlight day? Who has time for that?"
—Ok-Satisfaction5694
8."Sports are so different now. I'm 43. My kid is 9 and plays hockey. Youth sports have gotten nuts. When I was a kid, you played hockey in the winter. You played for your town's team. You had a practice each week and a game each week. Now there are spring leagues and summer leagues. There are 'competitive' triple-A programs that cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. Practices are 2+ times a week or more."
"I've talked to other parents who are already talking about college scholarships or going pro... It's nuts. Like you don't HAVE to sign up for all of it, but once you put your kid in a sport, there is SO MUCH pressure to do more. I used hockey as an example, but I have friends with kids who've had the same experiences in baseball, cheerleading, gymnastics, swimming, soccer..."
—seanofkelley
"OMG, yes. The pressure is insane and not age-appropriate at all. My daughter is 8 (almost 9), and we are experiencing the same thing. This also leads to intense overscheduling and burnout. So many downstream negative impacts. I am with you!"
—october42014
9."Play dates... apparently nobody can be trusted enough to watch your kid until they're like 8 or 9."
—JP6-
"Yep. It's taken persuading to get exchange playdates going with the neighbors. I struggle with the expectation that if kids are playing, the adults are coming over with them. Let's just swap throughout the week so we can get breaks!"
—MysteriousCurrent676
10."The whole Covid situation was such an enormous clusterfuck. My parents never had to worry about what to do if some fucking illness shuts down all the schools."
—kiimothy
11."The fact that technology is so integrated with school. I can't keep my kids off screens because that's how they do 90% of their schoolwork. Their schools start providing Chromebooks in kindergarten. Half of their assignments require watching YouTube videos. They have to fill out Google Forms for school events. And my kids' band director pushes out music and drill on Google Drive. I constantly have to find new ways to try to give them access to what they need, but still limit the constant unfettered access to the internet."
—Unhappy-Dimension681
"This pisses me off. My wife and I have struggled mightily to keep the kids off screens when giving them the phone or iPad would have been the easy way out.
Now, in first grade, an iPad is part of the curriculum."
—TastyOwl27
12."Social media and keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. Almost every 8-year-old in my daughter's class has a cellphone OR an Apple Watch. It's hard for my wife and me to explain to our daughter why we don't think it is a good idea for her yet. There was even some TikTok drama at her school that got the district's attention, where some 5th graders were randomly matching up 5th graders as if they were dating."
—dr_z0idberg_md
"Yes! Relatable!! Lots of 8-year-old drama at school over their cell phones. I think my daughter will understand when she is older. Right now, it feels like she is left out. Giving kids this age unlimited access to the internet is a huge mistake for parents. They will eventually regret it."
—spydagrrl
13."Peanut butter is virtually outlawed for kids in public places. I ate a PB&J sandwich almost every day at school."
—matow07
14."Vaccination rates. I remember most of us didn't get the chicken pox vaccine because it was so new. But now parents are refusing to give their kids very old, tried and true vaccines."
—EngineeringStill6159
15."I sure would like to be able to purchase a house. My sister and I were the first college graduates in our family, and neither of us has bought a house yet. We're both married, in our thirties, and have up until very recently all had dual incomes."
—Neither_Bed_1135
"This. I think renting is far more normal now than owning, and so neighbors drift in and out vs when I was a kid and had the same working poor neighbors for over a decade or more. So there are not the same cohesive groups of neighborhood kids to hang out with for a lot of today's kids."
—Appropriate-Fun-922
16."I'm entering the phase of parenthood where I'm being asked to download apps for each of my child's activities."
—brzantium
"Yes. I have the band app, and I'm in about 12 groups for things my kids are part of. It's maddening, but at least they are all on the same app."
—simplekindoflifegirl
17."Raising kids when both parents work full-time. There's the stuff you know is coming, like scheduling, debating who is taking off to get the sick kid, etc. Then there's being too exhausted to have proper sit-down meals. Too exhausted to fight them to eat vegetables and fruit. And worst of all, fighting with screens ALL THE TIME."
—walker6168
18."THE GUILT. That's my whole answer. I just don't believe that parents back then were constantly made to feel like they were fucking up their kids lives the way we are."
—LPow
19."Everything is bad all the time? Like I was talking to my mom about this, and maybe it's just the 24-hour news cycle, but can't I just get a year or two where things are not in crisis all the time? She swears that when she was my age, she was not in constant anxiety about the country/world."
—SoColdInAlaska
"Yeah, the crisis was a 2x/day thing. You listened to the radio or watched the morning news while you got ready for work, and then got the update in the evening. If you missed it, you missed it, you weren't obligated to marinate in it!"
—professorpumpkins
20."A $3,300 mortgage. My parents had their house bought for them in 1988 for like $75k. They only repaid a portion of that to my grandparents. Now my dad is in a very comfortable financial position (see: wealthy parents), and he won't extend the same kind of help even at a fraction of the total of our mortgage. Cool."
—JumpintheFiah
"My parents' house was $35,000. Ours was 10 times that much when we bought it 10 years ago, and we definitely do not make 10 times what my parents made.
Not to mention the rising costs of homeowners insurance, health insurance, and literally everything else."
—cassiecas88
21."School drop off and pick up. I walked to school and home from school as an elementary school kid. Now, if your elementary school kid tries to walk to the school door without a parent, they'd be on the phone with CPS before your kid's butt crossed the threshold. Walking to/from school is still a common practice in other countries, but sadly not here anymore."
—TrickyOperation6115
"The drop-off/pick-up car line is the thing of nightmares. A level of hell Dante didn't know about."
—TrickyOperation6115
22."Online bullying. Kids can't escape that stuff if they have a phone or an iPad or a computer."
—Troitbum22
"Don't even get me started on the bullying. Someone stalked my daughter's social media pages and set up an Instagram dedicated to bullying her. It turned out to be her ex-boyfriend's ex-girlfriend. She broke up with him and blocked both him, the girl, and the anonymous page, and it stopped, but can you imagine? They were even making comments about me and had gone through all of my socials as well."
—OrdinarySubstance491
23."When I was a kid, my parents hardly interacted with us on a daily basis. We'd have some meals together and specific activities like church, going to a movie, or whatever. But they mostly did their own thing, and the kids figure out their own lives, including getting together with friends, getting lunch and snacks, etc. These days, parents are expected to be there supervising their children 24/7, arranging play dates, planning menus, basically scheduling every second of their days."
"I try not to overdo it myself, but I see a lot of my parent friends will not leave their kids alone for even a moment. It's wild to me. My mom didn't even know where I was most of my childhood, but if you don't have two eyes on your kids at all times, now someone will call CPS. It's not just the parents, society has completely changed its expectations of us too."
—Delicious_Tea3999
24."That I would need to buy laptops for both kids; it's a need in the school they go to. My parents just needed to buy paper and pens and call it a day."
—TiKi_Effect
25."Streaming, in the sense of my kids' favorite show is always on for as long as they want, and they can rewatch it as much as they want. I love that it's easy for them to find their favorites and dive in. But it also means they don't get bored and wander off to find something else to do. I remember as a kid, children's TV kinda wrapped up midmorning. Which is when I would find a book, get out some toys, or go outside. Now I have to actively peel my kids off a screen."
—AgitatedEconomist192
26."Telling my teens not to do something, or to really think about it first, not because it's bad or whatever, but because there will likely be good quality video evidence that can come back to haunt them. They have so much more opportunity than I ever did, but less freedom in some ways."
—abucketofsquirrels
27."Putting a firm boundary on everyone that they are not allowed to post pictures of my children online."
—booksandcheesedip
28."Active shooter drills."
—dherves
"The fear that when I drop my first grader off at school there might be a shooting at his school."
—SamuraiZucchini
29."The elaborate children's parties. I went to a private middle school in the late '90s, so I had friends WAY richer than us, but the birthday party was still just pizza and a sleepover and NSYNC sing-along. We took our 3-year-old to a wealthy classmate's party this year and it was HORRIFYING."
"Two-tiered cake, balloon wall for photos, table-scaped kids' table with actual glassware, a buffet of foods toddlers don't normally like (pasta salad with black olives, salad with balsamic vinegar), and the party favor was...a CUSTOM CHARM BRACELET. I was so uncomfortable the whole time. It's just way too much, especially for such young kids.
We do not need this insane pressure."
—Traditional_Pitch_57
30."When I was a kid, there was paranoia about strangers on the internet. Now I'm told it's alienating kids from their peers if I don't let them film themselves and post it online."
—pocket_arsenal
31.And finally, "The fear of what kind of crazy technology will be there when they're teenagers. I sure hope social media dies and falls off a cliff. Fuck Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. I'm sure it will be something diabolical, I'm just not sure what."
—Throwaway4536265
Parents, is there anything you would add? Tell us all about it in the comments or via the anonymous form below: