We helicoptered, we overshared, we felt inadequate. So are we learning from our mistakes asks Lorraine Candy.
At the beginning of this decade I was a married, working mother with three children under seven. Today, at 51, I'm a married, working mum with four children aged eight to 17. I wrote my first weekly parenting column in a national newspaper in 2009, so I've charted the changing parenting trends as a curious observer and an enthusiastic participant.
And if I could choose one headline to sum up the past 10 years, it would be that unforgettable Time magazine cover, "Are you mom enough?" The accompanying photograph, of a mother breastfeeding her three-year-old son, who was standing on a chair to reach her nipple, infuriated women worldwide. The cover articulated the huge pressure mothers have felt to embrace the decade's No 1 trend, attachment parenting, a philosophy that promotes empathy and physical closeness. This has been the dominating force in the multibillion-pound parenting industry, consistently advising us to only breastfeed, to co-sleep and be constantly available to our children's needs, not ours. For me, the cover highlighted the stranglehold attachment parenting theorists have had over educated western parents, particularly mothers, who have been encouraged to believe they must lead child-centred lives.
As more women returned to work after childbirth, especially where they had previously dropped out or taken a career break from a male-dominated industry to start a family, they had to live with the niggling worry that they were not "enough" for their children, that childcare was still the mother's responsibility more than the father's. It felt overwhelming for many, though of course some women heaved a sigh of relief at being able to cherish parenting as the best and only job they wanted to do.
While I mostly ignored the outer edges of this theory, many sleep-deprived women buckled under the emotional battering of attachment parenting. It felt particularly judgmental of mothers who chose to work, which felt like a step back in time.