They told us that they loved us. They read to us and hugged us and gave us everything we needed, and let us fill the house with friends. They helped us with homework or any friend drama and would spend many hours every week just ferrying us to and from gymnastics and dance practices. My parents were both at some point in the PTA at school, and they were just very hands-on, involved and loving parents all around.
Yep, mine was a picture-perfect late 80s/early 90s childhood. Which, I think we can all agree, is pretty different from a childhood circa 2025.
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Because, you see, while I knew that my parents loved us, and still to this day have tons of wonderful memories from my childhood, I don’t for a second think my mum spent a lot of time feeling like she had to make memories with us every second of every day. Or remind us constantly how wonderful we were. Like most mums back then, I don’t think she read parenting books telling her how to parent.
In fact, I don’t think she spent a lot of time wondering about her parenting style or fretting about things being perfect or providing us with constant ‘magic’ at all.
For instance, my mum never used cookie cutters to turn our lunchbox sandwiches into fun shapes. Nor did she consult Pinterest or hire party planners when throwing us birthday parties.
I can’t remember ever twinning with her and wearing Insta-perfect matching ‘mommy-and-me’ outfits, and she certainly did not spend every evening of my childhood writing me letters for the future, so I would know how magical every day was and how proud she was of me.
But all the above are things my generation, millennial parents, are doing for our kids. And can we just all admit that we have managed to make parenting into some sort of competition – and way, way more intense than it actually needs to be?
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in Her First Ever Podcast Interview! Exclusive Worldwide Premiere Episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show. Pic: YouTube
In a podcast interview earlier this week with her friend, beauty entrepreneur Jamie Kern Lima, Meghan Markle explained that she is putting together a “time capsule” for her children with Prince Harry, sending letters and photographs and anecdotes daily to email addresses she’s created on their behalf, so that they may enjoy them later on.
These emails, the former royal explained, her kids won’t be allowed to access until they are 16, or even 18 – in which case they will both have thousands of emails to wade through. I mean, the thought alone of an inbox with several thousand emails is enough to give me anxiety, but I guess that is where Meghan and I are different.
Or as Meghan put it: “Here’s everything and every moment that I wanted to tell you how much I love you, and like, how proud I am of you.” The mum-of-two says she emails them most nights before bed “because it doesn’t have to be a heavy lift”. Which former members of her staff, who claimed in The Hollywood Reporter that Meghan would fire off regular 5am emails, might find all too familiar.
Millennial parenting hits different
But Meghan’s email scrapbook for her kids says a lot about millennial parents, and the pressure so many of us feel to create perfect, magical childhoods for our children, one where every day is wonderful and where every moment is curated and styled to perfection, ready to be displayed on Instagram.
Making memories has become big business, and as some have suggested, millennials are the most nostalgic generation, on account of us having straddled the analogue and digital eras. And all this nostalgia is impacting our parenting style in a big way – in the form of a constant urge to create unforgettable experiences and memories for our little ones.
The phrase core memories is being tossed about on every parenting account on social media, and when you see parents spending hundreds on balloon arches and smash cakes and decor and outfits for a baby’s first birthday party – that the child himself will never actually remember – you know things have gone a bit far.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in Her First Ever Podcast Interview! Exclusive Worldwide Premiere Episode of The Jamie Kern Lima Show. Pic: YouTube
We’re so nostalgic that we’re already imagining how our kids might look back on their younger years with future fondness. How they might recall all those Pinterest-perfect parties and the incredible effort we put into, as Meghan says, ‘everything and every moment.’ (“Gosh, look at the 5am email mum sent me 12 years ago! Heart eye emoji…”).
Parenting has become a passion project, a career, a measuring stick – and then we wonder why this generation is so exhausted? We are all part of it, the keeping up with the Joneses when it comes to memory making and magic creating. The Christmas tradition of Elf on the Shelf is just a perfect example – and the reason mums across the globe now almost dread the onset of December.
It’s the same attitude that means millennial parents are now expected to stay with our kids at birthday parties, rather than drop and dash as our own parents did. I mean, if you’re not present and making memories with your children at all times, surely you’re failing them? If you’re not worrying about what their next core-memory day out or activity might be, you’re failing them. If you’re not using empathetic, gentle parenting, you’re failing them.
I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up, we spent weekends at garden centres or simply running errands or visiting family and friends. I know for sure my parents were not busy trying to curate magical days for my sister and me every Saturday and Sunday during our childhood. Nor did they say things like:
“I’m nurturing you and I see you so deeply and I love being able to see your growth,” like Meghan explains she says to her kids.
‘I thought it was such a great time capsule to create for them because I used to have scrapbooks and photo albums, but we’re past that generation now,’ she explained on the podcast.
I know, I know, the idea is sweet. But maybe it is our nostalgia taking over again. And the reality is that there is a huge gap between some pictures glued into a scrapbook with notes and stickers, and waking up on your 18th birthday to an inbox crammed with 4000 emails to wade through, magical as the content might be.
Look, fellow millennial parents, let’s cut ourselves some slack. Our kids know we love them. They don’t need all the Pinterest perfection or the core memory pressure – or emails.
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