Key findings
- Mothers today want to instill kindness (53 percent) and happiness (49 percent) in their kids over other core values. They feel their parents’ priorities, on the other hand, were raising them with respect (53 percent) and responsibility (50 percent).
- They also believe their parenting style is significantly warmer than the one they were raised with. "Supportive" (71 percent) and "nurturing" (63 percent) are among the top words they use to describe their approaches, while only 39 and 27 percent of responders, respectively, use those words for their own upbringing.
- The majority of moms believe they’re more "mindful" about parenting than previous generations. However, only 1 in 4 think that today’s parents are doing a better job.
The first few months of my pregnancy have inspired many pleasantly meandering chats with my partner about our future. What will our child’s passions be, and will we share them? What will their little face look like? And then there’s the items we have more control over: What kind of parents are we setting out to be?
We promise to be present for every game, recital and holiday pageant, the way my mother was, and to read together every night far past the toddler years, as my partner's mother did. We're also thinking about what we want to do our own way, from discipline to religion to toys.
Maybe — definitely! — it’s idealistic to plot these things while our kid is still growing lungs, but making such plans feels as important as taking prenatal vitamins and buying a breast pump. As it turns out, it’s quite common for mothers today (and mothers-to-be, like myself) to take a different approach to parenting than the style they were raised with, according to a survey of over 3,800 new and expectant moms by Everyday Health Group, What to Expect's parent company.
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Today's parents say they're more nurturing and gentle compared to how they themselves were raised
When asked to choose adjectives for their approach to parenting, the nearly 4,000 mothers — women between the ages of 18 and 54 who were either pregnant or had at least one child up to 8 years old — chose words like supportive (71 percent), nurturing (63 percent), fun (58 percent) and gentle (56 percent).
When asked to describe their own upbringings, the number of mothers who say they experienced those same attributes are slashed, often in half: Only 39 percent say their parents were supportive, just 27 percent feel they were nurturing and only 1 in 5 recall their parents being gentle.
Additionally, mothers today hope to instill different core values in their children than the ones their parents emphasized to them. Though there is some overlap in the importance of principles like respect, honesty and responsibility, their priorities ranked a bit differently.
Instead, today’s moms want to instill kindness (53 percent), happiness (49 percent) and empathy (31 percent). Meanwhile, they say the guiding priorities of their own childhoods were being well-mannered (43 percent), having a strong work ethic (40 percent) and being obedient (35 percent).
How much of these attitudes reflect a true generational shift in morals? And how much of the results can be attributed to moms who view their own styles through an idealized view? It’s a bit of both, says Jennifer Lansford, PhD, a professor and the director of the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University.
"There are historical changes in the kinds of parenting behaviors that are considered more typical," she says. "For example, parents nowadays are more likely to do very deliberate things, [such as] teaching their infant to sign, that are meant to be intellectually or emotionally enriching, which parents in the past didn’t do as much."
Another example she gives is spanking or other corporal punishment — a once widespread discipline method that’s now illegal in half the world’s countries and rejected by most parenting experts.
As for the possibility of rose-colored glasses toward their own parenting styles versus how they say they were raised, Dr. Lansford allows for a bit of a well-intentioned gap.
"Kids oftentimes perceive their parents as being harsher than parents perceive themselves as being, in part because people want to see themselves in a positive light," she says. "It's not that they're trying to misrepresent themselves; it's that people have access to their own motivations, intentions and beliefs. They can think, 'I'm behaving in a warm, kind and nurturing way,' because they know that's really what they want to be doing."
In other words, because parents know they have their kids' best interests at heart, they tend to see their actions as compassionate ones. Whether their children will remember those same behaviors as supportive — or smothering or judgmental or intrusive — remains to be seen.
The generational approaches split even further with modern moms: Gen Z mothers are less likely to say they want to parent similarly to how they were parented (29 percent) than Millennial (36 percent) or Gen X mothers (43 percent).
Parents today say they're more mindful about raising their children
Moms a generation ago had a few classic books and popular campaigns that prescribed parenting advice — but it was nothing quite like today's endless stream of TikToks, message boards, blogs, hashtags and apps. Perhaps that’s why mothers in our survey agreed that parents today are "more educated about parenting techniques" (61 percent), as well as "more mindful about parenting techniques" (71 percent).
With all those instructions and constant consideration of best practices, surely mothers today must think they’re doing a better job than those in previous generations, right? Not so much, according to respondents. Only 1 in 4 say that modern moms have a superior approach than their predecessors, and nearly half (47 percent) felt "neutral" about the comparison.
Dr. Lansford blames social media for that gap in confidence. "That same proliferation of information might contribute to parents feeling that they may not be doing a good-enough job," she explains. "If you see people posting pictures doing fabulous things with their children, it could make parents question whether they're really doing as well as others."
Parents say passing on their culture and heritage is still important
Even if they have different values than their own parents did, today’s moms still want to share family traditions. The majority of those surveyed (74 percent) feel a responsibility to pass along information about their cultural backgrounds.
When responses were broken down by race and ethnicity, 83 percent of mothers of color felt this duty; this was particularly true of moms who are Asian or Pacific Islander, at 89 percent.
"Parents still do today what they've done for many, many millennia, which is to be the most proximal, most frequent, most readily available source for that [cultural] information," says Kirby Deater-Deckard, PhD, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and director of UMass’ Healthy Development Initiative. "Most parents find themselves sharing stories about their own family growing up, and [might] realize: Wow, this is the oral tradition."
He also speculates that mothers in a minority group, who may have experienced being "othered," might feel the weight of passing along the knowledge — and hardships, and joy — of their cultural history.
Despite taking a different approach, today's parents still lean on family for support
In another millennia-old tradition, respondents still turn to their villages (or rather, their families specifically) for help.
- 65 percent say that family is their top source of parenting support.
- 51 percent of moms look to their families when they are struggling mentally or emotionally.
- Half of mothers agree that family is involved in all of their big life decisions.
- Nearly half (43 percent) say it’s important to follow expectations to make their families proud.
Ultimately, What to Expect’s survey suggests something that I believe to be true: I can create a vision for my dream parenting style that combines the best parts of my own upbringing with the values I hold today, but that it could possibly remain just that — a vision. My child might still remember me as entirely more focused on responsibility and work ethic 30 years from now. "There’s a positivity bias," Dr. Deater-Deckard says, about our own intentions, and "a strong negativity bias in memory."
And as that final item of the survey indicates, when I’m up in the middle of the night in a few months with a screaming infant whom I’ve run out of methods of comforting, I’ll turn to the person who comforted me … and call my own perfectly imperfect mother for support and advice on what to try next.
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