The Bookless Club: Is it really harder to be a parent today?

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I can talk about this now as Thanksgiving is over and I can probably recover before Christmas rolls around. I figure I can state my case and then duck and run for cover. It’ll take about 10 weeks for what my kids will consider to be crass insensitivities to be downgraded to “just ignore her” status. But by then, it’ll be turkey time and all will be forgiven. Or, more likely, replaced with something they will consider equally reprehensible.

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I’m talking about that warning that Dr. Vivek Murthy, the American surgeon-general, recently issued. The one where he says being a parent is hard. If ever licence was given for a yodel-fest of self-pity, this is it. We now have a generation of parents who believe that, never in the history of the world has so much been asked of parents.

The title of the report is The Surgeon General’s Advisory On The Mental Health And Well-Being of Parents. The findings are — hold onto your hat — that 33 per cent of parents report high levels of stress, compared to 20 per cent of other adults, and that parenting is stressful.

Murthy’s findings were issued as an “advisory”. It seems that the American surgeon-general has three levels of alarm bells he can sound. In descending order, they are “reports”, “calls to action”, and “advisories”. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “advisories” are “public statements that call the American people’s attention to a public health issue and provide recommendations for how that issue should be addressed.”

Murthy identifies the “tremendous pressures from familiar stressors such as worrying about their kids’ health and safety and financial concerns, to new challenges like navigating technology and social media, a youth mental health crisis, an epidemic of loneliness that has hit young people hardest.” He adds that, as a father of two kids, he feels these pressures too.

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Murthy goes on to identify various reforms that he believes would have beneficial impact on the core unit of a nation — the family. They include increased access to paid family leave, improving early childhood education and childcare, and delivering historic investments in mental health care. The nightmare that social media represents has its very own advisory.

I can’t argue with any of the findings. It’s an irrefutable truth that it takes a village — its manpower and resources — to raise a child. Another irrefutable truth is that a child’s happiness and productivity is intrinsically linked to that of the parent. But is it harder to raise a kid today? Is it, really?

Back in the mid-1950s, Canada recorded nearly 9,000 cases of polio, with 500 kids dying from it in 1953 alone. As polio seemed to peak in the summer and early autumn, parents couldn’t let their children go to the beach, the swimming pool or playgrounds — pretty much anywhere. I’m personally familiar with a family in Victoria where three out of five people were stricken with polio, and that included both parents. Reflect for a moment on the fact that, until the federal government passed the Medical Care Act of 1966, Canada didn’t have socialized health care.

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I stumbled upon a chart by an economist that listed the threats to children’s lives in 1950 to those in 2005. (These numbers are all per 100,000 people.) Between the ages of 15 and 24, death by warfare nosedives, with 51.7 people losing their lives in a conflict in 1950, and the tally dropping to 1.2 people in 2005. Disease claimed 3,181 lives under one year of age in 1950, and that number plummets by 2005 to 656 infant lives lost annually per 100,000. Homicide, however, edged upwards over the years.

I have a lot to say on this subject. Unfortunately, I’ll be muttering it from under a bed, or deep inside a closet. If my kids ask you where I am, just shrug, okay?

Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former National Post columnist who lives in Vancouver. She writes The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. For more of what Jane’s up to, check out her website, janemacdougall.com

This week’s question for readers:

Question: Is child-raising harder today? If so, how?

Send your answers by email text, not an attachment, in 100 words or less, along with your full name to Jane at thebooklessclub@gmail.com. We will print some next week in this space.

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Last week’s question for readers:

Question: How green is your thumb? Do you have luck getting your orchids to re-bloom?

• I love orchids and usually have some around, if not live, then a very fine facsimile. Some years ago, I was gifted with a beautiful deep purple orchid consisting of two main flowering stems, each with a smaller blooming offshoot. It was lovely. And yes, they were in that plastic thingy and I gave them three ice cubes every seven to 10 days. I cut each stem back when it finished blooming and continued to have a blooming orchid for the next two years as each of the shoots bloomed again in turn.

Ingrid Suderman

• I have fond memories of hunting in the forest for tiny “Lady’s Slippers” — an orchid found in the Kootenay region. Also, I enjoy beautiful orchids in my home all year round because Taisuco — a Fraser Valley grower — often has an outlet sale at their location on Sumas prairie. Sadly, I have not had much success getting my plants to re-bloom. Perhaps I’ll try sharing my tea.

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Pat Mullaney

• We gratefully received a vibrant pink orchid as a new office-warming gift. It was beautiful and ended up in reception photos. Sadly, the blooms were short-lived. I went to toss the plant into the compost bin, but instead took advice and stuck it in the lunch-room window. In the meantime, another patient gave us a new orchid for the front. We loved the new vibrant orchid and forgot the old one until one day it suddenly bloomed. The old, twiggy orchid has been rotated back to front stage in the main reception.

Elli Monaghan

• My orchid is gorgeously purple polka-dotted. In 2007, I had a hip replacement. My mother (in Pittsburgh) wired me my first and only orchid. Some months after it bloomed it sprouted a keiki, which, I learned, is a new plant coming out of a node. I was instructed to plant the keiki in orchid medium (I usually use bark). It’s been potted up a few times, but for years has been in what was once a hanging basket, with lots of room for air roots (the green leaves are also much larger). Up until a couple of years ago, it often put out two new stems. It does this faithfully in December, and blooms into summer.

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Ellie O’Day

• My beautiful Aphrodites Orchid was a gift from my sister in 2022. It has bloomed every year since, and produced a new leaf each year. I definitely do not have a green thumb, but have cared for it by following the instructions it came with.

Sally Kimber

• Yes, for many years I’ve had good luck growing orchids. I grow them in a south-facing window in filtered sunlight. I also spray them each morning, but not the flowers. My husband and I used to be members of the Vancouver Orchid Society. We used to grow more unusual orchids but now stick with Phalaenopsis as they are quite reliable bloomers. The secret is to be patient.

Shauna Kirkham

• When I lived in the tropics, we would simply chuck our orchid plants under one of the trees in the garden when the orchids had stopped blooming. Several months later, we’d pull the pots out and they’d have set bud. Inside of a month or so, we would have sprays of blooms again. One plant could bloom again and again and again. No green thumb required.

L. Branson

• It always seems criminal to me that people throw out their orchids the minute they lose their flowers. I’ve collected more than a few from alleyways, and almost all of them have re-bloomed again. They have made wonderful gifts to friends and family and I feel a bit noble for having saved them.

J. Howard

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