Milennial Moms: "Super Mom" is the New Norm

I have seen and heard countless studies, surveys and articles reference Millennials, also known as the "Lost Generation Y". One simple Google search and you can learn all about how Millennials function in society, what a lost cause they are and even  how to manage Millennials in the work place.  This generation is so fascinating and hard to handle that corporate CEO's are taking training courses on how to deal with them. Millennials are generally marked by an increased use, familiarity and dependence on communication, media, and digital technologies. 

These studies, surveys and instructional courses tell you all about how Millennials can't find jobs, how they can't put down their cell phones and how they are all living with their parents.  But they missed something. They don't tell you how we parent.  That's right I am a Millennial.  I am a mom.  I am a Millennial Mom.

Many members of this generation have babies.  In fact, we have school aged children as well.  Now, not all is lost and the world isn't going to 'you know where' in a hand basket just because we are raising the next generation... Well at least we sure hope not.  I became a mother at the ripe age of 20. 6 years, 3 more kids and a lot of mistakes later my perspective has changed.  Now more than ever I see what we are doing right, I see where were are falling short but mostly I see the challenges we are facing.

The biggest challenge Millennial parents face is fulfilling the promise that we can have it all.  We can go to school and get whatever and however many degrees we want.  Never-mind the massive student loan debt we are drowning in, we can be anything we want.  Then we intern, serve our time at the bottom and climb the corporate latter.  We can have the careers previous generations only dreamed of.   We need those jobs after all to make those student loan payments, buy the latest gadgets and to compete with the lives of everyone on our social network friends list.  We also need those jobs to keep up with the rising cost of living, rising taxes and do our part in rebounding an economy that has tanked in half the time it took previous generations to make our economy and government the first-world big brother it is today.   For many Milliennials gone are the days of a one-income household.  Many of our households send both mom and dad to work.  When we head to work do our homes clean themselves? Are those perfectly balanced meals magically on the table when we get home? Are holidays and events planned and arranged by a fairy? Do our children get themselves ready for school, care for themselves and provide their own guidance and wisdom?  Unfortunately the answer is NO.  Trust me, we Millennial moms have fantasized about this magic fairy and it just doesn't exist. Millennial moms have those careers but we also have the next generation at home.  Somehow we are supposed to drop off our children to school in pristine condition, pick them up on time, be instantly available at any moment, attend every school function, be president of the PTA, get them to every practice all while advancing our careers to heights that are ALMOST to where we want them.  Oh, and those children? They MUST be perfectly behaved, perform perfectly at school and all sports they participate in.  How do they become perfect?  We must never lose our patience, we are allowed no mistakes, we are forbidden from spanking and our children must always be made to feel that they are better than the rest. Somehow we must be the perfect parents and raise the perfect children. Baby-boomer and Generation X parents did this without a hitch didn't they? 


If that isn't enough pressure we also have social media competition. That Facebook mom that you went to High School with that has the perfect family, job, figure and life? As much as we fight it, we strive to be her.  Heck, our subconscious dream is to out do her.  In that pursuit we become her and then we create another right behind us.  Before we know it we find ourselves in the Mom Games.  We scroll Pinterest for the BEST birthday party ideas for our 3 year old who honestly could care less that his face is on the bottled water, he just wants to open his presents. We see our friends on Facebook taking spectacular family vacations and before we know it we are dragging our poor miserable husbands to "That place _____ went to, but don't let me forget to Instagram it!" Mommy games are not new to our generation but they have been magnified and broadcast all over the world through vessels like Twitter, Facebook, Mommy Boards and Pinterest. How can we call ourselves friends when our main objective is to out-do one another?

Call me mad (many do) but may I propose a revolution? Can we compliment one another with out plotting how to "do it better"? Can we allow others the freedom from criticism to discipline their children in public? Can we snap pictures of the working mom's kid at the school function she couldn't get off of work to attend? Can we cover for the mom at work that needed to take off to care for their stomach-virus inflicted child? Can we cook dinner for the mom who looks like she is one bad day away from a breakdown? Can we wait at the end of practice with the kid who is mom is late without judgement? Can we overlook the clutter at the home of the mom that invited us over for wine and adult conversation?

Millennial moms are not all bad.  We can balance almost everything and then tell you about it in our blog (don't forget to Instgram it!).  We are Super-Moms.  But that doesn't make us any better than the next mom because in our generation Super-Mom is the new norm.