Was Motherhood Really Easier in the Nineties?
Taylor Schumann reflects on tech, nostalgia, and an innocence that ended with 9/11.
The Pomegranate is thrilled to welcome Taylor Schumann as a Contributing Writer.
Today I saw an Instagram Reel from a local real estate agent advertising a home for sale. The main selling point? “A Backyard Built for a 90s Childhood.”
Spend any amount of time on social media these days and you’ll probably be hit with no less than 37 posts about “being a 90s mom” or “giving your child a 90s childhood.” It has quickly become a popular content strategy for moms who publicly say they aim to give their kids a simpler, slower, less screen-y childhood (like the one they had) and now apparently one for realtors as well.
One notable theme I see is this idea that motherhood was easier in the 90s. I can see where they are coming from. I’ve thought this many times myself. Moms in the 90s didn’t have to worry about iPads, internet gaming, or pervs trying to befriend their teenagers on snapchat.
I was born in 1990 and feel like I grew up in the sweet spot of having a 90s childhood and an early 2000s adolescence. I had the sleepovers, the nights picking out movies at Blockbuster, and I played outside for hours with my friends in our neighborhood without ever checking in with my parents. I didn’t have a sip of water during the summers that didn’t come from a sort of rusty garden hose in someone’s backyard. My bike tires wore out faster than my dad could replace them. My sister and I watched whatever was on TV, racing to grab snacks during commercial breaks and get back in time for the show. It was not perfect, except it was a little perfect.
When I was a kid and my mom needed a break, she could sit us down in front of the TV and put a VHS tape in the VCR. For a run time of 93 minutes, she knew exactly what we were watching. We couldn’t switch it to a movie she had never heard of on another streaming platform without her knowing. She didn’t have to keep coming back to make sure we were watching what we were supposed to. Now, when I want to let my 7-year-old watch a show so I can fold some laundry or get dinner started, I would only be a responsible parent if I checked back every so often between folding t-shirts to make sure he hadn’t navigated over to a show I didn’t know about. And that’s in addition to the 2-3 hours researching and setting up parental controls before we even turned the TV on. Being able to pop in a VHS tape and forget about it? Dare I say, the 90s beckon me.
When I became a mom in 2018, I did what every mom-to-be does: I went to the internet to learn what I should buy and what I should do and what is the best car-seat-stroller-combo in my budget? I found answers to questions I never knew to ask. This led to years of taking any question I had to the internet, looking for another mom who was smarter and wiser than me and would help me know what to do to prevent the inevitable traumatization of my children due to giving them red dye 40, or whatever. This is when I realized I could know what other moms were doing all the time, and what their houses looked like, and see the perfectly nutritious meals they were feeding their kids. This is also when I discovered we aren’t supposed to be saying “Good job!” to our kids anymore. It’s going to destroy their intrinsic motivation to complete tasks, or something. Anyway, my mom didn’t have any of that in the 90s.
My mom couldn’t scroll TikTok for 20 minutes and within that time frame discover 16 new fatal diseases or accidents from which her children could die, leading to uncontrollable anxiety about every potential danger, even the ones that she didn’t know existed until that second. She could let us play outside for hours alone without worrying if Debbi down the street was going to call the police and report her for negligence.
But she also didn’t have grocery pickup or the ability to check my location on a cell phone to make sure I was safe. She couldn’t use the GPS on her phone to get us to a friend’s house and if we took a wrong turn, well, guess we’re spending the night there. My mom couldn’t pop in AirPods and inconspicuously listen to an audiobook while doing menial tasks or to tune out another episode of Paw Patrol. No one had the ability to set up a meal train for her and quickly send the link to her family and friends when she was freshly postpartum. And when she was up alone in the middle of the night with one of us screaming children, she couldn’t send a text reaching out for support to a friend who she knew was probably also up in the middle of the night. She couldn’t do a quick internet search for a picky-eater-friendly recipe when she didn’t know what to make for dinner, or google dosage for a medicine when she lost the packaging.
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