The Generational Divide: Parenting With the Baby Boom Crowd

It was 2:14 PM on a Tuesday, and I was standing in my kitchen wearing a pair of maternity leggings that I had definitely spilled oat milk on three days prior, clutching a mug of coffee that had been reheated so many times it tasted like warm pennies. Maya was barely three weeks old, screaming her tiny head off, and my mother-in-law—who I genuinely love, I swear—was standing right there in my kitchen telling me I just needed to dip her pacifier in a little bit of whiskey.

Whiskey. For a newborn.

I just stared at her. My brain, completely starved of sleep and running entirely on anxiety and stale carbs, completely short-circuited. I didn't even know what to say. I think I just blinked slowly and pulled Maya closer to my chest, while my mother-in-law cheerfully explained that it’s what she did for my husband Mark back in 1984 and he "turned out fine." Which, honestly, is debatable given that Mark still can't figure out how to load the dishwasher properly, but anyway, the point is, this was the exact moment I realized that parenting alongside the post-war baby boom demographic was going to be an absolute, unmitigated disaster of clashing ideologies.

Before I had kids, I had this incredibly naive, Pinterest-board vision of what it would be like to have grandparents around. I thought having parents from the massive baby boom cohort meant I'd have this built-in village of free childcare and wise, comforting advice. I imagined them dropping off warm casseroles and rocking my children to sleep while I took long, luxurious showers.

What I know now, after surviving two infants and twelve years of writing about parenthood, is that dealing with this specific generation of grandparents is less about soaking up their wisdom and way more about running constant interference to prevent them from accidentally violating every single modern safety guideline ever established.

The great crib debate of our time

I don't think there's anything that causes more friction between modern parents and the older generation than how we put our kids to sleep. It's like a battlefield. When Maya was just a tiny, fragile little baby boo, my own mother came over with this massive, heavy, brightly colored crocheted blanket that my great-aunt had made. It was beautiful, sure, but it weighed like ten pounds and had all these massive holes in it. She immediately tried to drape it over Maya while she was sleeping in her bassinet.

I literally dove across the room like a secret service agent taking a bullet. My mom looked at me like I was completely deranged.

She launched into this whole speech about how babies need to be warm and cozy, and how I slept in a crib lined with thick padded bumpers and six stuffed bears and I was fine. And it's so hard to explain to them that yes, I survived, but the rules changed because not everybody did. My doctor—who always looks very tired and talks incredibly fast—told me that the whole "back to sleep" campaign in the nineties basically cut infant tragedies in half. He mumbled something about carbon dioxide pooling around their faces when they've heavy blankets, which sounds absolutely terrifying and is exactly why my kids' cribs looked like barren, empty jail cells for the first year of their lives.

But because I felt guilty about rejecting the heirloom blanket, I had to find a compromise. I ended up getting the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket with Bunny Print from Kianao. I'm obsessed with this thing. I didn't use it in the crib, obviously, because of the aforementioned terror of pediatric rules, but I used it for literally everything else. It’s made from this 100% GOTS-certified organic cotton that's so ridiculously soft, and it doesn't have any of those weird synthetic chemicals that make me paranoid about hormone disruptors. We used it for tummy time on our incredibly questionable living room rug, and I used it as a nursing cover when I was out in public and feeling self-conscious. My mom was somewhat appeased because it has these adorable little bunnies on it, so she felt like Maya was still getting the "cute" factor, even if she wasn't allowed to be swathed in three layers of wool at night.

The sandwich generation squeeze

thing is nobody warns you about when you wait until your thirties to have kids. You end up wedged right in the middle of this awful demographic sandwich. You're wiping spit-up off a squirming infant while simultaneously trying to help your aging parents get through Medicare forms online because they forgot their password for the fourteenth time this month.

It's exhausting. Mark and I spend half our weekends running back and forth between taking Leo to his weird little toddler soccer games where nobody actually kicks the ball, and driving over to Mark's parents' house to figure out why their Wi-Fi router is blinking red. We're expected to parent our kids with gentle, mindful perfection while simultaneously managing the emotional needs of adults who were raised in an era where feelings were basically outlawed.

If you're feeling completely crushed by the weight of keeping both your offspring and your parents functioning, maybe take a breath and just send them to browse Kianao's organic gear collection the next time they want to buy something for the baby. Honestly, redirecting their desire to help into buying safe, sustainable products is one of the only ways I preserve my sanity.

When they try to feed your kid garbage

Let's talk about food and teething, because oh god, this is where things get really wild. Besides the whiskey incident, there was the time my dad suggested putting honey on Leo's pacifier because he wouldn't stop crying.

I had to frantically Google botulism while hiding in the bathroom. Apparently, babies under one don't have the stomach acid to handle the spores in honey, and it can literally paralyze them? Our doctor explained it to me once, and though I didn't understand the exact microbiology of it all, the absolute dread in her voice was enough for me to ban honey from our house for a solid two years.

Instead of relying on 1970s apothecary remedies, I bought the Panda Teether. I can't stress enough how much this little piece of silicone saved my life. We were in the middle of Target, Leo was pushing a molar, and he was screaming so loud that people two aisles over were giving me those awful, judgmental looks. I pulled this panda out of the diaper bag—thank god it's easy to wash, because it had definitely been rolling around at the bottom of my bag with old receipts—and he just clamped down on it and instantly quieted down. It’s made of food-grade silicone, completely BPA-free, and the little textured bumps on the bamboo part seemed to really dig into his sore gums in a way that he loved. I actually started putting it in the fridge so it would get cold, which is a trick my mother-in-law completely scoffed at, but whatever, it worked.

And then there are the toys. The sheer volume of hazardous, lead-paint-covered plastic that the older generation saved in their attics for thirty years is staggering. Mark's mom brought over a box of his old toys that smelled intensely like mildew and regret. I practically threw myself over the trash can to hide them.

Mark eventually ordered the Gentle Baby Building Block Set to appease his mom's desire for Leo to have blocks. I'll be honest, they're just okay. Like, they're blocks. They're squishy and made of soft rubber, which is actually kind of nice because when Leo inevitably throws them at the dog, nobody gets hurt. They have little numbers and animals on them, and supposedly they're great for logical thinking, but honestly, Leo mostly just tries to chew on them. They're totally fine, they do the job, but they aren't some miraculous parenting hack. They just look nice in the pastel macaron colors and they don't contain formaldehyde, which is a desperately low bar for toys, but here we're.

How to genuinely deal with them

So how do you honestly survive the constant barrage of outdated, sometimes dangerous advice from the very people who gave you life?

Instead of getting into a massive, emotionally draining argument about the survivorship bias of their generation, I highly suggest just throwing your doctor squarely under the bus. It works every single time. It completely removes the personal judgment from the equation.

When my mom tried to give Maya a bottle of water because it was a hot day in July—which my doctor specifically warned me against because infant kidneys are basically just tiny, inefficient beans that can't handle plain water and can lead to water intoxication—I didn't yell at her. I just sighed heavily and said, "I know, Mom, it makes so much sense to give her water, but Dr. Evans is so insanely strict about these new WHO guidelines and she'll literally yell at me at our next appointment if I do."

It turns it into you and your mom against the big, mean doctor. It's cowardly, yes. But I'm so tired, you guys. I don't have the bandwidth to teach a masterclass on modern pediatric science while I'm operating on four hours of broken sleep.

We're all just doing the best we can. They loved us enough to keep us alive with the tools they had at the time, and we love our kids enough to do better now that we know better.

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Questions you're probably asking yourself while hiding in the bathroom

Why are older people so obsessed with babies wearing hats and blankets?

Oh my god, the temperature obsession is real. I think it comes from a time before central heating was super reliable, or maybe they just genuinely feel cold all the time now? But my doctor was always warning me that overheating is a huge SIDS risk, so I constantly have to intercept my mother-in-law before she swaddles my sweaty, red-faced infant in yet another layer of fleece. Just blame the doctor and strip the baby down.

Is it really that bad if they give the baby a little bit of water?

Yeah, it seriously is, which blew my mind because water seems so harmless! But apparently, babies under six months get all their hydration from breastmilk or formula, and giving them water messes up their tiny little kidneys and dilutes the sodium in their blood. My doctor looked terrified when I asked about it. So stick to milk, even when it's super hot outside.

How do I tell my parents their old crib is a death trap?

You have to be brutal but quick about it. Drop-side cribs were literally banned by the government because babies were getting trapped in them. I just told my dad, "Hey, it's illegal to even sell these now because of the safety recalls, so we're just going to use this flat, boring modern mattress instead." You don't have to debate it. Just don't let them set it up.

What do I do when they say "You survived just fine!"

This phrase makes me want to scream into a pillow. I usually just take a deep breath and say something like, "I know I survived, but safety rules changed because a lot of babies didn't, and I'm just too anxious to risk it." It validates their past choices while firmly shutting down the current conversation. And then I immediately change the subject to something safe, like the weather or how much coffee I need.