No swearing. No violent toys. No sleepovers. No mature topics. These are just some of the common rules that a lot of Millennial parents have in their households. It’s not that we’re overly strict. For many of us, we’re simply keen on preserving what’s left of childhood innocence in the digital age. Kids will inevitably learn about a word or a topic on YouTube (hopefully not YouTube 🙏, but likely), and be exposed to online porn 🙈. Preventing or at least delaying that, to some extent, gives parents peace of mind.

But this wasn’t the case when we were growing up.

A Less Innocent Analog Time

For better or worse, parents in the ‘90s were more relaxed when it came to censoring aspects of “real life.” They didn’t have to worry about their kids getting bullied on Instagram, or learning about something they shouldn’t on ChatGPT. There wasn’t a fear of young boys being radicalized by the alt-right on YouTube.

So it wasn’t unusual to overhear dads swearing at Monday Night Football on TV, or telling a crude joke to uncles after a few drinks at Thanksgiving. Moms in the ‘90s regularly gossiped to friends about the latest local cold case, without worrying how that might affect little ears. Everyone knew the names Jaycee Dugard and Michael Dunahee, and parents relied on these kidnapping cases to scare their own kids straight about wandering off in public – or at least my mom did.

There was less concern over kids playing with “violent” toys, too. Every kid tormented their younger siblings and cousins with Nerf Guns, and Super Soakers went hand-in-hand with Slip N Slides. Everyone knows that slap bracelets were…

For the past 10 weeks, I’ve taken my toddler to a gymnastics class every Sunday morning. His level of participation is rather tepid, despite bribing him with a muffin afterwards from the coffee shop next door. So for 45 minutes starting at 9 am, I do a lot of gymnastics in hopes that my enthusiasm will eventually rub off.

We signed up for gymnastics because honestly, I wanted something to get us out the door on Sunday mornings that would help tire him out. Improvement of gross motor skills and having fun are also perks, plus we know three other families joining. Before we started gymnastics, we did swimming, and on Saturdays, he takes a year-long music class. When you take into account his full-day preschool from Mondays to Fridays, my kid has an activity scheduled every day of the week – and he’s barely three.

The Apple Never Falls Far

In many ways, my child is just like me. When I was in preschool back in the late ‘80s, I was featured alongside a couple other high-achieving toddlers in a local news broadcast titled, “Are we pushing our kids too far?” For a week, a cameraman followed me around to ballet lessons and (finger) painting class while a reporter interviewed my mom. The verdict on the program’s titular query? Maybe. And we were certainly an unusual bunch for the times.

Many of my friends spent their childhoods leading much less scheduled and arguably chiller lives. Some of them ran track, others sang in choir, and a few were even involved in Brownies and then Girl Guides, which took them away on camping trips some weekends. But rarely did they…

The first time I hired a babysitter, I went through a childcare agency. If your mind immediately pictured Kristy, Claudia, and the other Stoneybrook tweens of The Baby-Sitters Club (books and movie) meeting after school to decide who would show up at my door, you could not be more wrong.

After providing the agency details about the job and my requirements for a suitable candidate, a 30-something-year-old Montessori teaching assistant with a Masters degree came to put my 11-month old to bed while my husband and I were out for dinner for a few hours. Everything went smoothly, my anxious mama heart felt relatively at ease leaving my firstborn with this stranger, and I forked over $150 at the end of the night.

The thing is, this babysitter’s age and qualifications have been the norm, and not the exception, for all of the people we’ve hired to watch our kids since. Are Millennials that reluctant to leave their children with the tween babysitters we once were?

The Days of Kids Minding Kids

I was 11 years old when my mom signed me up for a Red Cross Babysitting course, which I took at our nearby community centre. Over eight weeks, I learned some basic first aid, as well as how to change diapers, spoonfeed a baby, play with a toddler, and make “safe choices.”

When I passed the course and received my very official certification card with my name on it, my mom put me to work – looking after my younger sisters, ordering us pizza for dinner, and instructing them to “turn off the TV and go upstairs to bed” at 8pm – while she and my dad went…