10 things parents say they’ll never give to their children

Remember those days before children? The day you stood in the queue at the supermarket and looked across at the distraught baby crying for it’s dummy and you saying in your head “I will never give my baby a dummy”!

Come on be honest, we have all thought it about something we see another parent doing.

Children !

Whether it is a dummies, bottle feeding, dirty toy or blankie and don’t get us started on technology., we all have an opinion until we find ourselves in those shoes.

So it is not a surprise to see that a recent study has uncovered the most likely parenting decisions that mothers and fathers say they will never make but ultimately end up doing, with using dummies, bottle feeding and introducing technology at an early age the most common.

Furthermore, 9 out of 10 respondents admitted to feeling too much pressure to stick to a certain set of rules when their child was born.

Becoming a parent is one of the most rewarding journeys, but it’s hard to understand how to handle different parenting situations, with the majority of those quizzed admitting they’ve done things as a parents they said they’d never do.

What’s more, the top advice parents would give expecting parents has been revealed
as ‘not allowing yourself to feel guilt-tripped by professionals’.

All respondents were firstly asked if they read any books or other materials (magazines, blogs, leaflets etc) to prepare them for the arrival of their child; 93% said they did.

These participants were then asked if they felt these materials had helped them at all in the lead up to the birth, to which the majority 40% said they helped ‘a lot’, 35% said they helped ‘somewhat’ and the remaining 25% said they did not help at all.

Wanting to delve deeper, researchers asked participants if there was anything they’d always planned not to do as a parent that they ended up doing once their children arrived, with 97% stating there was.

These participants were asked to state what their most commonly backtracked decision had been and were able to select as many answers as were appropriate.

The following ten answers emerged as the most common responses:

Wanting to find out more, all those taking part were asked if doing these things made them feel guilty to which 72% said they did.

All respondents were then asked, “Do you think there is too much pressure on parents to do things by the book?” with more than 9 in 10 parents (93%) saying they believed this was true.

Finally, parents taking part in the study were asked what one piece of advice they would give to expectant mothers and fathers; 67% said ‘do not be guilt-tripped by professionals’, 19% answered ‘don’t be too hard on yourself’ and the remaining 14% said to ‘have fun’ with it.