At no time in history have parents been more unsure of their parental role.

This a quote I read on the Parenting with Love and Logic homepage. I feel like this is something I hear all the time, adapted to various roles; "Teachers are unsure of their role as effective teachers. Parents are unsure how to be effective parents. Teenagers are unsure of their roles, college grads are unsure of theirs... People are unsure of how to be effective people." Why is NOW such a time of uncertainty? Did we just know what our roles were in the past, automatically, and never waver from that? Or did we just start thinking a generation or two ago? I read all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books as a kid, and NEVER did she say, "We were unsure of what our roles as pioneers were." They just got in a wagon and forged westward, and it was pretty damn tough! SO what has happened that is making us question every. single. aspect. of. our. lives???

I can say with very little doubt that our lives have gotten easier over the last several years. But at the same time, we have what seems to me like more people making more mistakes-- or maybe it's more opportunity for mistakes, and therefore everywhere you turn someone is doing stupid things. Things have gotten cloudier. We have more choices, more visibility-- everyone knows my 4 year old daughter has found her betrothed because it was on my Facebook status tonight. I see mothers posting their "Hey, it's BEER-thirty! LOLOL!!" statuses at 1pm, and as the daughter of a recovered alcoholic that makes me sad. On the other hand, no one knew when my dad started to drink earlier in the evening (even before the magical hour of 5pm) because I didn't tweet it. I can order a Netflix so my girls don't understand the drop in happiness when they get to the video store and Strawberry Shortcake is not on the shelf. And with all these CHOICES everywhere we turn and exposure to the 90th degree, our lives have gotten mixed up in the mire and are quite a lot more difficult. I read 1 or 2 parenting books a year, but am I a better mom than my mom was? The jury is out on that. I''ll bet as the years add up I will make just as many mistakes as her. But with all of this extra going on in our lives, we have lost track.

So what do we do when we are not sure if we are on the right path? My natural instinct is to go back to where we started from, and I see some moms trying really hard to simplify their lives. But without a simplier world, I just don't know how we are going to do that.

Yeah, I really think I should consider canceling my DisneyOn-Demand channel. For $3 a month I get thirty minutes a day that my kids are getting the highest entertainment value. That might actually be a bad thing.