Parenting has likely never been easy. However, the same general principles have always applied. Care for your children by providing food, clothing, and a safe environment to live in. Teach them right from wrong. Ensure they learn the ways of the world and develop into a productive member of society. Seems easy enough, right?! Unfortunately, there are always outside factors working against you, creating challenges along the way.

Every generation believes they had things worse than the one after it. The "I had to walk in the cold, uphill both ways" kind of worse. When it comes to parenting and the challenges of raising kids, there is no doubt in my mind we have everyone beat. Hands down!

The invention of the Internet alone was a major game changer. It took parenting from the privacy of your living room to being blasted on the world wide web for everyone to see and comment on. Not only did that compound the pressure of being a parent, but it has added to the challenges of raising kids.

Technology moves at the speed of light. Things are bound to continue getting harder as the years go by. This is why it is so important for parents to band together. Support each other. After all, it takes a village. At the rate things are changing, it may soon take more than a village. If we are honest, it already does.

Here are 15 ways parenting is so much more challenging now than it has ever been before:

15 Hello Mama

I didn't have my first cell phone until I was in college. Yes, I just dated myself with that. Kids today are getting cell phones before the age of 10. Not just cell phones, smart phones! That is a lot of freedom being handed over at such a young age without a lot of control for the parent. Long gone are the days of kids sitting in common areas of the house talking to friends on the phone. They now have the ability to walk away when they talk. By away, I mean far away. Add in the ability to send text messages and the complexities just compounded. It makes it much harder for a parent to know the conversations are appropriate and happening during hours of the day that make sense. Parents have had to learn to be smart about how they monitor and stay up with the technology.

14 Hiding Behind The Screen

Social media, especially Facebook, takes friendship to a new level. Friends, friends of friends, and even non friends begin following each other. Parents band together to monitor who their kids are interacting with ensuring their profiles are set to private. Kids have the ability to update their status, tag friends, post videos, and list exactly where they are around the clock. Monitoring that and setting rules is a must. Then there are the conversations and comments. It can quickly spiral out of control. The beauty (or not so beauty) of Facebook is the ability of kids to hide behind their keyboard and say things they would never actually say in person. Kids can be mean! More opportunity for judgement, very public judgement. Popularity is deemed by the number of "likes" your kid gets. Public arguments turn into bullying. It is all magnified by social media. Cleaning up messes and keeping your kid safe is a feat.

13 Life In Pictures

Instagram can be a beautiful place. Life in pictures is fun. Still the same worries about monitoring who follows your child's account. However, it's certainly kinder than Facebook! Have you noticed how perfect everyone's lives are? When did perfect become the standard? Kids are way into Instagram. Everyone has a cell phone and pictures are posted instantly for the world to see. The need to fit in has always existed. The public way in which people are sharing details of their lives takes things to a new level. There is a ton of pressure to post pictures of their awesome lives. The need to create the perfect image every time and being at all the right places with all the right people. It is a lot to handle! As a parent, you need to make sure your kids are ready to handle that stress and they will make good decisions.

12 Big Expectations

In today's world, there is a high expectation set for parents. Everything must be perfect. Pinterest pushes the bar just a bit higher. As if your kids needed any help with their "I want" list. It is no longer considered acceptable to just bake a cake and have a birthday party at home with the family or let your kids entertain themselves. Parents must devote every waking minute to building colorful sensory rice bins, carving roses out of vegetables to pack a lunch, buying all the latest brands, and creating bedroom spaces that would make Pottery Barn come knocking. On top of all that make sure you keep a perfectly clean home, make healthy from-scratch dinners every night, and play 20 questions at dinner and bedtime to get to know your child. No pressure though! Sleep is totally over rated and there is the magical drink called coffee. It makes everything just perfect.

11 Everything At Your Fingertips

And I do mean everything! With the birth of the internet came the rise of pornography. Gone are the days of simply monitoring the stack of Playboy magazines and late night Cinemax to ensure the kids' eyes aren't tainted. The internet is full of every kind of fetish you never knew existed! Those smart phones your kids carry? It has a direct link, anytime. Kids are rapidly learning about the birds and the bees at younger ages than ever before. It's tough at a young age to determine what is appropriate and normal. Hence the rise of sexting and nude photos being texted around like they are baseball cards. Parents need to be ahead of the curve on this one and that curve is constantly evolving. Difficult conversations are now required where they used to be glossed over. Things that used to be considered age appropriate at 15, are now necessary topics at 10.

10 Stranger Danger

Have you heard of the number of popular online video games that are now being touted as hot breeding grounds for pedophiles? Seemingly innocent games where your kids can talk to other kids in a chat room while playing that are actually danger zones. They aren't always kids on the other side. Stranger danger used to mean avoiding the weird guy in the van offering candy. Now it means helping kids understand their friends on the other end of the computer may not really be friends after all. Add in the complexities of GPS locations being given away through cell phone settings and you've got yourself a really scary parenting scenario. Keeping your kids safe is a parent's top priority. You wouldn't think technology and video games would make it that much harder. Unfortunately, they do. In today's world what you don't know could really hurt you. It's important to stay informed.

9 Living Under A Microscope

With the birth of the sanctimommy came a rise in parenting labels. There are attachment moms, helicopter moms, free range moms, crunchy moms, and recently I saw someone referred to as a lifeguard mom. Each one attempts to classify based on a basic set of principles, behaviors, and beliefs because obviously we have nothing better to do than to evaluate everyone else's parenting style. Moms are criticized left and right for the things they do regardless of the choices they make. Things that were once considered completely acceptable are now viewed as lazy or just down right bad parenting. In my opinion, it's been taken way too far! It feels as if all eyes are on you every single move you make. The pressure is so intense sometimes it can cause you to pause and reconsider what you even share with the outside world for fear of someone lashing out like a crazy person.

8 Lack Of Support

Today it's not just about classifying and evaluating parenting styles, people are down right nasty when it comes to mom shaming! If you aren't wearing all the right fashions, buying only the greenest organic products, and making exactly the same parenting decisions as every other person out there (impossible to do by the way) then you are a total failure that shouldn't be raising children. At least that is what they would like you to believe. I thought high school ended when I graduated? Moms struggle to make mom friends because quite frankly they are afraid to open up to others for fear of being rejected or criticized. If it's not fear, it's being over committed or unwilling to invest in friends. It just takes way more effort than you have to give while raising little ones. It all makes motherhood a pretty lonely place. It takes a village, but what happens when you don't have a village?

7 Too Much Reality

Part of parenting is teaching your kids what it's like in the real world. This gets increasingly challenging as more and more reality shows start to fill our DVR. I remember my Mom being very concerned about us watching The Real World when it first debuted. She was afraid we would believe that is what the outside world was like (7 strangers living together in a house with video cameras recording everything). While college sure had it's moments, I have always understood the difference between reality and reality TV. However, I'm not sure today's kids have the same vantage point being exposed at such a young age. We live in a world where everyone knows someone (or knows someone that knows someone) who has been on a reality TV show. Kids pageants, dancing, dating, getting a job, teen pregnancy, getting engaged, following rich people around...it's all covered. Plus, it sets an unrealistic expectation of life.

6 Play Vs Entertainment

Remember the days when you left your house to roam the neighborhood and play with the other kids until it was dark and you returned home for dinner? Most of the time you were gone all day. Your parents never knew exactly where you were at any given time, but you were always within earshot. Mom had time to focus on her own to-do list. Those days are long gone. The expectations for parents have changed. It is now Mom's responsibility to entertain the children and engage with them all day. Not only that, the selected activities need to have educational or developmental value. It's not acceptable for kids to know the word bored. We keep them over scheduled and busy. This puts a lot of pressure on parents. This is part of the reason we don't have time for meaningful friendships and support. We are stressed and over committed.

5 Instant Gratification

Everything is available instantly thanks to the Internet and Google, and it is killing our ability to parent effectively. Have you heard of the famous marshmallow test? Young kids were given one marshmallow and told they could eat it now or wait for 15-minutes and receive 2 marshmallows. The tester then left the marshmallow on the table and left the room to watch. These kids were followed. Years later it was determined those that delayed gratification were deemed more successful due to their skills related to patience, self-control, and delayed gratification. How do we teach these things living in a world of instant gratification? What little patience we had before is now non-existent. Parents want to provide more for their kids than they had themselves so there is no precedent to wait or earn something on your own. How times have changed. We want everything and we want it now.

4 Keeping Up With Jones

I'm pretty sure keeping up with the Jones has always been a thing. However, it seems the Jones may have way more money and expensive taste than they ever did before. Not only is there pressure to keep up with the latest fashions and brands, but it seems simply having more things at younger ages is the goal. At least there is pressure for that to be the goal. I didn't have my first cell phone until I was in college. Today, kids are begging their parents for smart phones before the age of 10. Instead of saying no, kids are getting their way because it's considered the norm. Parents that make a stand to wait until certain ages to give in to certain things are finding it difficult to live up to those ideals. Conflict with their kids and ridicule from other parents make saying no so much harder. It's a constant battle.

3 We Are All Exhausted

I swear no one sleeps anymore. We are all beyond exhausted. There is some truth to all of the "mombie" memes. Everyone is completely over scheduled and over committed. There is soccer, ballet, PTA, church, volunteering, football, cheerleading, and somewhere we have to fit in homework and school. Our days are spent running from one appointment to the next. We break our backs bending over to accommodate everything we possibly can so our kids have a life that is better than what we had. I honestly never thought what I had was that bad. However, I get the desire to hope for more for my children. I want them to have everything I can give them. I just never thought I would have to trade in sleep and sanity to get it. Our expectations are through the roof making it all the more difficult to attain those ideals. Regardless, we try like crazy.

2 What Everyone Else Thinks

The moment you become pregnant, parenting advice is central to everything you do. Between pregnancy books, parenting books, self help books, and mom blogs there is no shortage of tips being thrust your direction. Even random strangers feel the urge to share their two cents about what you should and shouldn't be doing when it comes to raising your kids. It's hard not to think about what everyone else will think of decisions you are making. It certainly adds a new dynamic that didn't seem to exist before. Having complete strangers feel as if they have a vested interest is a little strange. They somehow make you feel as if you need to elevate your already high standards just to fit in. Even more pressure. While we may say we don't care what everyone else thinks. It still creeps in and gives us reason to pause, which makes parenting so much harder.

1 Why The Uneven Stigma?

Stigma has popped up into every aspect of parenting. It pits the stay-at-home mom against the working mom to determine which role is more important. There is even an uneven stigma between moms and dads related to what is expected from each role. When dad stays home with the kids, it is considered a huge sacrifice. He receives a pat on the back and it is seen as a big deal. Mom stays home with the kids and she gets nothing. It is viewed as her role to clean, cook, and raise children. No big deal. So in today's world where roles are swapped, it adds complexity to relationships as everyone struggles to feel adequate or even good enough. There is always a standard to compare yourself, and stigmas make you play mind games. Why can't we all just accept that both parents should be expected to pull equal weight? Regardless of how it is done, raising kids is the most important job after all!