Our Stories: My First Child!

A first child changes your entire life. It means sleepless nights, having your life controlled by something outside of you, marriage crises - but also the greatest joy that men or women can imagine. The first smile, the first steps, the first day at school - years that seem precious, and which continue until the arrival of the stressful years of puberty... But with the first child, these too are experienced by every parent in a very special way. And of course, things are different for each mother, each father. While today, nearly every child was planned, a conscious choice, most parents in the 1950s and 1960s were forced by the arrival of a first child into their socially prescribed parental roles. The term “postpartum depression” was unknown, no one talked about the "tooth fairy," no one gave a thought to how long a child should be allowed to cry - parenting was simpler. Back then, every housewife and mother looked forward to the birth of her first child, and in many respects, was less beset with anxiety and insecurity than many professional women today. Breast or bottle feed? Daycare center or nanny? Chinese classes or yoga for children? Today, first children have for the most part older mothers who no longer approach parenting naively or matter-of-factly, and as a result, can offer their children more. 

"My first child" presents a piece of North German social history. Whether in the countryside of Schleswig-Holstein, in the towns of in Rostock or Schwerin, on the island of Norderney, or a spa town in the Harz - we experience people and their stories. Humorous, entertaining, enthralling, narrated with a wink, interspersed with private home movies that document the early lives of first children and historic images from various decades, and finally the first children themselves - most of whom are by now adults! 

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