2015 Trends in Parenting

The main goal of parenting hasn't changed through the ages: keep kids alive. But how we get there, and how we feel about it, changes all the time. Moms and dads follow trends that combine technology and kids, social change and the age-old desire to get dinner on the table without tears. Here are 11 parenting trends from 2015.

Smash cakes: No way are we letting babies wreck our one-of-a-kind, custom first birthday cakes. No way are we not letting them enjoy every moment of the day. Solution: their own cake to eat (or paint the high chair with) in whatever way they please.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Twenty20

With two full-time workers heading nearly half of all two-parent households, and the number of single parent households continually on the rise, home-cooked dinners are getting the squeeze. But 2015 was the year every parent in your Facebook feed tried food delivery services like Blue Apron, Sun Basket and Hello Fresh to get tasty meals on the table with minimal prep (and even less brain work). These subscription services dropped pre-measured, pre-portioned and often organic ingredients (plus recipes) right at your door between two and five times per week, making homemade family dinners somewhat doable in the unrelenting work/school/life grind.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Blue Apron

Parents are always on the lookout for sleep remedies for their little night owls, and the marketplace always has something claiming to be the silver bullet. In 2015, it was in the form of "The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep" book by Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin. With ugly drawings, lots of text and specific reading instructions, "The Rabbit" promised to get children from 2.5 to 9 years old to nod off within minutes of cracking the book's spine.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Crown Books

Health, happiness, good grades, great beauty—they all come down to one thing: sleep. And 2015 was the year we got serious about it. The National Sleep Foundation came out with guidelines that shocked even the most sleep-righteous of parents into realizing that their kids? They're not getting enough sleep. There was even a conference bringing together health practitioners, sleep researchers and media bigwigs to discuss this great deprivation of our times.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Twenty20

Last year saw the parental commiseration and mockery of Common Core, but this year is when parents started saying, "Enough is enough." Thousands of public school kids in dozens of states refused to show up for the spring standardized tests, opting out of the requirement in an effort to push back against stringent federal standards that have changed the focus of school from children as learners to children as test-takers. Policymakers got the message and even President Obama, whose administration is largely blamed for this classroom shift, said kids take too many tests.

The helicopter mom has landed. Between cries from universities and employers that young kids can't even to the publication of Jessica Lahey's "The Gift of Failure," parents took (baby steps) back in an effort to raise more resilient, risk-taking, self-assured kids.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY: Twenty20

As if there were some kind of collusion between the American Academy of Pediatrics and the showering industry, parents looking for some private moments to clean off got pretty good news this year. The AAP backed off its recommendation against screens for kids 2 years and younger. Instead, they said parents should use common sense, interact with their children while the screens are on and generally keep communication open to talk about what everyone's doing and when. And maybe send the kids outdoors once in awhile.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Twenty20

This is the year dads broke through (or at least cracked) the pink ceiling, at home and at work. The number of high-profile corporations lengthening their paid maternity leave and offering significant paid paternity leave for new dads snowballed.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Twenty20

Between presidential primary candidates positioning themselves as good for families to U.S. companies finally realizing short, unpaid maternity leave is bad for the bottom line, this year also saw a boost in postpartum benefits for a growing number of working moms. Netflix kicked things off by offering unlimited paid maternity leave. Microsoft added to its plan. Amazon and other tech companies made similar announcements. It's not everyone, but women have more options. A new start-up makes it easier to figure out the best places for women who want to start families to work.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Twenty20

With the publication of Anne-Marie Slaughter's book "Unfinished Business," a follow-up to her 2012 Atlantic piece "Why Women Still Can't Have it All," and men getting in on the work-life balance through lawsuits, 2015 may be the watershed year for working families and keeping women in the workplace. Slaughter writes that slowing down, or stepping away from work for a while, doesn't have to mean the end of career advancement or reaching goals, just a different kind of timing. Workplace policies, though, need to shift with that.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Twenty20

Facebook has been booting images of breastfeeding moms from its feeds for years, but Instragram became a hotspot for posting pics of moms nursing their babies. And why not? Our phones document our new haircuts and the baby's first steps. Why not a couple of shots at mealtime? Breastfeeding selfies became so ubiquitous this year, they even got their own mash-up name: the brelfie.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Amy Wruble