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A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

• gravstar 5y ago
  "A shift in American family values" as if there ever was a unifying "American family values". Selfishness, poor communication skills, and a lack of experience - as always - fuels estrangement.
• SQueeeeeL 5y ago
  The world became big and complicated while the older generation was already fat on their success. It's very hard for a 55 year old manager of a small town bank to understand his daughter literally will not have the same opportunities he had as globalization eats all of the small town opportunities. She'll almost certainly have to move to a city and probably utilize computers all day, get a serious education in an engineering field. The fact that the parent was so absorbed in their own life this doesn't occur to them until literally their child exiles them from their life for being toxic is just wild.
  • failwhaleshark 5y ago
    People with different values and living situations can understand each other if they want to. It is factually true that after the age of majority, family relationships technically become optional. Burning bridges for petty reasons or annoyances would be a terrible idea: there's no one like family. I've befriended a few sane, educated, elderly homeless people. Turning your back on your parents if they haven't done anything "wrong" would be coldly, cruelly throwing them away like garbage. That's what happened in Korea and the suicide rates are awful. It's disgusting and embarrassing. In my case, I haven't talked to my father in 25 years because he is very much a petty, unstable, irrational, unforgiving, un-empathetic, pathetic, unreasonable, hateful, venomous narcissist no one likes, my mother escaped, and he browbeat his late parents to take all of their money when my mother (their nearly adopted daughter/daugther-in-law) needed it more. If it weren't for the terrible way he treated people and the terrible things he's done (like molest my cousin), I would at least still want to know him. I'm close to my mom.
  • wutbrodo 5y ago
    I feel like you skipped a step here. Why would needing to move to a city and use computers cause "toxic" behavior?
    • everdrive 5y ago
      >Why would needing to move to a city and use computers cause "toxic" behavior? What if you don't want to do those two things?
      • wutbrodo 5y ago
        I understand this even less. A child being forced by the economy to be a white collar urban worker would automatically cause their parents to behave toxically towards them? Again, I feel like steps are being skipped here. I'm not saying it's wrong, just that I don't understand the connection and would appreciate elaboration.
    • Guest42 5y ago
      My interpreting of the use of the word “toxic” is that there is an unbridgeable communication and understanding gap between generations when it comes to professional opportunities. In 2009, I had someone in the older generation tell me that success is simple, just have to get a temp job like they did in finance and rent an apartment.
      • ne0flex 5y ago
        I'm willing to bet that one of the largest contributing factors to a child's resentment is the gap in expectations between generations (My parents would say to apply for a job in-store, but then I would be told to apply online). I'd tell them that asking in-store doesn't work but my parents just didn't seem to understand that things operate differently now.
        • deleted 5y ago
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  • cookieswumchorr 5y ago
    due to the exponential nature of progress, the span between ourselves and our kids will be greater than between us and our parents. whenever I read about how evil the boomers are, I imagine how we will be getting it one day for reasons nobody would have thought of today
    • tablespoon 5y ago
      > due to the exponential nature of progress, the span between ourselves and our kids will be greater than between us and our parents. whenever I read about how evil the boomers are, I imagine how we will be getting it one day for reasons nobody would have thought of today Which supports the argument that such rapid change should be slowed down, because it's anti-human.
      • cookieswumchorr 5y ago
        good luck slowing it down though. It might work in one country, but the result will only be this one country falling behind and becoming an irrelevant province of the earth. so not unless we have a world government one day. Then indeed we could end up in a society that is balanced and stable for indefinite time, like a isolated tribe in the amazonas, with thousands of years at the same stage of progress, just at a larger scale. This is btw one of the possible explanations of Fermi's paradox
        • tablespoon 5y ago
          > It might work in one country, but the result will only be this one country falling behind and becoming an irrelevant province of the earth. I really doubt that, but that's one of the boogeymen that scares us away from questioning a lot of things. It probably comes from false assumptions like "'we're' smart" or the "market makes the ideal decision", so all other paths except the one taken were inferior, perhaps fatally so.
          • cookieswumchorr 5y ago
            mmh, but really. You can pass laws forbidding certain stuff. But you cannot enforce that globally. Bans on certain weapons do work to some extent, but there are still people creating and using them. And these things are not only unethical, but also not really useful. Every attempt to use them ended badly for those who tried. Now imagine ruling out a technology that is effective and profitable and not so obviously unethical.
  • 1123581321 5y ago
    I know middle-aged managers of small town banks. They are encouraging their children to take their careers completely differently. You might see the entitled “just walk in and apply” from someone who worked their way up into an insulated position at a large Chase branch, but you won’t see it in a modest position in a small town that directly encounters dozens of struggling people every week.
  • travisgriggs 5y ago
    > It's very hard for a 55 year old manager of a small town bank to understand his daughter literally will not have the same opportunities he had as globalization eats all of the small town opportunities. I am 50. I make good money as a software developer in an agrarian community of 50,000. I have 4 children with one left at home. It IS (and has been) very clear to me that my children are having a harder time enjoying the same opportunities I have. Which makes me profoundly sad and frustrated. The comforts and excess I do enjoy, can't offset that, as much as I am willing to try. So I'm not sure what the conclusion you're reaching here is? Are you saying that bank managers (and other moderately successful/wealthy people) are inherently self absorbed?
    • cmh89 5y ago
      From my experience it's that moderately well-off to well-off older folks rarely recognize that the opportunities that enabled their lifestyle don't exist anymore. For example, when I was in high school, I was told that just getting any college degree would enable me to get into a good paying career, or talking with older folks about buying a home, they rarely understand how unaffordable homes are now. Lots of older folks also seem to be completely surprised that people in their 20s and 30s don't want kids simply because of the cost. Or student loan debt, how many times have I heard someone in their 50s+ talk about how they worked hard so they didn't have any student loans when they left school while failing to acknowledge how much cheaper school was in the past? Not all old people are unaware, but a significant amount are oblivious to how much worse the world is today.
      • travisgriggs 5y ago
        Great points. I know I've experience miscommunication going both ways with this. The problem is that history does not repeat itself. It rhymes with itself. This means that "do it the way we did it" won't work. And is frustrating for younger generations. But it also means it's stupid to ignore the rhymes and ignore near and present and easily lectured history available. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater kind of thing. It's hard to navigate this. A great example of this (to me) is the "getting a job" thing. The boomer advice would be that you "pound the pavement", "call back", etc. Younger people are frustrated with how out of touch this is, because even if they're willing to try, human resources and other forms of automation have rendered this just about pointless. And yet... the value of networking is stronger than ever. The better advice from the boomer would be to realize that the "technique" they used was about networking with and impressing potential employers, admit that those techniques are no longer relevant, but that the value of networking into an organization still has a lot of influence on whether you're going to work there or not. This is of course generalized, and prone to a litany of counter exceptions. Because all of these "make life better" are rarely absolute, but more stochastic in nature.
  • brandonmenc 5y ago
    > It's very hard for a 55 year old manager of a small town bank to understand his daughter literally will not have the same opportunities he had as globalization eats all of the small town opportunities. Not sure where you're from, but everyone I know in their 50s (and 60s) lived under the constant threat of losing their job to macroeconomic and market forces beyond their control. Many of them did.
• treespace88 5y ago
  If find it interesting that divorce is not mentioned. The 70 year olds today are the first major wave of divorce. It’s hard hear an older generation talk about duty and responsibility now, when 40 years ago they divorced to have a happier life.
  • cookieswumchorr 5y ago
    but it is mentioned, more then once. And it does increase the risk of estrangement, which you would expect. Whatever. One way ore another, once we grow old we become more dependent, physically and psychologically. Finally, we die. This last step we make alone no matter what happened before
  • motohagiography 5y ago
    > Why would divorce increase the risk? In my clinical work I have seen how divorce can create a radical realignment of long-held bonds of loyalty, gratitude, and obligation in a family. It can tempt one parent to poison the child against the other. It can cause children to reexamine their lives prior to divorce and shift their perspective so they now support one parent and oppose the other. It can bring in new people—stepparents or stepsiblings—to compete with the child for emotional or material resources. Divorce—as well as the separation of parents who never married—can alter the gravitational trajectories of a family so that, over time, members spin further and further out of one another’s reach. And when they do, they might not feel compelled to return. Appears it was mentioned specifically and in-depth.
    • morpheos137 5y ago
      I agree the impact of divorce on children is often over looked. In many cases the damage is far worse to the developing child than to the people actually getting divorced. The parents get freedom, the child gets a broken family where the top priority is not as it should be biologically, raising a well adjusted child into a competent adult, but rather with the parents meeting their own needs at the expense of the child. Then when the child is an adult and not well adjusted, often in large part due to consequences of the divorce and idiosyncratic needs that were overlooked by parents prioritising themselves, the parents can not understand why the divorce had such a large impact on the child. What they miss in their narcissitic myopia is that while mom and dad already had grown up into stable well balanced person the child had not and the process was interrupted by the divorce and sequelae.
• cogman10 5y ago
  As someone that was raised in a highly religious home, I have to wonder how much of estrangement has to do with the younger generation's abandonment of religion. Go to nearly any church and you'll see the primary demographic is older individuals. In my younger days, it was quite a bit more even. Millennials and Gen Z have dumped religion and with it a lot of the social norms. For example, homosexuality. Most Millennials and Gen Z have no problem with someone being gay. It's socially acceptable. Yet just a couple of decades ago one of the hardest hitting insults you could throw at someone was suggesting they weren't straight. I wish more authors/researchers would explore this.
  • iammisc 5y ago
    I agree... I don't relate to these articles at all. My parents are religious, and yeah, in some ways they're out of touch, but they're not so out of touch as this article makes them out to be. All old people tend to be slightly out of touch with the younger generation. My grandparents didn't always understand my parents. Such is the way of the world.
    • michaelscott 5y ago
      I think the article is talking about estrangement proper, where children and parents do not talk to each other at all, not that they engage but sometimes don't understand one another. The former is more serious, the latter is expected.
      • iammisc 5y ago
        I don't think I understand that either. My view of family is definitely one of obligation not understanding.
        • polka_haunts_us 5y ago
          I think some young people don't view family as obligatory if it negatively affects them. My sister and I would certainly classify ourselves as such. My sister rather intentionally after graduating college cut contact with my mom to a very minimal amount, and I remember vividly my mom being in tears on a frequent basis because my sister had blocked her facebook account and wasn't responding to her daily emails about rather invasive topics that frankly, were none of her damn business. One time my mom asked me to do some chore, and after I came in I realized by looking at my browsing history that she had snuck into my room to use my facebook to snoop on my sister. It's absolutely mental. Not that she has any real room to protest here, she deliberately estranged herself in the very complete sense from her parents and sisters, I've never met a single person on that side of the family despite them living an hour away. In kind of a macro sense I appreciate my parents raising me, but I do not consider continued contact with them obligatory in any way, shape, or form, and certainly not at the level that my parents in particular want that relationship.
• throwaway284534 5y ago
  IMO, these parents are often narcissistic people who aren’t prepared or even capable of recognizing what their grown children want from them. Ironically, both sides want the same kind of acceptance from one another: “Will you unconditionally accept me and my lifestyle?” “Will you accept that I’m not fully capable of understanding your needs, and therefore cannot respect you as you’d like?” Contemporary expectations ask that estranged parents humble themselves and become emotionally vulnerable to their child, an already difficult task that’s made harder with age and misaligned cultural values. And after already giving up so much of their lives, they may think their children are behaving like overgrown and entitled brats. Personally, I don’t believe these estranged parents really, truly want their children back in their lives. They may not admit it, but they’re not looking for a stronger relationship as equals — they want their child to behave as the caretaker they had sacrificed so much of their lives for. If anyone’s interested, I wrote up a personal essay on my own bout with narcissistic family. https://www.inherentmag.com/opinion-1/splenda-love https://www.inherentmag.com/opinion-1/splenda-love Meta: I’ve seen this comment fluctuate up and down 10 points in less than 10 minutes. If I’ve poked your wound, I’d be happy to hear why.
  • iammisc 5y ago
    > They may not admit it, but they’re not looking for a stronger relationship as equals Your parents will never be your equals. Have you considered that your expectations of equality are themselves a misaligned cultural values? My goodness, my mother was deferential to my grandmother up until the day she died.
    • throwaway284534 5y ago
      Hey, thanks for replying. I can’t say I agree with your reasoning though. I’ve seen first hand what kind of damage a generational chain does to a family. Daughters hating their mothers until their dying breath, only to carry that same trauma into a strained relationship with their children. The cycle repeats until a grown child decides to either consciously change this behavior with their own children, or distance themselves from their parent. Not to be too dramatic, I believe abusive parents will metaphorically poison their families well beyond their own lives. Cutting that rot out of the tree is sometimes a way to save the healthier branches.
• scandox 5y ago
  They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
  • pacaro 5y ago
    For those who might not know the reference this is "This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin
    • pacaro 5y ago
      A little more digging finds that it was written in 1971, so echoing in a sense other comments on here that this isn't such a new observation
      • klenwell 5y ago
        But "the verse" in question refers to the Old Testament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_sin#Judaism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_sin#Judaism
  • Jtsummers 5y ago
    https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-ver... Philip Larkin. You ought to give credit when you quote something like this.
    • scandox 5y ago
      I honestly thought most people would recognize it. It just reads so well as a prose comment, that I didn't want to spoil its beauty.
• saiya-jin 5y ago
  I'd say if mentally sound and healthy child repeatedly accuses their own parents of fucked up childhood so much they are cutting all ties, then they really had one thanks to them. If parents refuse to even acknowledge this and seek amendments, what other course is there? Let them poison even your adult life and your kids? I mean who doesn't know those self-absorbed people for whom the rest of the world is to be used for their own gains. Such people are never good parents, and the confirmation of this is how they children behave and think as adults. The best of those realize this and create their own life path, in which there is no place for toxic people, parents or not. Often a string of 'friendships' which is more about we're similar and the rest of the folks are weird/hates us, so lets hang out. Often string of relationships, one messier than the other. Then big regrets when old, since all the fuckery eventually pays back, often big time. Or they just compare their life with somebody living without big failures and not being unlucky when it comes ie to health. I have endless sympathy for those who did all the right things and still ended up miserably. But those who repeatedly dig their own moral grave and then cry when in it are not worth spending much energy. People generally don't change that much.
• everdrive 5y ago
  >Estranged parents often tell me that their adult child is rewriting the history of their childhood, accusing them of things they didn’t do, and/or failing to acknowledge the ways in which the parent demonstrated their love and commitment. Adult children frequently say the parent is gaslighting them by not acknowledging the harm they caused or are still causing, failing to respect their boundaries, and/or being unwilling to accept the adult child’s requirements for a healthy relationship I'm still reading the article, but this bit stuck out like a sore thumb. The definition of the term "gaslighting" seems to have drifted in the last ten years. Previously, it meant something like "intentionally sewing doubt about a true fact in order to force a victim to question their own judgement." Currently, it seems to mean "Someone has failed to fully empathize with me and agree with my take on the situation." This second definition seems very childish, and it's unintentionally quite funny that the article specified that "adult children" felt gaslighted.
  • throwaway98797 5y ago
    The younger generation get social value by being the saddest person in the room. Sometimes, their stories are rightfully so and deserve our help. other times they reframe their lives negatively just to win the social game of their generation. Once they reframe they start to believe thier own narrative creating a vicious cycle. The older generation, has their own problems in arrogance and ignorance, but they cant even fathom a society of young people who would compete on suffering. The disconnect will grow.
    • tclancy 5y ago
      >The younger generation get social value by being the saddest person in the room. This is pretty much classic generation gapping, blaming the other side for not understanding How Things Are. I would suggest some of what this is is a change in power dynamics. It used to be society's expectations were such that you didn't talk about your shitty parents or complain about your lot in life. That led to a lot of sadness, it just wasn't visible. Now people are more comfortable talking about these things and it makes you feel icky.
      • 5y ago
• recursivedoubts 5y ago
  "Adult parents" are boomers. Boomers divorced at civilizationally unprecedented rates and are famous for being the "me" generation and "not trusting anyone over 30". It is unsurprising that they do not have great relationships with their children and grand-children, when compared with the past.
• Daishiman 5y ago
  I think if anything, the "shift" is more like an unveiling. There are and have always been extremely problematic issues in many families, it's just that in the past you would be denigrated for severing ties with your family for those reasons due to a sense of duty. So we now finally see the elephant in the room. We cannot go back to unseeing it, but we have to deal with it gracefully. To me this is just the continuing process of development of human empathy.
  • pmichaud 5y ago
    Yeah I mean, this is the claim / supposition: this isn't new, it's just not hidden anymore. But I think it's worth questioning whether the supposition is true or not, and not in the sense of "can I think of any examples of a dysfunctional family being exposed now that would not have been back then?" because when you're talking about a large population you can find examples of pretty much anything (including that a lot of dysfunction that would not have been tolerated in the past is now flying under the radar). Rather the right question (according to me) is: what are the broad trends of what is actually happening to hundreds of millions of people and what are some of the factors driving the trends?
    • kenjackson 5y ago
      The three biggest things I’ve seen cause estrangement are: 1. Coming out. I suspect that gay people always existed, but just didn’t come out. 2. Interracial relationships. Far less common in the past. And society doesn’t view them as negatively now, which changes the power balance. 3. Parental affairs. I suspect this is the one that always happened, but people just lived with it more. From my anecdotal list the problems are actually new. And except for the third, likely to get better.
      • pseudalopex 5y ago
        4. Abuse. Did you mean they aren't actually new?
        • 5y ago
• hooplah 5y ago
  Lots of parent hating in this thread. Really says more about your own EQ than it does about them. Just more Marxist bullshit, turn you against your cultural parents via tropes like "Ok boomer", "they are narcissistic", "life is harder now!", and "oh they're rich, we won't be". This thread will be ripe with religion bashing and ageism. Most of the talking points have already been spouted. No no no, I'm sure they must be the problem ;)
• watertom 5y ago
  Selfishness and Narcissism are IMHO the driving force for many of these estrangements. It's just more of the same from the Boomers, or the Me generation. They people who fully embraced the Me generation raised a group of children who make the me generation look like communal hippies. I work with people who are difficult at work because of their self centered view of the world, but when I listen to them talk about their families I am horrified by what they expect, to and from family members. I suspect that these people are a joy at work because nobody will tolerate their selfish behavior, so they need to behave. Almost to a person these difficult people have limited interaction with their children, initiated by the children because of the parents toxic self centered nature.
• zwieback 5y ago
  I don't think parent-child relationships were fundamentally better in the past, just read some Dickens or George Eliot or Henry James and you'll find plenty of agonizing both ways. The article headline suggests there's a "shift" but doesn't really go into enough detail to explain why a shift from relationships based on duty to relationships based on fulfilment would fuel estrangement. A little more data on that would be helpful.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    I would have thought that the lack of technology would distance kids from parents more. My great grandparents hopped on a boat to another country and never saw their parents again. The lack of cheap air travel would have made visiting family cross country impractical for most in decades past, but I would fly back to see family on mere long weekends.
    • zwieback 5y ago
      Good point. Unless you were the first-born and inherited the family farm you were probably forced to find your luck elsewhere and even 20 or 30 miles would mean effectively being separated from your parents for all but special occasions.
      • MattGaiser 5y ago
        I would be curious to know when the median human in each century saw their parents for the last time in Western society. As there were so many events where soldiers went off to war and settled where they conquered or colonists sailed off around the world never to return or conquistadors decided to just stop somewhere and marry a local woman.
        • asdff 5y ago
          I bet for the median human over history that they typically lived with their parents until they passed. You still see that in a lot of families.
  • 5y ago
• wonderwonder 5y ago
  Wonder how much of this is driven by social media and the internet today. The word 'Toxic' is just thrown around now and everything is 'Toxic'. Its a word that has ceased to have any real meaning but virtually every behavior that used to just be normal every day activity is Toxic. Everyone has flaws and no one has all the answers. Parents are just people doing the best they can and for the most part making what they think are the best decisions in the moment while struggling with everything that everyone else struggles with. Children want to put their parents on a pedestal and assume that all decisions; and any harm caused was intentional. There are of course bad parents and bad people and I don't mean to discount the effect that those people have on their kids. Social media is quick these days to tell you that your parents are narcissists when in reality they are just distracted trying to figure out what happened to their lives and trying to get by. At the end of every day I look back and see choices I made that were probably not great or see where I ignored my kid as I was trying to get something done for work. These things pile up and then are focused through the lens of the internet and suddenly you are a bad parent.
  • dcole2929 5y ago
    Here's the thing though. If you hit me with your car, it doesn't matter whether it was an accident or whether you intended to. You still caused me damage and it's still not crazy for me to hold you accountable. I may have more empathy in one case than another but if you refuse to accept responsibility for the harms you caused then yeah that empathy is likely going away. And this is what the author refers to near the beginning of the article: "Adult children frequently say the parent is gaslighting them by not acknowledging the harm they caused or are still causing, failing to respect their boundaries, and/or being unwilling to accept the adult child’s requirements for a healthy relationship". No one is perfect. I still have a great relationship with my own parents despite their failings but not all my siblings do, and as I've told each of my parents, it's on them to work to make that relationship better. Some things my siblings may never forgive or forget and you can do with that what you will, but if you want this person in your life you have to work to make it happen.
    • wonderwonder 5y ago
• queuebert 5y ago
  In my particular case, the rift is due to Rupert Murdoch's media outlets destroying my parents' logical reasoning ability coupled with a particular kind of boomer narcissism. For example, when I was young, my mom stayed home and raised me, fed me health foods, and gave me a head start on education. She was very loving and did a great job, really. These days, she screams at me and says she hopes Trump cancels my research funding because science is all a lie anyway. She didn't come up with that idea on her own. I think the detrimental effect of corporate and social media polarization cannot be underestimated. It is literally breaking up families.
  • polka_haunts_us 5y ago
    For a politics shifted perspective of this, sometime late last year before prayer before meal, my mom was talking happily about how she hoped Jeff Bezos got the guillotine. Just before "Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts...", "Boy wouldn't it be funny if a mob necked Bezos". Her main news sources are Salon and Twitter threads of various left (Bernie or more) wing writers. I remember referencing the incident a couple months ago post Biden winning and she was like "The dinner table isn't an appropriate place to talk about this". I swear the last 4 years drove the vast majority of everyone insane, in a very literal sense.
    • queuebert 5y ago
      I didn't mean this to be one sided. It just happens that my parents were right wingers. Yes, it's happening on both sides.
      • tonyedgecombe 5y ago
        I suspect it's leaning more to the right for older generations.
    • spookthesunset 5y ago
      > I swear the last 4 years drove the vast majority of everyone insane, in a very literal sense. TDS is very, very real and when paired with this whole covid thing it only got worse. Peoples deep issues with the last 4 years joined forces with media fear mongering to create a perfect storm resulting in what will be someday be looked back upon as a massive "social engineering" failure.
• throwaway23429 5y ago
  I was estranged from my parents, and I am also in the process of adopting a child. This led me to think a lot about the sort of relationship I want with my children, versus what my parents and I have. I believe my parents had me because they feel like it was their duty, and they fulfilled their parental obligations fairly well in that regard. The trouble is that they didn't consider what it was like to have an adult son. Now they probably realise that I'm not the sort of person they like (I'm gay, and living in a different country). They don't call anymore, and even when I call them they only talk about themselves. They have no interest in me or my life. I hope that whomever is having children right now should think very thoroughly about what kind of relationship they want with their kids once they grow up.
  • throwaway284534 5y ago
    You’re almost living my life! My parents were less than thrilled with who I grew up to be. I think they would’ve been mildly happy if I married the first person I met and settled in their neighborhood, living out a life that fit into theirs. I’m sure that they would’ve found faults, but at least they could brag about how good of parents they were.
    • ericmcer 5y ago
      I have a specific memory of visiting home in my early 20s and going to get groceries with my mom. In the checkout line was another mother with her grown son, but he had some kind of developmental disability and clearly still relied on her. My mom made some comment about how that would be nice which always cracked me up. She didn't just want me to settle down close to her but wanted some sort of eternal-child she could core for forever. That said she was an ok mom, just had kids in her late teenage years and never developed a strong identity outside of being a parent.
• wing-_-nuts 5y ago
  This article doesn't go far enough to hold parents accountable for their actions IMHO. It's completely justified to go 'no contact' with a parent who was physically abusive, who is homophobic, etc. I bristle at the implication that parents are owed anything. My relationship with my parents is based upon mutual respect as adults. Had they not at least made an effort to reconcile, we would not be on speaking terms today.
  • mike00632 5y ago
    My thoughts exactly. The article seema to intentionally taboo homophobia (maybe dismissing it under the category of "identity") when that is one of the biggest sources of homeless youths in the US. I refuse to see parents who disown their gay kids as victims.
    • starik36 5y ago
      > one of the biggest sources of homeless youths in the US What is your source of information on this claim? I am reading this and don't see anything. https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/homeless-and-runaway-youth.aspx https://www.ncsl.org/research/human-services/homeless-and-ru...
      • wing-_-nuts 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBT_youth_in_the_United_States#:~:text=7%20References-,Prevalence,between%2011%20and%2040%20percent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_among_LGBT_youth_....
  • spideymans 5y ago
    A lot of parents unfortunately believe that respect is a one-way street.
    • Domenic_S 5y ago
      I don't remember where I read it, but this is a big description of my childhood experience: > Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”. And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”. They think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay.
• buescher 5y ago
  I really dislike the term "adult children". Check out the google ngram: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22adult+children%22&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&direct_url=t1%3B%2C%22%20adult%20children%20%22%3B%2Cc0#t1%3B%2C%22%20adult%20children%20%22%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%22adult+child... The peak in 1992 is especially intriguing. How would the Victorians have expressed the same relationship?
  • diplodocusaur 5y ago
    please note that the y-axis is scaled, I compared it with the words 'transgender' or 'hacker' and the "intriguing peak" you mention flattened out. Which raises the question of at which point is a change significant in that graph.
    • buescher 5y ago
      Yes, it's not as common as those words. But going from zero use outside of legal documents - as a contrast to "minor children" or less precisely "small children" - to a post-seventies psychobabble and recovery movment term of art is easy to read off that graph.
  • delecti 5y ago
    Do you have a better term to suggest?
    • buescher 5y ago
      First: Why should there be a term at all? Stop thinking of yourself and others in generic bureaucratic or therapeutic terms from a particularly dire era of mass self-absorption. Second: If you must, "son" or "daughter", and only prefixed by "adult" when necessary for clarity.
      • WillDaSilva 5y ago
        To your first point: there should be a term because it is clearly a useful idea that people want to communicate. The ambiguity or inelegance of what current exists to express the idea means we should at least desire a better way of expressing it - that is, a term for it. To your second point: "son" or "daughter" is not sufficiently general, and it is gendered. What if I wanted to express the idea of adult offspring without knowing (or caring about) the gender of that person?
• remir 5y ago
  The social structures are slowly disintagrating because their foundations were weak anyways. Religion and culture only masked it for a while. Everything is temporary in life and being a parent is a temporary role. A parent's job is to initiate the child to the world, teach them how to navigate it and how to be a functional member of society. In short, the parent's job is to help the child be as independant of them as possible. When the child is an adult, the relationship must evolve. A lot of people fail to understand that, because being a parent is part of their identity. If you take that away from them, they have nothing left because they haven't cultivated anything else. This is a mistake. It is good to see people seek counceling on these issues. It show they have the intention to recognize something is wrong and are willing to put the effort to find resolution.
  • MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    >If you take that away from them, they have nothing left because they haven't cultivated anything else. My parents told me early on "I'm not your friend" and has since then always felt that I should be obligated toward them because they're my parents. These exact parents you mention in your comment are also the exact same ones that can't believe their children don't get along and they don't ever talk to them anymore.
    • vageli 5y ago
      > My parents told me early on "I'm not your friend" and has since then always felt that I should be obligated toward them because they're my parents. My parents told me the same when I was young. It wasn't until about age 25 that the dynamic between us radically changed. There is a fine line to cross between being a primary caregiver and being an onlooker to someone's life. If you were a parent for 18 years it is understandable to have some "growing pains" associated with transitioning to a new type of relationship with your kids but it certainly is doable, even if it takes a while. I still seek advice from my parents (and they me) but it does not have the affect of authority as it did in childhood.
• someguy321 5y ago
  I am seeing a lot of resentment in this thread. My best guess is that some of it is deserved and some of it isn't. Something that this thread reminded me of is the fact that several of my friends (millenial like myself) think that bringing children into this world is a bad thing to do- with global warming and other social problems making it so that this choice is just going to cause more suffering. I wasn't too surprised to hear this from them, knowing their personalities. When the millenial zeitgeist has drifted in a direction where this is a common opinion, I take it to indicate that our socialization has taught some of us that humans have little inherent moral worth as individuals, the values of a family are subservient to the values of globalism, and all is nihilistic considering that we have a poor shot at solving the worst of our problems(the Nash equilibrium doesn't seem to be working out for global warming). This observation makes me turn back towards family values. They work better than nihilism for me.
  • conductr 5y ago
    I think the US tradition of leaving next generation better off than the last (whether true or not) is somewhat to blame. There is a societal "failure" to not providing for your kid the same or better than your parents provided for you. Many millennials are the tipping point for; they got the most, and it's down hill for future generations. The great American pyramid scheme is falling apart or so it seems. I think many people have trouble with that and just tend to throw their hands up as they don't have a solution. I boils down to economics. If these same millenials could afford the lifestyle they want for their kids, they would have kids. Global warming, overpopulation, etc is an altruistic substitute. (Granted things are more expensive, etc, etc. it still holds true.)
    • minikites 5y ago
      >Many millennials are the tipping point Millennials are way worse off than previous generations by many metrics, that's why so many of them are angry. The tipping point already happened.
      • conductr 5y ago
• nkingsy 5y ago
  I feel nauseous when I accidentally stumble into Reddit shame and pity fests. I’m honestly terrified of what my children will blame on me some day. Just an example off the top of my head: “aita for cutting off my parents because they kicked me out of the house when I was 18?”, followed by thousands of comments digitally lynching the parent in question and wallowing in the terrible trauma the OP experienced. I wasn’t planning on kicking my kids out at 18, but the responses had me crying for the poor parent. There’s no nuance in internet discussion. People read a sentence, attach their own worst demons to it, then flay them alive for all to see. My own step sister has gone full q anon now, but before that repeatedly posted about her traumatic childhood with no real specifics. When pressed for details, the worst she could come up with was that her dad yelled sometimes and introduced her to a few too many girlfriends.
  • MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    edit: i guess my comment was a little too personal to state.
    • tablespoon 5y ago
      How is this in response to the GP at all? Did you reply to the wrong comment?
    • nkingsy 5y ago
      This sounds really hard. I guess my question to you is, what would be a helpful reply for your mental state? I could say “people like that shouldn’t have kids. They’re lucky you didn’t post their address or I’d go remove their ability to reproduce myself”. Would that help you? What if I said “what were their childhoods like?” We’re all doing the best we can. Sounds like in your parents case that wasn’t very good, but perhaps compassion and acceptance will help you do better if you choose to make the next generation. My mom is a raging narcissist, and until I accepted that in her, we had real problems. Now I just understand that I’ll never get an apology from her about anything, and enjoy the good parts. I mostly feel sorry for her that she lost her father to alcoholism at a young age and is sort of stuck at age 13 in some ways. She burdened me with a lot of stuff growing up that she shouldn’t have, but it’s relatively simple to trace that back through history and see that this was inevitable.
• anontempad78 5y ago
  My perception of gaslighting is more of the outright denial that randomly beating the shit out of me ever happened, or forcing me to take drugs when I was a child and didn't want to, over and over and over. But no. it never happened. People upset about failure to respect an identity are literally soft children who have no fucking idea how well treated they have been.
• antisthenes 5y ago
  There's no mystery here, at least as far as the article describing divorce. Children of divorced parents usually end up staying with a parent that manipulates them into hating the parent that doesn't have custody, because there's no opportunity to tell your side of the story. It's like state-mandated propaganda, except coming from your parent. Is it any surprise then that if an authority tells you to hate something in your developmental years, that you end up hating it, and thus estranged? Also, calling it a shift is pretty disingenuous. It's more like a deliberate eradication.
• hackeraccount 5y ago
  We're all living that Asian family joke. Parents spend their whole lives waiting for their kids to thank you. Kids spend their whole lives waiting for their parent to say "I'm sorry." That said I've never felt that way about my Mom and Dad. I've faults and problems a plenty but I wouldn't ascribe any of that on them; indeed the best things about me seem to clearly come from them and the worst are just as clearly things they suggested I not do. What are you going to do though, even if all that wasn't true they'd still love me and I'd still love them.
  • rogerclark 5y ago
    In therapy circles and attachment theory land, this is exactly what's supposed to happen when you receive "good enough parenting". Good enough parenting means your parents actually tried and either worked through any of their issues preventing them from giving care to their children, or didn't have those issues in the first place. So the idea goes, you end up developing a relationship based on mutual respect, love, and level-headedness. The problem is, not everyone is lucky enough to receive that kind of childhood care, even though it seems like it should be universal. Lots of people are massively fucked up and still have kids anyway, either accidentally or otherwise. And then their kids are put at a massive disadvantage in life and in human relationships. It's usually difficult for people with decent upbringings to even conceptualize why a child might willingly remain estranged from their family. But there are a lot of people out there with really good reasons to do that.
    • huge87 5y ago
      > It's usually difficult for people with decent upbringings to even conceptualize why a child might willingly remain estranged from their family. But there are a lot of people out there with really good reasons to do that. This sums up how I feel about this topic. I read all these accounts of how people's perceptions of parent-child relationships change after they have kids, or how there's still mutual love between them and their parents despite so-and-so, and I understand. I am well into adulthood with a stable marriage and career; I've been to therapy, and done all things reasonable to heal from whatever it is I came from. By all accounts I've been pretty successful on that front. But goddammit, when I think about my parents, I move between seething resentment and gratitude that I decided to cut contact. And this is an improvement. As you say, people with good enough upbringings can't conceptualize why a child might remain estranged from their family; I'd wager they impose perceptions of their own (good enough) parents when making that judgment.
• nitwit005 5y ago
  I suspect some of this is just how hard it's gotten to avoid people. People used to just get on a boat or train, move to the other side of the country, and then all they had to deal with was letters and the occasional Christmas visit. Now, with the ease of travel and communications, you actually have to tell people you don't want to see or talk to them.
• weregiraffe 5y ago
  They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
  • samatman 5y ago
    I despise this poem.
    • weakfish 5y ago
      This isn't very constructive.
    • weregiraffe 5y ago
      I don't care.
  • dogorman 5y ago
    Presumptuous poems are insufferable.
• Tarucho 5y ago
  What is fueling estrangement is not a shift in values but a shift in expectations. Failure is not an option these days.
  • shdh 5y ago
    Define failure
• gumby 5y ago
  I really wonder how much of this actually is a problem, how prevalent it is, how new it is, and how much of the problem is socially induced. Just anecdotally, my sister and I have different relationships with our parents. They had different relationships with their own parents, and different from their respective siblings. My adult child is quite close with me. My ex had yet different relationships with each of her parents, which was different from her own siblings. And that's just a small selection. Some of these relationships would be considered strained, some very close, and all sorts of points in-between. Historically cities were full of people who wanted to get away from where they were before, some for adventure, sure, but also many to get away from family and social relationships. I don't doubt that there are adults (especially older parents) heartbroken about estrangement from other family members. So for those people sure, it's a problem. But it's quite possible the counterpart in the (non-) relationship is quite satisfied by where things stand. And given that a kid grew up with a parent: how many less tight relationships are satisfactory to all concerned? And all that leads me to wonder: how much unhappiness about the structure of a given relationship stems simply from its deviation from society's stereotypical model of what an ideal relationship should be? This definitely differs from society to society; the south asian side of my family is full of very close relationships (to say the least) but is also very stifling and unhappy for some members. Certainly people feel heartbreak, and some suffer serious psychological disorders, due to a mismatch between their body and the (then) social ideal. We recognize that as an unfair pathology; why not the same for human relationships which are exponentially more varied than body shapes. This all reminds me of common surveys of religious prevalence: most of them assume that it's the default state, and often don't even have a way to measure "don't care". You can see this kind of assumption in the article itself, where the author quotes an academic: "but the idea that a relative could be faulted for failing to honor/acknowledge one’s ‘identity’ would have been incomprehensible." -- Just tell that to, for example, the gay folks, or folks who adopted a different religion, who left their families of wider communities because they needed to be recognized for who they are. The incomprehension by these commentators that these are indeed longstanding factors demonstrates their own biases.
  • coldtea 5y ago
    >And all that leads me to wonder: how much unhappiness about the structure of a given relationship stems simply from its deviation from society's stereotypical model of what an ideal relationship should be? My opinion: less than we think. Plus, the ideal stereotype is usually there for a reason. We're social animals. A broken bond is a broken bond, whether it's with parents, community, friends, or our own family. We can pretend that we're fine, but then we don't get to be a society full of self-reported depressed people, with great levels of psychological brokeness, addiction, and so on, and have a big majority lamenting how they are "so lonely".
• js290 5y ago
  Religion & culture keeps most people out of trouble most of the time... "the absence of religion... replaced by all kinds of crazy beliefs... you realize there's no religious fundamentalism that's more irrational than an atheist's primitive use of probability" http://bit.ly/2Hi4pNK http://bit.ly/2Hi4pNK
  • mike00632 5y ago
    I've witnessed the opposite. Most parents who disown their gay children are encouraged to do so by religious belief.
  • MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    I mean not all atheists believe in probability as the definer of someone's life. Even if you pray to God and think he said yes or you shake a magic 8 ball and it says yes, the decision is still the same.
• softwaredoug 5y ago
  There’s that saying “to truly love someone you have to be willing to let them go”. Which is really really hard. Raising my kids is my purpose. But when they’re adults they will make their own decisions about our relationship as equals. Anything less would be conditional love: I appear to only love them conditioned on something. Like keeping me from being lonely or fulfilling me in some way. Thats not their job.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jgilias 5y ago
  When I was around twenty my Mom used to call me every other day or so just to have a chat. One day, after she asked me how my day was, I shot back something along the lines of: "I don't have anything to tell you, really. You're calling so often that nothing new manages to happen in between the calls." So, she stopped calling. I would go home every other week as usual and everything seemed fine. It was only much later that I found out that she basically cried for three days straight after that call. Some time later there was a period when I would contact my parents every few months or so. Not really on purpose. Simply because other things simply took more of my time and attention, and calling my parents wasn't really high on my list of priorities. Only when my son was born I started to realize what someone goes through as an individual and as a couple once a child comes into their lives. How it changes things. That not being thrown out of the window at 2 a.m. as an infant is already a blessing. I'm sure that thought has crossed the mind of many a young parent with a screeching infant on their hands in the middle of night. So, I felt ashamed of myself, and grateful to my parents for being there in the first place, and being decent at being parents as well. Now I've made a point to myself to call them up at least once a week. As in, I have set up a reminder for that. I now know how much they value this. But it's not only for them. I realize very well that one day I will wake up and wish to call my parents to have a chat about something. But there simply won't be anyone to call anymore. I'm not passing any judgement at all on people who have abusive parents. I have no idea how that feels like. I'm just happy that I didn't end up accidentally getting estranged to the decent parents that I have. At some point it really was going that way.
  • no-dr-onboard 5y ago
    I realize very well that one day I will wake up and wish to call my parents to have a chat about something. But there simply won't be anyone to call anymore. This made me tear up. My dad had a stroke a couple of years ago and my mom is taking care of him. I dont call them nearly as often as I should. Thank you for the reminder.
  • kbenson 5y ago
    Every once in a while I read something the so obviously resonates with me as how things should be with me, but not how things are, that it's depressing and humbling. That's good though, because that's how change happens. Excuse me, I need to go make some calls and set some alarms now.
• teslaberry 5y ago
  the 'open society' model is about encouraging radical individualism by any and all means. 1) encourage consumption not production, people can consume alone, production however often requires cooperation 2) encourage immidiate pleasure, especially sexual pleasure ,over sexual gratification resulting from hard work, this means encouraging promiscuity , prositution and masterbutation over sexually satifying long term reltionships will require delayed gratification and cooperation, rather than individualism. 3) encourage the breakdown of the family by any and all means, inclusive of encoruaging institutional dependence and loyalty over dependence and loyalty to family. 4) encourage economic structuring of society which makes indiivudals more dependent on large instiotutions or to seek out self destruction, then they are to seek out help from immidiate friends and family. 5) encourage a society of specialists and respect for specialization versus generalization at every level. mandate social requirements for dependencies on specialists. preists used to handle many family and community functions that are now handled by a myriad of specialists included mental health assesment. sometimes , the state cooperates with private institutions and sometimes it opposes them, depending on whether those institutions are cooperating to radical individualism , or doing the opposite. 6) create fake religions that sway people towards anti-community mind set. for example science is a process and methodlogy, turn it into a religion to be worshipped with a godhead of technological control and chaotic fear , so that you can attract and encourage people to distance themselves away from personal family and friends. if that doesn't work, as a last resort ask them to worship the state, or some other non-community based ethos like 'globalism', to reform society you must separate and reconsitute individuals into their constitute atomsistic selfish selves, so they don't resist your aims, or possibly even help you achieve them. the "open society" you cannot stop it. don't try. you are alone.
• vxNsr 5y ago
  Why do we have these culture war discussions here on hn? They all devolve into the same type of hyper partisanship that gets nowhere.
• foolmeonce 5y ago
  I'm not sure I believe this diagnosis. I think communications has made for more formal estrangement since it's pretty hard to find a lifestyle that explains why you can't video chat from anywhere anytime and the cost of even trans-continental travel is rarely a quarter of a year's salary. The further you go back, the easier it was to have excuses to greatly limit contact and only have contact that is very impersonal. The average American is a decendant of adults who were never going to see their parents again. Most would have felt a great deal of social pressure to treat that as a hardship and disguise if it was their primary motivation. I think hunter gatherers would have been predisposed to finding new groups at adolescence even if their culture lacked a specific rule for which sex does so, and the priorities of agricultural societies to keep land rights are probably not particularly compatible with our evolutionary past.
• frankish 5y ago
  I will try not to complain about my parents, but one of the big side-effects is that I do not want kids and have had a vasectomy to prevent that. Not the only reason, but a relevant one. I think more people should choose not to have kids and our societies/governments should stop pushing so hard to have more due to traditional values or so economies can grow. It is time for us to focus on quality and not quantity. I think we are approaching 8 billion people in this world: not only is this not sustainable, but we could be better raising our children by having fewer. Why does this relate to this topic? Because of the concept that many feel they were raised poorly. The people that should not be having kids usually do. One of the reasons I do not want kids is because I do not think I will do a good job. Instead, I think I can better support my friends that want to raise kids. If I feel I'm finally prepared to take on the responsibility, then I like to think I would force myself to adopt. Regardless, I think we could iteratively improve parenting by encouraging (never forcing) those that are mentally prepared to do so. I think educated, younger generations are already having fewer kids, but guess I wanted to shine light on the good side of this.
  • hcurtiss 5y ago
    You seem very thoughtful and set in your calculus. It's probably no help, but for what it's worth, two kids is less than replacement value. Were every couple to have only two kids, the odds are some would die and you would have a shrinking, not growing, population. Having kids, at least in my experience, is a true blessing, and something that I think will bring me great joy for many decades. To each their own, but I wouldn't worry too much about environmental impacts or global carrying capacity.
    • frankish 5y ago
      I do not want to take away any positives from having kids; however, I do think we should strongly consider whether we would actually be good parents and if we would be able to prepare them to live in a world where the bar is raising exponentially. Even if we find fulfillment in children, I question if it is really the best option for them in the long-term or if we may be selfish in our desires to have them. I think shrinking population is one thing I would like to see. Until we start moving to other planets, I do not see the benefits of a growing population. Many people still live in poverty and lack a good education, which I believe parenting has the most influence on.
• golemiprague 5y ago
  Might also have something todo with the age in which people bring children these days. People don't know what it is like to be a parent and got no empathy to their own parents until they actually have the same experiences.
• fidesomnes 5y ago
  Reading this makes me realize a lot of you should of kicked to the curb bad family relationships a long time ago.
• ta2157 5y ago
  It's what leftists have been asking for: "disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement". Add in the snowflake generational belief that their personal feelings trump anything else, and we get to where we are.
• pluto7777 5y ago
  Rejection of religion is a rejection of family.
  • inetknght 5y ago
    No it's not.
• im_down_w_otp 5y ago
  24/7 bombardment with conspiracy theories and partisan political nonsense through television and the internet has turned the relationships and bonds in my extended family into weird factions of outrage addicts that are basically impossible to interact with for any extended amount of time unless you similarly develop a fondness for their flavor of outrage or for their passive aggression for when you don't. It's exhausting. I'm a co-founder and CEO, I have dozens of spinning plates to manage and keep track of most all the time. I'm also the father of two young children that I adore. Those are the things I decide to spend my energy on. What's fueling my estrangement is that I intentionally decide the kinds of BS that I'm willing to subject myself to, and the kind of curated insanity that tends to originate from my larger family doesn't make the cut.
  • pjc50 5y ago
    There's a lot of "Fox News robbed me of my parents" stories out there. https://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_fox_news_how_a_generation_was_captured_by_thrashing_hysteria/ https://www.salon.com/2014/02/27/i_lost_my_dad_to_fox_news_h... (2014, situation has generally got worse!) https://captainawkward.com/2020/12/09/1304-fox-news-stole-my-mom-and-replaced-her-with-a-ranting-lady-who-wont-let-me-say-or-do-anything-without-it-setting-her-off-how-do-i-get-along-with-her-until-i-can-leave-for-college/amp/ https://captainawkward.com/2020/12/09/1304-fox-news-stole-my...
    • starik36 5y ago
      I think the outrage culture is prevalent with pretty much all the news networks starting with CNN and on down the list. You can replace %foxnews% with any of them. At family gatherings, find something else to talk about. I mean, people did have conversations 30 years ago, right?
      • slater 5y ago
        30 years ago, we didn't have Fox News and the associated persecution-complex outrage machine (altho the 'silent majority' evangelical nonsense of the 70s/early 80s provided the manual)
• kevstev 5y ago
  I am surprised to hear there is no mention of children who just don't like what their parents have become. My mother did a good job raising me, even if it was very heavy on the "I am your mother not your friend" philosophy and tough love. But in general, it was a lot about hard work, taking education seriously, being reliable and self reliant, etc. Yet I see none of these things in her today. Every time I call its a pity party about all the wrongdoings done to her either by people or life. I know at some point I am going to have to support her, despite working most of her life and getting a sizable divorce settlement, I am not sure she has any significant nest egg saved. Quite frankly her brain seems to be rotting as she has few friends, hobbies or outlets in general and spends most of her energy getting involved in the near constant squabbles my extended family likes to get themselves into with each other. On a more generic level though, I read a lot on the internet (well reddit really) about parents falling into Qanon, or even just being slightly cultist Trumpers, or crazy religious, and they just can't deal with them or identify with them at all. Then there is also the resentment of them being out of touch and being critical that they can't buy a house at 23, are having trouble finding a job, or aren't married and having kids, etc... completely oblivious to how much harder it is to do the things they did at their age today. I do the minimum to keep in touch and literally have to mentally prepare myself each time I call or visit, because I just find the conversation immensely unpleasant. Its not "toxic" but the constant negativity is very draining. Maybe I am just an outlier here, but with 48% of the nation or whatever it is going out and voting red, and it appears that the younger generation having mostly opposing views, the disconnect might be more that they are just avoiding their parents- actively "losing" touch, rather than merely misplacing it.
• bloopernova 5y ago
  My mother never once hugged me. She told me she loved me once, when I was in hospital after a road accident almost tore my left leg off. She used to explode with fury at seemingly random things, screaming and lashing out with a stick. My childhood was often spent just staying out of her way. Yes, I'm a very touch-averse and anxious person. She denies these things ever happened. She wonders why I moved to the other side of the world and never visit. Nor do I stay in contact more than an email once a month. I won't miss her when she's gone. Parents often don't maintain a basic level of decency towards their children. The sooner we move away from the idea of children owing their parents something, the better.
  • MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    I had the same relationship with both my parents. I got so little positive reinforcement in my life that I had to practice thanking people giving me praise because it was so odd to me. Part of me doesn't want to get married or have kids just because I've seen the horrible ball and chain it can be with both my parents.
• hogFeast 5y ago
  I think this article is fairly ungenerous to children (whether adult or not). When you are a child, parents look after you. But there is an obligation that goes the other way too: parents expect you to do X or Y, parents (in some cases) expect you to look after them (the article notes that sibling estrangement results from caregiving, this happens in other cases too), and they may expect to you be a certain way. I am a young(ish) adult, my mother looks after my aunt who is disabled, and is now getting ill herself...they are more difficult than I ever was as a kid. I just sat in my room and played Playstation, my mother has keys to a car, she will do X or Y regardless of what you or doctors tell her...it is very difficult. I think about leaving that all the time (my mental health is extremely poor, trying to care for someone when you can't care for yourself is difficult), you have to respect people who have helped you but the relationship with your parents moves on from that stage. Trying to treat adults like they are still in a parent-child relationship makes no sense. Personally, the main challenge I have is that my mother and aunt still view me as a child who understands nothing, so any piece of help I give (no matter how trivial) is challenged as if I was a child...so it works both ways...both parties have to realise that life has moved on. Trying to say: oh, but this person did this three decades ago is...weird, imo. Also, an adult can choose not to have a child, a child can't choose not have a parent...that dynamic is very different. Tbf though, I think expectations of children in the West are significantly lower so maybe that isn't a huge thing for most people. But I think it is more to it than: entitled millennial whines about his parents who gave him everything...that just makes no sense (no child wants to have a bad relationship with their parents, you don't pick them, it doesn't work sometimes).
• civilized 5y ago
  Did anyone else grow up with an OK family life, but barely stay in touch with their parents? And they don't seem that fussed about it either? I appreciate what everyone's saying but it seems like "maybe once every few months" is a fine contact cadence for everyone involved in my case. We must be a bit on the spectrum or something.
• LordHumungous 5y ago
  It's difficult because some people do face horrific abuse and are very justified in cutting off contact. Others seem to be narcissists themselves who enjoy being cruel to their parents. It's impossible to know who is who as an outsider.
• Arete314159 5y ago
  The other side of this essay is that there are a lot of abusive parents out there. Part of the reason a lot of children go no-contact nowadays is similar to why there are so many more divorces -- economic and societal structures now allow people to leave their abusers.
• 0xF57A 5y ago
  My family and one of my friends talk a lot about “cutting out” people who don’t subscribe to liberal politics. I know for a fact that if I expressed support for Donald trump, they would ghost me. Liberalism is a mental disease.
• teawrecks 5y ago
  As a 30-something who moved 2000 miles away from their parents and mostly only talks to them on holidays, I could see how it seems like I am the one neglecting them. But from my POV I feel like I am the one who is neglected. My whole life my parents don't enjoy actual conversation with me. They get tense and irritated at the possibility of not knowing something, so they only ever want to state things that happened in their lives, and have me do the same. Anything resembling critical thinking is not welcome. Even worse, if the topic even slightly verges into the political realm, they just start spewing whatever line Fox or OANN are shilling that week. And I've learned that all I'm allowed to do in response is be silent or agree, because if I'm critical of them at all, I run the risk of them being so offended that they stop talking to ME for a while. Another element at play is that my mental recollection of how my parents got along with their parents is nothing like this. From my POV my parents and grandparents always saw things mostly the same, were very supportive of each other, and were very involved in each others' lives up until my grandparents passed away. I just don't feel like I even live in the same world as my parents.
• hi41 5y ago
  I got estranged from my parents because my wife and they did not get along well. Towards the end, I would call my mother once a week. I could never make my wife get along with my mom. One day , my mother said something that annoyed my wife. I called my mother and had an angry conversation and hung up the phone. She had high fever but did not call for about 10 days. She died of stomach cancer two weeks later. To this day I am unable to forgive myself for it and regret what I did. My life is so full of such regrets that it becomes unbearable and wish I were dead.
  • jchallis 5y ago
    Speaking from someone who knows - your mom wouldn’t want this choice to haunt you and would want you to find peace.
• hexane360 5y ago
  This reminds me of this wonderful blog series that examines the psychology of estranged parents' forums: http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/index.html http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/index.html There's lots of discussion of the generational gaps that cause a lot of this friction (many of which I see discussed in this thread): - Is emotional abuse "real abuse"? Does it "count" for estrangement? - Do parents owe an apology for mistakes they made? - Do children own a relationship to their parents? - Do children owe respect to their parents, regardless of anything the parents have done? - Is the parent/child relationship one-sided?
• paulryanrogers 5y ago
  One dynamic I think gets overlooked is that parents chose to have the children, even if just in the heat of a moment. Children have little to no say about much of their lives for the first 18 years. So even relatively benign parents may struggle to understand their children's perspective when the children choose to reduce or cut off contact. Perhaps I'm an outlier but I've gone months without contact and no regrets. And I hope I'll continue to expect nothing back from my children. After all, their existence was our choice as parents. And anything the kids chose to share or give back is an entirely voluntarily gift.
• Havoc 5y ago
  >American values Much like the notion that freedom is something the US has and well the other ~193 countries by implication don't I suspect this is missing the larger picture quite dramatically. There seems to be a global shift at play here. something certainly appears to be tearing away the core. Personally it's not the deteriorating situation that is freaking me out, but rather the fact that I can't pinpoint what is behind this shift. To put it into crude term: It feels like someone is fucking with me and I can't tell who/why That inherently leads to a mistrust of all social order
• arbirk 5y ago
  My father was never there, and when he was I has to manage all the horrible feelings of dread and downfall for him, me and my siblings because he was always on the brink of living on the street. As I grew up I saw him deteriorate. He is stubborn. I asked him once if me and my brothers could help clean his home so my kids could visit safely, but he started yelling about how I always complain to him. I have no need for him in my life.
• throwaway290232 5y ago
  And sometimes children feel too much responsibility for their parents’ happiness. I often hear estranged adult children request better boundaries from their parents as a condition of reconciliation. As Andrew Solomon wrote in Far From the Tree, “There is no contradiction between loving someone and feeling burdened by that person. Indeed, love tends to magnify the burden.” Holy shit, this. I thought I was crazy for feeling emotionally blackmailed by my parents. They effectively told me that if I wasn't a constant part of their lives, they would be miserable - after things like blaming an episode of depression on my poor academic performance. At the same time being callous and judgemental towards me, and each other. I'm just surprised that they expected me to stick around?
• deleted 5y ago
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