[HN Gopher] A shift in American family values is fueling estrang...
___________________________________________________________________
A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement
Author : yamrzou
Score : 273 points
Date : 2021-07-14 14:08 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| anontempad78 wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway284534 wrote:
| 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
|
| 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.
| throwaway29435 wrote:
| Created a throwaway just to reply to you.
|
| I'm halfway through your essay and it resonates strongly.
|
| My parents constantly fought when I was a child. They
| eventually went for a divorce. My father tried to get my mother
| institutionalized through bribes and connections, but
| ultimately failed. Eventually, he kidnapped me to his home
| country. My mother didn't pursue me. My teenage years were
| spent getting berated for everything and being told I will be a
| weirdo failure. I was ignored for years as my father pursued
| women. I found refuge in online forums, video games, and a
| bunch of friends who had bad homes. We helped out each other. I
| survived this time, counting down the years until I was 18.
|
| Today, I am married to one of those friends and we have created
| a happy life together. I too wanted to be comfortable and
| loved.
|
| My father tells me that he did all of this because he loved me.
| He saved me from growing up a junkie in the spoiled west. My
| mother tells me how hard it was for her to lose her child, how
| hard she cried. There is no point at which they ever asked me
| how I felt or what I experienced. I am merely a background
| actor in the grand drama of their lives.
|
| I realize that a lot of parents fumble bringing up their kids.
| Everyone makes mistakes. But what I and others experience
| growing is not a fumbling. This is HN - imagine you an engineer
| responsible for a system that produces incidents every day.
| Management tells you to never fix anything. Actually, they
| berate you for even suggesting that, saying that you're just
| complaining and this is normal.
|
| This is what it feels like.
|
| throwaway284534, my thoughts go out to you. You're not alone.
| There are a lot of people like us. Many don't make it and fall
| apart in different ways. The lucky ones build a happy life.
| throwaway284534 wrote:
| Thank you so much for the kind words, and for taking the time
| to read my long-winded article. I had to cut so much of it
| for length, but I think you can fill in the blanks given our
| similar upbringing.
|
| I can't say I've totally forgiven my parents, honestly I'm
| not even sure how one forgives a parent. But I've tried to
| accept them like I said in the story; not as malevolent demi-
| gods but just ordinary people who did their best.
|
| It sounds like you're living your best life and making the
| most of the path your parents started you on. If there's
| anything I've learned, it's that some wounds are easier to
| pick at then move past to finally let heal. I still think
| about them occasionally, but it's lesser each day.
| iammisc wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| > The cycle repeats until a grown child decides to either
| consciously change this behavior with their own children,
| or distance themselves from their parent.
|
| Thus, the estrangement as described in the article... I'm
| one who plans to never pass down any of the parental styles
| my parents employed and that will be easier due to my
| somewhat minor version of estrangement. (I pickup the phone
| every month or three but I never make the call)
| iammisc wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Thanks for the reply.
|
| You are labeling any kind of deference towards your parents
| as abuse. Do you not see the absolutism and extremism in
| your statement?
|
| Nowhere did I say children should tolerate abuse. I just
| said they shouldn't see themselves as ever being able to be
| completely 'equal' to their parents.
|
| Should the law treat them equally at the age of majority?
| Of course. Should they be able to make independent adult
| decisions? Obviously.
|
| But should they expect a relationship between them and
| their parents to ever be 'equal'? No. Parents have looked
| after you since you were a baby, they're always going to
| want to give advice, always going to want to help, and
| always going to remember you as the helpless little infant
| who needed their bum washed. Accepting this is the first
| step towards a good relationship with your parents as an
| adult.
|
| Going back to my mother and grandmother. Yes, my mom would
| be annoyed when my feeble grandmother would give her
| detailed advice on what to do that would be inappropriate
| between 'equals', but she'd take it gracefully,
| understanding that this is her mother.
| spideymans wrote:
| >You are labeling any kind of deference towards your
| parents as abuse
|
| Deference is earned.
| vkou wrote:
| Deference-all-the-time is an incredibly convenient fig
| leaf for 'take whatever abuse I feel like subjecting you
| to'.
|
| In a healthy relationship, the deference isn't abuse. In
| an unhealthy relationship, deference _enables_ abuse.
|
| Edit: Additionally, decent people can end up poisoning a
| relationship, if they never get any negative feedback in
| response to their poor behaviour. (Or if they completely
| disregard any negative feedback, because their opinion is
| the only one that must be deferred to.)
| nate_meurer wrote:
| > _Do you not see the absolutism and extremism in your
| statement?_
|
| You mean, like this statement:
|
| > _Your parents will never be your equals._
|
| Sounds pretty extreme and absolutist to me. Are you
| saying that the mere act of procreation entitles a person
| to eternal deference from their children regardless of
| the nature of their relationship to those children?
|
| > _Parents have looked after you since you were a baby,
| they 're always going to want to give advice, always
| going to want to help, and always going to remember you
| as the helpless little infant who needed their bum
| washed._
|
| No, many parents have not "looked after" their children
| in any significant way. And who are you to assert that
| everyone's parents are motivated by loving memories of
| their infancy? Are you merely extrapolating from your own
| experience and applying it to everyone else?
| iammisc wrote:
| > Sounds pretty extreme and absolutist to me.
|
| I am giving a social absolute. Your absolute regarded
| abuse, a crime, and a serious one at that. A statement
| being absolute is only concerning if it's also extreme.
| Labeling deference to parents as abusive is extreme.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| What exactly is a "social absolute"?
|
| > _Your absolute regarded abuse, a crime, and a serious
| one at that._
|
| No, there is no crime of "abuse" per se. Take, for
| example, the constant, relentless degrading and insulting
| language that one of my friends directed at his son since
| he was a little boy, which destroyed the kid's self
| esteem and has now undermined his agency as an adult,
| resulting in depression and addiction. I continually hear
| this kid calling himself "stupid", and he's genuinely
| surprised that he can't stop himself from drinking. Now
| what crime do you propose his father should be charged
| with?
|
| My friend now criticizes his adult son for being weak,
| saying he has only himself to blame for his struggles.
| Would you advise his son, and all the others like him, to
| "defer" to his father? Would you apply to this man all
| the generalizations you've used in this thread, and
| accuse him of failing to appreciate how his father
| "looked after" him?
|
| > _Labeling deference to parents as abusive is extreme._
|
| The parent comment did no such thing. They said that an
| abusive parent's expectation of deference can itself
| constitute abusive behavior. This is not surprising to
| anyone who's been exposed to abusive relationships: it's
| common, for example, for abusive husbands to demand
| deference from their wives, in line with traditional (and
| often religious) mores. Would you agree with this as
| well? Or is it only parents who you think deserve
| unconditional fealty?
| iammisc wrote:
| > What exactly is a "social absolute"?
|
| A social absolute is something like 'always be nice to
| people'. This is different from 'any attempt to be nice
| to someone is abusive'. one relates to human social
| interactions. The other relates to what is typically
| considered a serious crime.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| So, "social absolute" is a concept that you invented,
| which allows you to use absolutist language while
| claiming otherwise. Is that about right?
|
| > _what is typically considered a serious crime_
|
| How often do you suppose the emotionally abusive
| behaviors described in the comment that you orginally
| objected to rise to the level of criminality? I'll give
| you a hint if you need it.
|
| I notice you didn't answer any of my other questions.
| Would I be way off-base to assume, therefore, that your
| sympathies lie with the abusive father I described?
| [deleted]
| weregiraffe wrote:
| 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.
| dogorman wrote:
| Presumptuous poems are insufferable.
| samatman wrote:
| I despise this poem.
| weakfish wrote:
| This isn't very constructive.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| I don't care.
| remir wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| > 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.
| scandox wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| For those who might not know the reference this is
|
| "This Be The Verse" by Philip Larkin
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Larkin
| pacaro wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| But "the verse" in question refers to the Old Testament:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestral_sin#Judaism
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-ver...
|
| Philip Larkin. You ought to give credit when you quote
| something like this.
| scandox wrote:
| 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.
| Tarucho wrote:
| What is fueling estrangement is not a shift in values but a shift
| in expectations. Failure is not an option these days.
| Arete314159 wrote:
| 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.
| someguy321 wrote:
| 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.
| grae_QED wrote:
| I'm pretty sure millennials don't want kids because children
| are expensive. I think this has more to do with the phasing out
| of the middle class than anything. You can't buy a house on a
| blue collar paycheck anymore.
|
| Also, for many women, its very hard to juggle motherhood and a
| career----if they chose to go that route.
|
| There is also a choice now. Women can use a plethora of
| contraceptives that weren't as common in my parent generation.
|
| Honestly, this whole "antinatalism" thing is all smoke and no
| fire.
|
| >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.
|
| Uhhhh, What?
| ruined wrote:
| i think as we see crises accelerate, the only ones with true
| freedom to act and make the world they want to be in will be
| the nihilists.
|
| everyone else is busy playing calculus looking for solutions
| that fit into existing logic and political economy, when the
| truth is that survival and creation irreducibly exist for their
| own sake.
|
| bringing a child into a dying world might be the ultimate
| selfish act. it's also the only option that doesn't feel like
| suicide. and once they're here, there's nothing left to do but
| devote all your energy into making the world the best it can
| be.
|
| i think this is what "family values" ultimately missed. family
| became the default, an inwardly-focused tradition and culture
| decoupled from praxis, and action was taken for granted.
| thomasahle wrote:
| > bringing a child into a dying world might be the ultimate
| selfish act.
|
| That's a pretty bleak outlook on the future of our world. Do
| you really think getting born today is significantly worse
| than being born at a random time in human history?
| dudeman13 wrote:
| >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
|
| You lost me a little there. How does not wanting kids makes you
| think that our socialization has taught some of us that humans
| have little inherent moral worth as individuals?
| thomasahle wrote:
| > How does not wanting kids makes you think that our
| socialization has taught some of us that humans have little
| inherent moral worth as individuals?
|
| Doesn't not wanting kids for X reason mean that you consider
| the moral worth of a new person to be less than X.
|
| I think a lot of people don't consider a new person worth
| anything at all. Or at least would prefer 9 people at
| happiness level 10 over 10 people at happiness level 9.
| conductr wrote:
| 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.)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Millennials in their 30's have something crazy like 1/6th the
| wealth their parents did at the same age.
| kristjansson wrote:
| The dual of this is that many more millennials have living
| parents than their parents did at the same age.
| dlp211 wrote:
| citation needed. I highly doubt that this is true
| considering my (millenial) grandparents are still alive.
| minikites wrote:
| >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.
| BarryMilo wrote:
| People on HN speak their armchair sociology with such
| confidence it astounds me.
|
| Even the idea that resentment can be "deserved" or not seems
| meaningless to me. People don't resent people because they
| think they deserve it, they resent people because things
| happened to them. We obviously can't assign blame for such
| infinitely complex causal chains, hell we can't even assign
| agency. Who's fault is it that someone's grandfather got brain
| damage in the war he was conscripted into, then went on to be
| abusive to his children, who went on to become addicted to
| alcohol. Who should say if these people then deserve resentment
| for being bad parents?
|
| Life seems to me too random to comprehend, yet everyday I find
| people to tell me I should or should not condemn or condone
| people for their actions.
|
| Maybe shit just happens and we look for reasons afterwards?
| neilparikh wrote:
| > humans have little inherent moral worth as individuals
|
| Isn't it flipped? If humans had little moral worth, then there
| would be no need to worry about the suffering they would
| experience. It's because they have moral worth that people
| hesitate to bring new humans into the world.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Maybe it is:
|
| Humans have moral worth; to remove suffering of humans, make
| sure they don't exist to experience suffering.
| nkingsy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| edit: i guess my comment was a little too personal to state.
| tablespoon wrote:
| How is this in response to the GP at all? Did you reply to
| the wrong comment?
| nkingsy wrote:
| 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.
| golemiprague wrote:
| 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.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| 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.
| hogFeast wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| teslaberry wrote:
| 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.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| Reading this makes me realize a lot of you should of kicked to
| the curb bad family relationships a long time ago.
| js290 wrote:
| 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
| mike00632 wrote:
| I've witnessed the opposite. Most parents who disown their gay
| children are encouraged to do so by religious belief.
| ta2157 wrote:
| 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.
| antisthenes wrote:
| 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.
| queuebert wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I swear the last 4 years drove the vast majority of
| everyone insane, in a very literal sense.
|
| Our current situation reminds me of the brain-eating computer
| on the book Diamond Age that somebody created to crack
| passwords. It's like a lot of people are simply gone, and
| some superconciousness too over their bodies, and it's on the
| controls 24/7.
|
| I still hope this reverses once the simplistic ideas get hit
| again and again by reality. Those groups are working very
| hard to shield themselves, but I imagine some portion of them
| must always be exposed to the real world.
| queuebert wrote:
| What an amazing analogy. I doubt there is a solution short
| of severe changes in how most people use the internet and
| media. Attention stealing apps and their consequent
| dopamine addictions seem to have killed rational thinking,
| so much that people will refuse to believe facts and
| evidence. It feels better to be part of a group that
| believes a thing than to process a conflict and adapt your
| worldview. Hmm, what else does that sound like? :-)
| helen___keller wrote:
| > I swear the last 4 years drove the vast majority of
| everyone insane, in a very literal sense.
|
| Just out of curiosity, would you say that this has ever
| happened to you?
|
| I'm asking because I also see many people around me going
| 'literally insane' (and yes, in both the 'left' and 'right'
| ways. Basically becoming consumed by some drip of outrage
| pieces and provocative online discourse).
|
| But I also recognize that I 'went insane' at one point too.
| Being a kid who grew up on the nascent internet, I became
| addicted to reddit when reddit first emerged, and I can look
| back to around the Occupy Wallstreet era when I became
| obsessed with rhetoric that was disconnected from my own
| lived experience, and repeated certain ideas that were often
| disconnected from reality or evidence.
|
| It pains me to see friends and relatives go through the same
| process. But I 'survived', and I do hope many others can too.
| queuebert wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I suspect it's leaning more to the right for older
| generations.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > 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.
| bendmorris wrote:
| If you think extreme polarization and degradation of
| critical thinking is exclusively a problem of the other
| side, it probably applies to you as well.
| objectivetruth wrote:
| _Some 23% of Republicans... say they agree with the
| baseless QAnon allegation that "the government, media and
| financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of
| Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-
| trafficking operation."_
|
| Source: https://www.prri.org/research/qanon-conspiracy-
| american-poli...
|
| By chance, do you have a comparably researched statement
| about how "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is "very, very real"
| that didn't come from a Twitter thread or YouTube video?
| Floegipoky wrote:
| Big +1 to this. My parents weren't abusive at all, they love me
| and have always done their best. But my relationship with my
| dad is extremely strained- it was a strange and painful
| realization that I wouldn't associate with him, at all, if we
| weren't related. And it's entirely because of his radical
| right-wing beliefs, which have only escalated in the era of
| Trumpism.
|
| I've read accounts of older children during the rise of
| European fascism, seeing their parents consumed by bitter
| hatred until it destroyed everything in their lives except
| their devotion to the totalitarian state. I was prepared to
| deal with that. I have no blueprint to deal with a walking
| embodiment of the Southern Strategy- just complete and utter
| denial of the core tenets of what they support.
| peteretep wrote:
| I'm sorry for you dude, that sucks
| everdrive wrote:
| >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.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Is it really a shift in definition? Your new definition of
|
| > failed to fully empathize with me and agree with my take on
| the situation
|
| sounds like a disagreement over whether a fact is true.
| everdrive wrote:
| The difference would be the good faith of the argument. It's
| not gaslighting if someone believes I have my facts wrong, or
| my take on the situation is wrong.
|
| It WOULD be gaslighting if someone thought my take on the
| situation was correct, but claimed that I was wrong in order
| to sew doubt in me.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Well, isn't there some boundary at which a belief is
| completely unreasonable?
| everdrive wrote:
| In the original definition, a "gaslighter" would have to
| know and agree on the same facts as the victim, and then
| intentionally lie about them to sew doubt in the victim's
| mind. In your scenario, the "jerk" (for lack of a better
| term here, since he is not a classical gaslighter)
| honestly believes that the victim is incorrect, and is
| arguing from good faith. Good faith arguments can
| certainly be wrong, and can certainly be awful.
|
| [edit]
|
| I suppose I take such a hard line on this because it's
| childish to think that people will always empathize with
| you, and agree with your take on things. Quite often, the
| opposite will happen. This is a regular occurrence, and
| does not constitute abuse. Sometimes when no one agrees
| with you, it means you're in the wrong and you need to
| rethink your take on the situation. Other times, an
| individual can be in the right while others are wrong.
| This sort of conflict will be a normal part of someone's
| life. Further, some situations do not have a strictly
| "wrong" or "right," and simply constitute competing
| values and perspectives.
| derbOac wrote:
| I actually think this is an interesting exchange, as I
| think this issue -- the boundaries of real versus
| perceived reality -- and the use of the term
| "gaslighting" reveal a lot about the psychology of the
| parties involved.
|
| I was going to say something similar to you, that
| correctly or incorrectly, I do feel like there's this
| increase over time in people (maybe generational, maybe
| not) treating their perceptions as real. It's like
| there's no room for a Rashomon effect or something, and
| there's this lack of recognition societally that self-
| identified victims can sometimes have false
| recollections.
|
| In that case, if you and another person strongly disagree
| over what happened, in a factual sense, the only room for
| explanation, if you thought you were a victim, is that
| the other person is gaslighting you by denying the
| "reality" of what happened, or lying outright, or has a
| false memory.
|
| FWIW, I agree the meaning of the term gaslighting has
| shifted over time, in that I think originally there was
| more of a connotation that the victim _didn 't_ question
| what was happening, until maybe after everything was so
| blatantly obvious, and, as has been pointed out, the
| perpetrator either knew what was happening at some level,
| or at least didn't truly believe it themselves.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yes, but that doesn't make it gaslighting.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I think it is easy to look at this and say "wow, look at these
| dumb young people". But when I look around at people I know who
| are in this spot, the responses from parents has been truly
| awful. I know people whose parents have physically beaten them
| yet the parents still insist they were loving and cannot
| understand why their child broke the relationship. I know
| people whose parents raised them to be racist and are now
| shocked that their kid is cutting them off after finding an
| interracial relationship that their parents think is wrong.
|
| A parent who says "I just loved you the whole time" when they
| actually traumatized their child _is_ gaslighting in the
| traditional sense.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Indeed. Everyone I know who is estranged from their parents
| is because they "came out" and the parents failed to cope.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| It's an example of a human universal that humans believe
| what's convenient for them. It's convenient to be a terrible
| person and still believe you were a great and loving parent.
| Not so convenient to realize you made mistakes and weren't
| perfect.
| [deleted]
| elmomle wrote:
| Agreed. When you are trying to communicate in an
| empathic/emotional way and the other party does not
| understand how to do this and defends themselves in an
| intellectual/unemotional way, your emotional need is
| profoundly unmet. This falls short of intentional
| gaslighting, but to critique the party seeking empathy as
| childish misses the point.
| dkarl wrote:
| I disagree. I don't like the way the power of the word has been
| eroded either, but gaslighting in the original sense does
| happen, and I think parents are frequent offenders, because
| they become accustomed to the power they have over their kids'
| perception of reality.
|
| The most extreme example I know of: a woman I know was sexually
| abused by a teenage neighbor when she was very young. When her
| parents found out, they told him he wasn't supposed to do that,
| and when they caught him again, they uninvited him from their
| house for a few years, then welcomed him back, and scolded her
| for being "rude" and "dramatic" when she cried and didn't want
| to be in the same room as him. Now, before you get suspicious,
| that previous sentence was her parents' version of the story,
| which she accepted for years. So this guy was in and out of her
| house almost her whole childhood, treated as part of the
| family. Her mother even showed her the "very nice" note he sent
| declining their invitation to the party they were throwing for
| her college graduation. When they got on Facebook, they
| immediately friended him, so he got all the family news they
| posted, including when and where she moved, the new jobs she
| got, etc. They called her paranoid and self-centered when she
| asked them to stop sharing all the latest about his life with
| her and vice-versa. The family narrative growing up was that
| all of that was perfectly healthy and normal, and she had
| difficulties with it because she was a difficult, dramatic, and
| irrational person, the kid with all the problems who spoiled
| things for her otherwise perfect family.
|
| So that's already gaslighting on an emotional level, but if you
| want it at the factual level, they covered that, too. As she
| started talking to her parents about it as an adult, it dawned
| on them that what they did looked bad by "present-day
| standards," and they started changing their story about what
| happened. In their version now, they banned him from the house
| after the first offense and didn't allow him back until she
| moved out for college. They never scolded her for being "rude"
| when she was scared of him; they were sympathetic. Her mother
| even tried to say she arranged counseling for her, and then
| backed down and said, "Well, people didn't get counseling back
| then [the 1980s] but we did the equivalent," by which they
| meant talking to the priest at her school about her "emotional
| problems."
|
| That's pretty legit gaslighting when you're in your thirties
| and suddenly your parents change the story they tell about how
| they handled your molestation, after sticking to the previous
| story for a quarter century.
|
| Not only that, the ease and lack of conscience with which her
| parents changed their story made my friend wonder how much of
| the version she grew up with and took for granted was
| fictionalized. She doesn't really remember how many times the
| abuse happened, what period of time it spanned, who put a stop
| to it, or how or when her parents found out. She has a few
| fragmented memories of certain times and circumstances that she
| mostly trusts, and the rest was secondhand via her parents.
|
| I could tell you other stories about parents misremembering
| things to their own advantage, probably unwittingly in most
| cases. I remember my sister screaming and crying and slamming
| doors about our parents not letting her go to a certain camp
| one summer that she had been to the previous summer. My
| mother's memory is that it was my sister's decision and she
| didn't want to go the second year. I don't think my mother is
| consciously lying. People's memories change over time, usually
| in ways that protect and flatter them.
| gpt5 wrote:
| This anecdote is a good example of gaslighting because it
| appears that the parents are aware of the facts, but
| intentionally deny them, making her question reality.
|
| The problem arises if the parent honestly believe in a
| different set of facts, in which case it is not intentional
| and hence not gaslighting.
| imbnwa wrote:
| If you could demonstrate with evidence the intent and factual
| occurrence of a harm, it wouldn't be gaslighting, it would just
| be factual lying. No one has ever confused those two things.
| People use the term gaslighting primarily in contexts where the
| truth is a matter of perspective and 'objectivity' is
| irresolvable but the claimant has subjective confidence the
| alleged did indeed exact the harm.
|
| It isn't surprising older folk have a hard time treating with a
| grey notion like that, but that's just another sign of the
| seachange. See Judge Joe Brown's take on Bill Cosby's release
| versus that of mainstream Black media.
| mrow84 wrote:
| From the perspective of a child who believes something
| happened, mightn't a parent "not acknowledging the harm they
| caused or are still causing" seems very much like
| "intentionally sowing doubt about a true fact"?
|
| Characterising that point of view as merely "Someone has failed
| to fully empathize with me and agree with my take on the
| situation" seems ungenerous, and also to implicitly doubt their
| understanding of what happened, without a particular reason to
| favour either the child's or parent's interpretation.
|
| The problem is that _everyone_ operates on their own
| understanding, by definition, so wouldn't it be better to,
| rather than say "this isn't gaslighting", instead note that it
| being gaslighting depends upon them being correct about what
| happened?
| dahfizz wrote:
| Using zeitgeist terms like "gaslight" and "toxic" immediately
| makes me take someone less seriously. They are words for social
| media virtue signaling and nothing more.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| As if"virtue signaling" isn't at least as bad a tell.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| What other word can be used to describe that behavior?
|
| If there was one that carried the same "doesn't really care
| just wants to be seen saying a particular thing"
| connotation without triggering half the left people would
| instantly adopt it because there are tons of instances
| where you see that kind of behavior and want to call it
| out. Grandstanding is also close but carries the wrong
| connotations of wanting to influence opinions whereas
| "virtue singling" is toward your own tribe. Bike shedding
| is also close but implies actually caring about the outcome
| or wanting to contribute to the discussion in a non bad
| faith way.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There are plenty of specific phrasing that can be
| applicable. "Feigning outrage." "Speaking in bad faith."
| "Muttering meaningless shibboleths." Virtue signaling
| itself has become a virtue signal, an empty jargon that
| denotes the user as a particular tribe.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| The children who are estranged from their parents are
| experiencing the traditional gaslighting, and not the more
| recent thing you bring up.
|
| I am estranged from my father for a number of reasons, but
| mainly because my parents divorced when I was young and my
| father spend the next 15 years trying to destroy my
| relationship with my mother through basically any means at his
| disposal. It came to a head when my father called me late one
| night while I was in college, and he told me "We did it, we
| won, we beat her". I was very confused and asked him to
| elaborate, and he told me that he sued my mom in court for
| child support that she paid while he was paying for my college
| attendance. He told me that he loved me more than my mom and
| that he was paying for college because he loved me and that my
| mom wasn't paying because she didn't love me. He had previously
| used money as a weapon in my relationships before and we had
| discussed and agreed that he cannot talk about finances like
| this with a 19 year old who is (1) needs financial support to
| make it through adolescence and early adulthood and (2) wants
| to maintain relationships with both parents. It was impossible
| for him to get over the anger and resentment he had for my mom
| and to keep that out of our relationship, so I cut ties with
| him. Having talked with him about this a lot before cutting
| ties, he would consistently gaslight me about how (1) my mom
| never cared about me (2) his remarried family were the only
| family that cared about me and (3) that everything he did, he
| did for love of me and not out of spite for my mother and (4)
| that he never did any of the stuff I specifically asked him not
| to do to help me maintain my familial relationships.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Not every form of abuse or deceipt or misbehavior is
| gaslighting.
| anthonygd wrote:
| > The children who are estranged from their parents are
| experiencing the traditional gaslighting, and not the more
| recent thing you bring up.
|
| And sometimes, the parent is experiencing gaslighting. We all
| have problems and the difference between parent and child
| fades with time (most of us live both roles).
|
| Without an objective record of fact and an independent
| analysis, it very well could be either party or more probably
| both that are guilty of gaslighting. Nothing is wrong with
| being estranged though unless you want there to be.
| parrellel wrote:
| I mean, there's probably a lot of actual classical gaslighting
| going on to. My interactions with my mother definitely fall
| into the old film definition of the thing.
|
| "I never chased you around the apartment with a knife! It was
| brainwashing!"
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I've noticed a trend amongst other 30-somethings I know to
| adopt this sort of pop psychology which encourages people to
| look very, very closely at their childhoods. It's a great idea
| to understand your upbringing, but it's not a trivial effort to
| do it properly.
|
| I don't think it's always a great idea for 2 reasons. One, it's
| known that our memories change over time. Traumatic memories
| can become better than they should (it wasn't that bad,
| right?), while frustrating memories can become worse than they
| should (every reiteration of the memory solidifies just how
| frustrating it was!). In general, this kind of reflection,
| unless we have external sources to affirm our recollections
| (siblings or a parent/adult we trust), seems like it could
| easily become counter productive.
|
| Two, without understanding ourselves reasonably well in our
| present state, seeking out past events to construct an
| explanation of who we are can lead to some very bad science in
| which we attempt to explain things we poorly understand in ways
| that don't make sense.
|
| I've had several conversations with friends over the last 5
| years or so in which they elaborated on weird stuff their
| parents did. In some cases it's simply to acknowledge their
| influences and why they might be the way they are. In others,
| perhaps most, they appear to be looking for excuses and ways to
| apply blame externally.
|
| This is obviously anecdotal. Maybe I hang out with weird
| people.
|
| In any case I've always strongly encouraged people to navigate
| this kind of thing with a therapist or other family if
| possible. Doing this in a vacuum is very risky. It seems to
| lead to exactly what you're outlining here. Children resenting
| parents for things that they believe negatively affected them,
| which the parents don't even remember - or remember
| differently.
|
| Of course they remember them differently though. They remember
| them from different frames of reference, different stages of
| mental development, and for different reasons!
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| I don't think this is what is going on in the article and in
| these cases of estrangement though. In my experience with
| myself and my friends estrangement isn't the result of
| someone who is 35 looking back and misremembering a slight in
| their childhood, its the result of a long and ongoing issue
| with a family member that degrades the relationship over time
| and that impacts them in the current moment today. I am
| estranged from my father and I want to have a relationship
| with him BUT I know that if I reopen ties with him, he will
| emotionally abuse me in the present day.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Good point, I'm glossing over that part. I'd agree that
| this likely only happens in situations where there are
| ongoing tensions or worse. That's definitely been the case
| with people I know. As a result, the exploration of
| childhood isn't objective at all. It's occurring within the
| frame of present conflict.
|
| I'm sorry about your relationship with your dad. I have
| trouble with mine too, and it weighs on me at times.
| Relationships can be complicated.
| derbOac wrote:
| I don't think this is unique to familial relationships. I
| think this is maybe a trend with all sorts of relationships.
| I'm not sure if there's any way of quantifying it, because I
| think it's something that's always happened, but I get the
| sense it's more common than it used to be.
|
| Without meaning to sound judgmental, I see it as part of a
| general trend -- cancel culture, sensitivity warnings, etc --
| that involves some underlying pattern. Maybe it's just more
| encouraged now than it used to be, maybe it's not really any
| different, I don't know. But I do get the sense people
| (liberal and conservative, young and old) are more likely to
| be absolutist about their viewpoints, political and
| relational, in a way that leaves less room for "seeing the
| other side" and change.
|
| It's important to note I think the familial estrangement
| issue is more complicated than this, and involves other
| changes in cultural values, but also socioeconomic crises.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Psychologists talked about unintentional gaslighting at least
| 40 years ago. "The motivation may be conscious, although it is
| usually unconscious; and almost invariably the conscious
| motives are rationalizations and/or distortions of deeper, more
| complex, and less acceptable motives."[1]
|
| [1]
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21674086.1981.11...
| 77pt77 wrote:
| That abstract is nothing but Freudian psychoanalytical lingo.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| 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.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| >The younger generation get social value by being the saddest
| person in the room.
|
| I don't think that's fair. I don't think those people are
| doing it to seek attention. What I do see is people get stuck
| in a spiral of rumination. It's important to understand how
| your past impacts who you are today, and your base
| temperament. If you understand that, you can work around your
| weaknesses. From there, you grow.
| malfist wrote:
| You paint with a very broad brush.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| That's true, the article in question does the same.
|
| Nuance gets lost anytime generalizations are applied. This
| is the way of the world. See media labeling of Gen Z or
| Baby Boomers. The variation in sample greater than the
| variety across labels.
| tclancy wrote:
| >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.
| vangelis wrote:
| The younger generation had significantly less
| tetraethyllead exposure. I wonder if that had any impact.
| tclancy wrote:
| Ha, yes. With all of the unrest in the US, I've found
| myself wishing the "other side" would at least
| reintroduce leaded gas so we'd raise kids unafraid to
| throw bricks again.
| notabee wrote:
| Yes. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/29/e2020104118
| epsteindidntk wrote:
| ok, billie eilish.
| notabee wrote:
| *sowing
|
| Also, you're bringing up the textual source of the term, not
| its general connotation. The connotation is when an abuser,
| cheater, or otherwise harm causing individual decides to try to
| rewrite history or attack the competence of the individual
| bringing the grievance rather than address the grievance in
| good faith. There is a big difference between disagreeing on
| the facts of a situation and trying to invalidate someone's
| perception of the situation in a manipulative way to avoid
| blame. If your first instinct when someone says "you hurt me"
| is to argue why it's not your fault, you should probably talk
| to a therapist about that. That is how a lot of families work,
| and will even couch it in terms of "tough love" despite it
| being frankly abusive behavior. To use the word of the day,
| that's toxic.
| samatman wrote:
| I guess you've never had someone accusing you of hurting them
| when you didn't?
|
| The optimal move is to disengage rather than argue, but I
| assure you that mandating that people "own" whatever spurious
| accusation is thrown their way just opens up a rich avenue
| for passive-aggressive abuse.
|
| Your contrasting the textual source with the general
| connotation is exactly the concept drift referenced by the
| post you're replying to.
| notabee wrote:
| I have indeed been accused when I didn't agree with the
| objective harm caused. Thankfully, I typically didn't
| further escalate the situation and act like a jerk by
| denying their perception of the issue. Just because you
| don't immediately mount a fiery defense doesn't mean that
| you own their position, their feelings, or have to agree
| with them. This is emotional intelligence 101.
|
| Typically a quiet, non-escalated discussion can help both
| parties feel better, clear up misunderstandings, and if
| apologies are merited (even from the initial accuser) they
| can be had. But only if you don't get someone's hackles up
| in the first place, or deny their right to air a grievance.
|
| Again, the fact that you are already considering it a
| contest to be won or lost (or avoided immediately without
| discussion, which is a sure indicator to folks how much you
| don't care) probably says a lot about the lens you view the
| world through.
|
| Referencing the connotation means that there is a general
| accepted usage, which is not the hyperbolic "didn't
| absolutely agree with their grievance" that the original
| post I replied to was making. In general terms, I think it
| has come to include unconscious manipulation in addition to
| the previous, narrow definition of conscious, machiavellian
| attempts to dispute concrete facts.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > narrow definition of conscious, machiavellian attempts
| to dispute concrete facts
|
| My understanding of gaslighting is that it was never
| about disputing concrete facts; it was about controlling
| the person by making them doubt their sanity. We already
| have a word for conscious Machiavellian attempts to
| dispute concrete facts: "lying."
| notabee wrote:
| I don't know what you're talking about, there's no such
| word as "lying".
| vinhboy wrote:
| I first learned the definition of "gaslight" like 10 years ago
| from a Project Manager friend who said I was "gaslighting" her
| because I secretly fixed a bug she complained about and
| pretended it was never a bug to begin with.
|
| I didn't know the meaning of the word so I looked it up. It's
| related to the plot of a movie I believe.
|
| It's a great word to describe the situation we were in.
|
| Nowadays people use "gaslight" to mean something different and
| it annoys me. But what do I know, I am not a linguist.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Gaslighting seems to have entirely lost its original
| definition. I now see it being used to describe almost any kind
| of disagreement or abuse. It's unfortunate, because it does
| disservice to actual victims of gaslighting.
| pluto7777 wrote:
| Rejection of religion is a rejection of family.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It also might be a reversion to the mean.
|
| E.g. One reason ancient Christianity was such a big deal
| according to historians (and resulted in billions of followers,
| etc.) was their profoundly different family structure when
| compared to what was happening in the roman culture and
| throughout the world.
|
| They brought Jewish traditional family structure to the
| 'gentiles' (read: everyone else who wasn't omitted by blood
| line).
|
| It's possible that a more secular materialistic society will
| have completely different relationship structures because there
| is no objective truth saying 'hey, respect your elders'
| whytaka wrote:
| I wish you would elaborate more. What you're saying is very
| interesting. What were families like in Roman culture? How
| did Christianity change that?
| bckr wrote:
| I like this perspective. There are so many folds to it,
| though.
|
| First fold: Christendom and its 2,000-year-old
| siblings/cousins Islam (also Confucianism? Buddhism?) have
| been around long enough to form a sort of base social
| reality.
|
| Second fold: These 2,000-year-old cultural regimes are
| crumbling and we are moving into new cultural regimes.
|
| Third fold: The crumbling is actually, as you said, a
| reversion to the mean.
|
| Fourth fold part A: This so-called reversion to the mean is
| itself impossible because cultures from 2,000 years ago were
| themselves much different from the cultures that came before
| them, and so on in both time and space dimensions.
|
| Fourth fold part B: This so-called reversion to the mean is
| impossible also because we don't have enough context about
| ancient cultures to say that we are reinstantiating them, and
| things have changed so much (technology, residual effects of
| the most recent cultural regimes) that, even if we had enough
| information about the ancient cultures, there's no way we're
| really doing what they were doing.
| pmichaud wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 4. Abuse.
|
| Did you mean they aren't actually new?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| I think verbal abuse in particular is getting more
| deserved attention than it has in the past.
| dktoao wrote:
| I think they meant that their examples are things that
| would have been "shoved under the rug" or hidden in the
| past and are no longer taboo. If you were gay in 1900 you
| hid it, if you are gay in 2020 you are out (usually).
| Abuse may consist of a lot of things, but using physical
| abuse as an example. If you beat your kids (more than
| just spanking) in 1900 it was still taboo (but maybe less
| so)
| vkou wrote:
| I think your view of the past is colored by 21-st century
| social norms.
|
| In 1900, a husband beating his wife wasn't even illegal
| in most of the world. [1] Beating children and other
| animals would barely even register as unusual.
|
| [1] It wasn't practically illegal in most of the US, both
| on the state & federal level until the late 20th century
| - https://www.cji.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/04/domestic_abus...
| dash2 wrote:
| But beating your kids or wife - again, in the "more than
| just spanking" sense of physical abuse - was often
| punished informally. Working-class communities had clear
| senses of the relevant boundaries (though again those
| wouldn't be the same as our boundaries necessarily) and
| institutions like the Charivari to support them. (Google
| "Rough music".)
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Huge agreement on including abuse.
|
| It's hard to make this question grounded in data, but
| here's an anecdote I do think is accurate.
|
| My grandfather was a horrific man. He died of
| complications due to alcoholism before I was born. That
| said, I've heard a lot about just what he was like,
| including from people outside the family. I've also seen
| 16mm film footage of him at family holidays, and it's
| shockingly clear every single other person in the room is
| straight up terrified of his potential temper. I'm not
| exaggerating on this point. I think he must have had
| something going very, very, wrong inside that skull.
|
| My grandmother, who otherwise was a fiercely independent
| woman, stayed with him despite the abuse. My Dad,
| hitchhiked to Mexico one summer to escape him, but
| otherwise still tried to be the good son.
|
| Why? Why not just divorce/disown the asshole?
|
| The norms against that half a century ago were so much
| stronger. I do think that's an important shift that's
| happened recently. There's still plenty of people that
| stay in a bad situation due to loyalty, but the stigma,
| in the sense of victim blaming, has definitely eroded
| within my lifetime.
|
| This is a very good thing in my book, even if it looks
| like a decay of society to some idiots.
| tw04 wrote:
| It was more socially normal because an entire generation
| experienced the horrors of WW2. I'm not saying that makes
| the behavior ok, but it sure made it a lot easier for
| families to empathise. My grandpa wasn't an alcoholic but
| he was a giant asshole until about mid-70s when he
| started softening up.
| thebiss wrote:
| 5. Addiction
|
| Adultery, abuse, and addiction are not new.
| Y_Y wrote:
| > the "shift" is more like an unveiling
|
| Is there a name for this phenomenon? I think many articles
| could plausibly be "This Bad Thing is Downright Ubiquitous, But
| We Only Just Realised!".
| mcguire wrote:
| Had a friend who told the story of her aunt: Her aunt's mother
| married a man and had several children, including the aunt. Her
| aunt's mother left her husband as he became an abusive
| alcoholic and returned to her family. Who proceeded to treat
| the aunt's mother like a pariah for deserting her husband. The
| aunt grew up living in a converted chicken coop and being
| completely ignored by her extended family.
| inlikealamb wrote:
| I came here to say this. My step-sister's family sticks to the
| concept of family despite all the women being raped and beaten
| by their father. They will not address the problem, their
| mother will not address the problem, and the only way to live
| in reality is to leave them. They violently attacked her for
| trying to discuss it on multiple occasions. Their mother
| continues this even after the death of their father.
|
| They tell everyone they know that she's addicted to drugs and
| won't talk to them because they want to help her. In reality
| she's more successful than all of them combined, which she
| attributes largely to seeking mental health counseling and
| removing herself from their constant drama.
|
| We're living through a reckoning for abusive people. In the
| past people were ostracized for cutting off their families for
| _any_ reason, especially women... but now there 's little
| reason to put up with this kind of bullshit. These cycles of
| familial abuse reach back generations and it's about time
| they're addressed.
| rayiner wrote:
| I see it more as con self-involvement than empathy.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| The parents probably do as well.
| hooplah wrote:
| 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 ;)
| [deleted]
| watertom wrote:
| 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.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| 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.
| kevstev wrote:
| I just posted something very similar, and was surprised to see
| there were not more comments along this line. My family isn't
| red, but just in general dealing with them is kind of
| exhausting. The extended is fine to spend time with, but they
| are constantly in petty fights with one another and trying to
| align others to their "side" when I just want to find out who
| is coming for Thanksgiving and what I should bring. Some of
| them continue to make the same exact poor decisions over and
| over and then bitch about ~~the consequences~~ their lives.
|
| There is only so much I can take, there are lots of other
| people in my life who I never view dealing with as someone I
| have to subject myself to but do not want to.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Yes, absolutely that's a constant component of the
| "factioneering" as well. My spouse points out that my family
| tries to use me as Switzerland to broker between their
| respective dysfunction whenever there's a crisis (e.g. death
| in the family, financial problems, etc.). There was a point
| in time where I took that on willingly and dutifully because
| I'd think, "Well, somebody has to do it." But, as they never
| took these moments as teachable ones to sort out their own
| issues with themselves and then consequently with others, I
| just hit points where I was sacrificing what I loved for what
| I didn't, and I stopped. It turns out that, nope... somebody
| actually doesn't have to do it. As long as you can get
| yourself outside the blast radius, life goes on. I suppose,
| unfortunately, that then becomes the goal and challenge...
| how to stay outside the blast radius. Hence, estrangement.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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_h...
| (2014, situation has generally got worse!)
|
| https://captainawkward.com/2020/12/09/1304-fox-news-stole-my...
| LordHumungous wrote:
| Is it really that hard to just ignore these things when your
| parents say them? I have Republican parents and I just smile
| and nod whenever they say something crazy. It's extremely
| easy.
| starik36 wrote:
| 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?
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| For my part, in an effort to try to understand where the
| deterioration was coming from, I tried to trace the lineage
| of the different seemingly pre-packaged outrage nuggets.
| Trying to see if I could make sense out of the respective
| roles that things like 8Chan, weird PACs and foundations,
| Facebook, Twitter, email chains, online news, and
| television news were playing in ultimately crafting the
| "junkie" that used to be a person I could talk to about
| rafting, or skiing, or cars, or whatever. Where every
| possible topic of conversation would inevitably devolve
| into looking for any opportunity to inject some sound bite
| or meme. Anecdotally what I found was that the television
| media part of it was never the progenitor, it was always
| the legitimizer. A narrative was always seeded first
| through other preliminary means (e.g. Facebook or
| astroturfed email chain), and then eventually that
| narrative would be confirmed through some corner of
| television media, and then this acts as a legitimizing
| function seemingly due to the role that broadcast media
| used to play in their lives historically.
|
| Eventually I gave up on trying to unpack it any further
| because it was clear I had no means to do much about it
| regardless of what I could unearth and understand about how
| it was happening or if I could get ahead of the curve on
| some facets of it by avoiding topics that could even
| incidentally be connected to upcoming "hot buttons".
| vxNsr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| treespace88 wrote:
| 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.
| treespace8 wrote:
| My mistake it is mentioned. Apologies.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It is. There are several paragraphs on the effect of divorce on
| estrangement.
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| 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.
| delecti wrote:
| As a child of divorced parents, I'm glad they didn't stay
| together. For as far back as I can remember, it's been very
| uncomfortable being around while they're interacting with
| each other. Most marriages don't end for no reason, and I
| question the implication that unhappily married parents are
| necessarily better for a child than happily divorced ones.
| vkou wrote:
| What is the damage to a developing child of living for 18
| years in a home where their parents should have divorced,
| but didn't?
|
| People, especially people with children, rarely divorce
| just because it's Thursday.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| 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.
| hackeraccount wrote:
| 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.
| samatman wrote:
| Yes, but for many of us in the West, without the tradition
| common to East and South Asians of reciprocal obligation.
|
| This used to be nigh unto a human universal: your parents raise
| you up from a helpless infant to adulthood, and this obliges
| you to love and care for them for the rest of their lives.
|
| I'm as deracinated Westerner as it comes, and yet I'm fairly
| traditional in this regard. I can think of three acceptable
| reasons to estrange from parents: sexual abuse, severe physical
| abuse, and the parents disowning the child. Even the second one
| leaves a lot of room for reconciliation, since they can't hurt
| you anymore.
|
| I mean, easy for me to say, my parents easily earned a B+ and I
| was able to work out my teen angst with my father by my mid
| twenties. Still: casually abandoning "honor thy father and thy
| mother" doesn't seem to be working out very well for us.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| I think you presuppose that the abuse is in the past and not
| the present. My dad actively emotionally abused me, regularly
| insulted my wife, and tried to destroy my relationship with
| my mother. By necessity he made it a choice between a
| relationship with him and a relationship with my mom. My
| estrangement wasn't about something I remembered, it was
| about him being terrible to me when I was 25 and didn't need
| him for support or money anymore.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| This view seems predicated on the idea that people who
| estrange their parents do so because of past actions. I'd
| argue that in my personal experience and my experience with
| other such adult children the reasoning is more often about
| the current behavior of the parent or parents than past
| behaviors.
|
| People who abuse or neglect their children are often doing so
| because of their own mental illness or emotional instability
| and those issues are unlikely to resolve without outside
| help.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| What about people raised by single parents? What do they owe
| to the absentee parent?
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| Knocked out teeth.
| bostik wrote:
| An apology?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| You might be confusing the question. A child does not
| have to apologize to a parent that left before they were
| born.
| eternalban wrote:
| Asia also has a western end. And being from West Asia, I can
| assure you that "reciprocal obligation" (dare one call it
| love and respect?) is very much a thing at those coordinates
| as well.
| tolbish wrote:
| But mental/emotional abuse and neglect are perfectly fine?
| Those can be just as irreparably damaging as physical abuse.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Ex: I have a (former) coworker who told me his life story.
| He's homosexual and his parents sent him multiple times to
| gay conversion therapy. Learning to accept himself for who
| he is required him to leave his parents: because they would
| not accept a homosexual child.
|
| No sexual abuse or physical abuse in this story, but its
| pretty clear that he's healthier for leaving his parents.
|
| IIRC, he's an only child as well. I'm not sure if he'll be
| willing to take care of his parents as they get older.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| This is what caused me to cut the cord with my parents. My
| father is a massive criminal, got himself into prison for a
| large part of my formative years, never said I love you.
| Mother is untreated borderline, was emotionally abusive my
| entire life.
|
| I spent years of my adulthood trying to find a way to
| reconcile with them and the conclusion I came to was it's
| not your burden to suffer for your parents' sins. They will
| change or won't change of their own volition. But you
| deserve to survive and thrive in kindness.
|
| So much of ourselves is steeped in the company we keep.
| Choose the company that fosters the better, kinder, wiser
| you.
| lazide wrote:
| Considering the posters background, they may have just not
| taken it into account.
|
| One challenge with abuse on all these fronts is that there
| is a huge amount of grey area in all of them, and judgement
| that would need to be drawn on what is and is not abuse.
| Sometimes/often it is REALLY clear cut (yeah, someone doing
| munchausen by proxy on their kids, or beating them, or
| whatever is clearly abuse).
|
| Other times, you'll find a lot of controversy. There was a
| lot of discussion recently about parents getting cut off
| from their kids because of rabid Trump support. Is that
| abuse? From whom? There have also been stories of parents
| cutting off their kids because of their strongly anti-Trump
| views during the election. Is that abuse? From whom?
|
| Mental abuse can be incredibly subtle, and a key component
| of many abusers is their ability to convince others around
| them that they totally aren't abusing anyone and it's that
| OTHER PERSONS fault.
|
| Made even worse by the fact that sometimes the person being
| painted as the abuser IS NOT the abuser, and it really IS
| the other persons fault!
|
| Sexual abuse and physical abuse can at least be generally
| judged somewhat accurately from a third party witness/video
| perspective.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The thing about abuse is that it has to be excessive or
| misuse of some power. Generally, mental abuse should
| require that the person being abused say that they don't
| like whatever is being said and for what is being said to
| be objectively meant to harm them (serve no legitimate
| purpose, phrased vulgarly). If it does serve a legitimate
| purpose and was delivered in a decent way, then I don't
| see how that could be abuse. That is protected speech.
| Forcing someone else from expressing their views just
| because someone else doesn't like it would then also fall
| under mental abuse and restriction of of their protected
| speech.
| ponow wrote:
| "Protected" vs "unprotected" speech: The distinction
| itself is an abomination, papering over a more subjective
| reality.
| slownews45 wrote:
| If you've ever worked as a camp counselor for rich kids -
| the term abuse can work out as follows:
|
| "Clean up your crap" = "You can't make me, that's abuse,
| my dads a lawyer."
|
| Is asking someone whose had maid service / cleaners to
| clean up their crap in a group situation abuse?
|
| The other stuff is feeling "uncomfortable" or "unsafe" in
| situations where you are asked to take the most basic
| responsibilities (ie, turn in an educational
| assignment").
|
| Kids will get a school counselor to excuse them from the
| work because it makes them feel "uncomfortable and
| stressed".
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is an interesting example of subjective versus
| objective well being.
|
| Asking someone to help clean is clearly not a misuse of
| power (e.g. abuse), but to an ill informed/molded
| individual, any request that they do something they don't
| want to do (homework, chores, work, etc.) can 'feel' like
| abuse to them (subjectively), even though objectively it
| is not.
|
| Most of our society is shifting to focusing on subjective
| well being over objective well being, so we get these
| confusing situations. (at least this framework helps me
| parse these issues).
| slownews45 wrote:
| It's interesting - because if you work with really rich /
| spoiled kids, they are sometimes being sent on these
| summer / camp type programs as a punishment. So some kids
| have been mowing lawns to try to pay for the program
| (thinking of it as something super special - which it
| is), and other kids are being sent as punishment.
|
| Reality is underneath most kids are good. Get them out of
| the environment and if you can get peer pressure going
| the right way, they'll drop right into it. Seriously,
| their parents wouldn't recognize them (cooking, cleaning,
| being very physically active etc).
|
| But early days can be a shock to the system. If you've
| been jetting to paris to shop on weekends, and then are
| being asked to eat a meal cooked by other kids (no meal
| choice at all - just one big something) and/or need to
| cook it, it can really feel like something way out of
| comfort zone.
| andrey_utkin wrote:
| Written down and agreed upfront clear principles and
| responsibilities should help, even with lawyer dads, no?
| mullingitover wrote:
| > This used to be nigh unto a human universal: your parents
| raise you up from a helpless infant to adulthood, and this
| obliges you to love and care for them for the rest of their
| lives.
|
| In ancient Rome as far as the legal system was concerned,
| your children were your _property_. You could literally sell
| them into slavery, no questions asked[1]:
|
| > The pater familias had the power to sell his children into
| slavery; Roman law provided, however, that if a child had
| been sold as a slave three times, he was no longer subject to
| patria potestas.
|
| Also, your children's property was your property:
|
| > Legally, any property acquired by individual family members
| (sons, daughters or slaves) was acquired for the family
| estate: the pater familias held sole rights to its disposal
| and sole responsibility for the consequences, including
| personal forfeiture of rights and property through debt.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pater_familias#Children
| thereare5lights wrote:
| > Also, your children's property was your property:
|
| Isn't that still the case today until the child is past the
| age of majority?
|
| Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v10DWClP7NA
| dragontamer wrote:
| Britney Spears is probably the more important example of
| that...
| thereare5lights wrote:
| Explain
| dragontamer wrote:
| I don't fully understand the legal issues myself. But it
| appears that when Brittney Spears was put into a mental
| ward in 2008, her father + lawyer was granted
| "Conservatorship" and therefore was placed in charge of
| Britney Spears and all of her assets. There's a court
| case going on right now about whether or not this
| conservatorship should end.
|
| I'd talk more about the subject, but that's all I'm
| willing to say in my current state of (mostly) ignorance.
| The idea of one adult (Britney's Father) literally owning
| another adult's assets (Britney Spears's stuff) is still
| around, especially when combined with mental health +
| court cases of the modern life.
| mullingitover wrote:
| My layperson's understanding of conservatorship: if there
| is any possible doubt about your ability to care for
| yourself _and_ money can be made from the
| conservatorship, you are very likely to find yourself in
| a conservatorship and will have great difficulty in
| getting out of it.
|
| If you are absolutely unable to care for yourself and are
| in desperate need of help _but_ there is no money to be
| made, you will probably find yourself living on the
| street in a major metropolitan area.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Why would someone giving birth to you oblige one to forgive
| severe physical abuse merely because you are too big to beat
| up at this point?
|
| It is a bizarre to suppose that love is owed instead of
| earned or earned once instead of the result of ongoing
| effort. If you stop feeding your cat or watering your plant
| it dies same with your relationship.
|
| I would venture to guess that the majority of estranged
| parents don't know this or in denial about having let the
| relationship die.
|
| The article says that the majority of parental estrangement
| is due to divorce especially the non custodial father then
| successfully segues to some nonsense about identity politics.
|
| I don't see it as a realignment of values so much as a more
| boring story about parents breaking up and becoming estranged
| spiced up with a minority becoming estranged because the
| values they hold are correctly deemed odious and hateful.
|
| If you hate gay people and your kid is either gay or feels
| strongly about the issue they aren't going to want to be
| around you.
|
| If you talk about shooting dirty liberals and your kid is a
| dirty liberal likewise.
|
| If your own kid hates you the first thing you should do is
| ask yourself why and if you blame it on a lack of family
| values you are almost certainly the problem.
|
| We both have good relationships with our kids I think you
| misunderstand why others don't.
| shadowoflight wrote:
| > This used to be nigh unto a human universal: your parents
| raise you up from a helpless infant to adulthood, and this
| obliges you to love and care for them for the rest of their
| lives.
|
| Alternate take on that human universal: your parents had
| unprotected sex and fulfilled their obligation to raise the
| offspring produced to adulthood, this obliges you to nothing.
|
| I'm not saying this means everyone should estrange their
| parents, but the idea that a child has any obligation to
| their parents for raising them seems misguided at best and
| damaging at worst, imo. Any attachment between children and
| parents should be due to mutual feelings of love and respect,
| like any other relationship - if those are absent on one
| side, why should the other suffer a relationship with people
| who they would otherwise remove from their friend group?
|
| (Note that I have a good relationship with my parents, so
| this isn't coming from a place of personal pain, but rather a
| dislike for the idea that two humans procreating and
| fulfilling their obligation to the offspring that comes of it
| should impose any obligation whatsoever upon that offspring.)
|
| EDIT: I should clarify that I do believe that parents who
| went above and beyond that obligation to show their children
| love and respect and receive nothing in return have a right
| to be upset - _however_ , what about situations where a
| parent thought they were doing the right thing (based on how
| they were raised, religious briefs, parenting advice from a
| friend or magazine, etc.) but the thing they were doing was
| actually harmful? There's a lot of nuance in this, but I
| think that a blanket "honor thy father and thy mother [out of
| obligation]" is a bad idea.
| anp wrote:
| Having grown up in an environment _exactly_ like your edit
| describes, I really appreciate you voicing this
| perspective.
| [deleted]
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| In reality, no one owes anyone anything. That doesn't make
| it ideal or justified.
|
| Turns out that's a bad way to structure a society and being
| hyper individualistic just ends up in your society
| collapsing.
| EvilEy3 wrote:
| What makes you think society is more important than
| individual?
| 1270018080 wrote:
| Without society, the best you can do as an individual is
| forage for food while naked and homeless. A little
| hyperbolic, but not far off.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| If society collapses it will be because we ignored
| existential threats like climate change, nuclear war,
| biological warfare etc.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Wrong. Societies have dealt with far worse situations and
| managed to survive. Societal cohesion is what prevents
| anarchy in the long run, not avoiding natural disasters.
| msbarnett wrote:
| Precisely none of "climate change, nuclear war,
| biological warfare" constitute a natural disaster, nor
| has this quasi-neo-confucian conception of societal
| cohesion via filial piety historically triumphed over
| anything worse than any of these modern extinction
| scenarios.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| None of those things would result in the complete
| extinction of human beings.
|
| The Black Death was pretty horrible and yet European
| society still exists.
| gBszkp6V wrote:
| Why did you just shift the goalposts from societal
| collapse to complete human extinction?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Because the comment used the word extinction?
| fidesomnes wrote:
| we found the redditor!
| slacktide wrote:
| European society exists today, but experienced societal
| collapse at the time, which extended for hundreds of
| years. Y'know, the Dark Ages?
| msbarnett wrote:
| I'm not going to bother arguing about it, but suffice to
| say I don't share your sunny optimism _vis-a-vis_ nuclear
| holocaust.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| _Many scholars have posited that a global thermonuclear
| war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the
| current smaller stockpiles, may lead to human extinction.
| This position was bolstered when nuclear winter was first
| conceptualized and modelled in 1983. However, models from
| the past decade consider total extinction very unlikely,
| and suggest parts of the world would remain
| habitable.[25] Technically the risk may not be zero, as
| the climatic effects of nuclear war are uncertain and
| could theoretically be larger than current models
| suggest, just as they could theoretically be smaller than
| current models suggest. There could also be indirect
| risks, such as a societal collapse following nuclear war
| that can make humanity much more vulnerable to other
| existential threats_
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_holocaust
| michaelmrose wrote:
| We might live but we wouldn't live well and our long term
| prospects would be dim.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| The claim was "extinction event."
| msbarnett wrote:
| The phrase I used was actually "extinction scenario"
| rather than a singular event, and "most people die
| immediately, an unlucky few eke out lives of unspeakable
| horror and pestilence for a handful of generations before
| the species collapses entirely" was basically what I had
| in mind.
|
| Really though I can't imagine what you think this
| pedantic obsession with whether or not everyone gets
| blown up immediately is adding to the conversation.
| oblio wrote:
| We're incredibly resilient. We can eat anything and we
| have technology that can be used in some of the worst
| environments on the planet and that allow us to get
| shelter and food.
|
| We'd be 10 thousand not 10 billion and life would suck
| but we would survive. And the fallout would clear within
| a few decades or centuries.
| not_jd_salinger wrote:
| Can you please list some of this "far worse situations"
| than nuclear war and climate change as we are currently
| facing?
|
| "Societal cohesion" doesn't do too much to help us
| survive crop failures and wet bulb temperatures over 35C.
|
| Aside from that, I think you might misunderstand your
| causal arrows a bit. It is fair more likely that massive
| industrialization and late state capitalism led to a
| society that valued the individual over the social unit,
| rather than that a sudden desire to be individuals sprung
| up in people's hearts and made a mess of the world.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Black Death and Mongol Invasions were probably worse on a
| per-person basis for those affected than even a realistic
| nuclear war would be.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| > If society collapses it will be because we ignored
| existential threats like climate change, nuclear war,
| biological warfare etc.
|
| All that where created by an individualistic approach.
| Party now and let future generations deal with the dirt.
| msbarnett wrote:
| > All that where created by an individualistic approach.
|
| How so? TFA attributes this modern alienation to changes
| in the American family structure that took place in the
| last half of the 20th century. All three of the threats
| the person you're responding to listed, nuclear war,
| (modern) biological warfare, and climate change, were
| developed or essentially locked in in our society _prior
| to_ the last half of the 20th century - largely by people
| born before or right around the end of the 19th century,
| who were presumably much more attuned to this "dutiful
| family obligation" mindset, since those are the very
| people TFA is contrasting these post-1950 changes
| against.
|
| The plain history of these developments would seem to
| argue that post-1950 societal changes had nothing
| whatsoever to do with these threats, unless you're
| arguing that the effect preceded the cause.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Change 'will' to 'might' and this statement is likely
| more true.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| This is the individualistic take.
|
| The person you're responding to is referring to how
| societies worked since time immemorial, prior to the advent
| of such strong individualism.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| You'll have to go back a very long way to find stable
| families that didn't have children leaving because they
| were bored, ambitious, abused, angry, or - in royal
| families - literally wanted to kill either or both of
| their parents and perhaps also their siblings so they
| could take over.
|
| One difference now is freely available contraception and
| a much lower birthrate, combined with more economic
| stability. (At least for the boomer gen.)
|
| When parents have two children and both are estranged,
| it's a tragedy. When parents had ten children, five of
| them made it to adulthood, and two decided to leave, it
| was acceptable attrition.
|
| The other difference is the absence of extended family
| and friends who can step in with childcare help. So
| parents + kids going through adolescence under the same
| roof becomes a pressure cooker. No one gets much of a
| break for 4-8 years.
| dkarl wrote:
| Reciprocal obligation is the key. I've heard people spin it
| so that children owe their parents an infinite debt that
| justifies anything, but that is not reciprocity. Reciprocity
| means equivalent behavior on both sides. People get a chance
| as adults to discuss what happened in their households as
| children, and some people find out that their stories are
| radically outside the norm. Usually all they want is some
| acknowledgment from their parents that mistakes were made and
| it wasn't ideal. Denial and justification are the things that
| trigger estrangement. Or continued exploitation: people who
| cared for their drug-addicted or otherwise needy parents for
| years starting in childhood and decide that however much
| their parents still need them, they have to separate
| themselves from that pathology so they can have their own
| healthy life.
|
| Not everybody wants to share details, but I've heard enough
| stories from friends that I'm shocked what people are willing
| to forgive from their parents. I shared one story in another
| comment -- that person has a close relationship with their
| parents despite it not being a very positive one. Another
| friend of mine, who is queer, grew up with a father who would
| frequently say things like all gay people should be executed,
| they should be locked away from decent people, doctors should
| have let AIDs finish the job, etc. This person did cut off
| contact with their parents a couple of times but eventually
| heard sincere apologies and regret from their father and
| reconciled. That was almost twenty years ago, and now they
| speak lovingly of their parents and are helping care for them
| as their health declines.
|
| Really it comes down to two questions: forgiveness and
| continuing harm. In my observation, adult children are not
| stingy with forgiveness for their parents. Not everybody can
| forgive everything, and it can take a while (I wouldn't
| bother asking until the kids are at least 25, maybe 30) but
| people forgive their parents for things they would never
| forgive anybody else for. They also tolerate a lot of
| continuing harm for the sake of maintaining the relationship.
| They draw a sharp line when it starts to affect their own
| children, directly or indirectly, and I think it's good for
| everyone that they do so.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| > I'm as deracinated Westerner as it comes, and yet I'm
| fairly traditional in this regard. I can think of three
| acceptable reasons to estrange from parents: sexual abuse,
| severe physical abuse, and the parents disowning the child.
| Even the second one leaves a lot of room for reconciliation,
| since they can't hurt you anymore.
|
| I'm in exactly the same boat. I'm the most
| hyperindividualist, detached-from-culture, atomized person I
| know, but my concept of filial (and familial) duty
| practically makes me an Old Country traditionalist compared
| to many of my friends.
|
| > I can think of three acceptable reasons to estrange from
| parents: sexual abuse, severe physical abuse, and the parents
| disowning the child
|
| I don't think my view is as concrete as this, as I don't want
| to confidently dismiss someone who claims that estrangement
| is necessary for their mental health. But I'm a little
| disturbed by the degree to which the current culture
| diminishes or occasionally entirely dismisses the existence
| of any familial obligation at all.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| For me personally there are aspects I don't like about myself
| that are clearly a result of how my parents raised me. As a
| much younger man I was bitter about this, but I came to realize
| that my parents are human and made some mistakes, but over all
| did sacrifice a lot for my and my sister's well being. I also
| realized we didn't do a lot to make raising us any easier. So
| rather than remain resentful towards them, I just let it go and
| started working to fix the things about me I didn't like.
| allenu wrote:
| That's a good, healthy way to look at things in general. When
| I was younger, I also was more bitter about life
| circumstances, especially with family, as we were poor, but
| beyond family as well. As I got older, I realized finding the
| blame and feeling angry might feel good, but it doesn't
| actually improve the situation. It's really best to just find
| out how to accept things and find corrective actions,
| regardless of fault.
| [deleted]
| fyfgfjgfy78 wrote:
| Sadly, when I was young adult, I knew my parents were not
| perfect and was happy with everything they did for me. They,
| like typical Asian parents, were always criticizing but I
| learned to ignore it.
|
| It wasn't much later when I had my own child, they finally
| broke me. Not only they set high expectations for how I will
| help them have relationship with their grandchild, and
| criticizing our parenting, but also started criticizing 2
| year old. For their part as grandparents, they did bare
| minimum, that is attend a birthday, ask for pictures because
| relatives are asking for photos. Never made an effort to come
| visit us. That is when they broke something in my brain.
|
| Now I resent them more than ever, I wish I had never let them
| criticize me as an adult. I lost faith in God since they are
| so religious. I am trying to be complete opposite of them. I
| have mostly stopped feeling joy. I live mostly to fulfill my
| duty as a father. I really want to pack everything and move
| to the other side of the world but wife doesn't agree with
| that.
|
| And as a father, I realize that there is no sacrifice in
| parenting. You choose to be a father. That was your choice.
| My kids are the only things that bring me joy right now. Yes
| sometimes they push my limits and I am tired, but it was my
| choice to have them. Thinking that my kids are making me
| sacrifice will probably make me resentful towards them. When
| I am playing video games while tired because I am so close to
| finishing a level, I don't say I made a sacrifice.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| >did sacrifice.
|
| On the one hand I agree children and young adults can be
| overly entitled or have too high expectations for their human
| parents on the other I think that framing raising children as
| a sacrifice is wrong. It is kind of the core point of
| biological life. In past times children were seen as a
| blessing now some times in the west they are seen as a
| burden. This inversion is part of the larger narcissism
| epidemic distorting modern society IMHO.
| oxymoran wrote:
| I agree. My parents held their "sacrifice" over our head
| and I don't think I really got over it and I think it's why
| I never wanted kids until fairly recently. I used to
| respond to that by saying that I never asked them conceive
| me in the first place which made me feel like poo. Now
| being a parent myself, I can see why parents would feel
| like they made a sacrifice, but I am never going to hold
| that "sacrifice" over my child's head because I also see
| how that felt terrible as a kid.
| fyfgfjgfy78 wrote:
| My parents did same thing, they made parenting seems like
| such a horrible thing. Made me wonder why anyone would
| ever have any kids. I never wanted any kids until my wife
| convinced me after 10 years.
|
| Now I know parenting is hard if you do it as religious
| duty to your god, family, country etc. But if you choose
| to become parent, like when you choose to pick up a new
| project or hobby, it is pure joy, even the hard parts.
| Yes you will be tired running marathon, but you will not
| say that you made a sacrifice. And unless you are trying
| to monetize you hobbies, you don't expect anything back.
| ponow wrote:
| Whether or not it made you feel like "poo" doesn't change
| that responsibility for a physical action lies with the
| people initiating it.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Children were mostly seen as a blessing because they were
| indentured servants that worked for very little.
|
| Childhood as it is seen today is a very recent creation.
| mleonhard wrote:
| Your comment is a humblebrag. :(
|
| My parents modeled and explicitly taught me a judgmental
| mindset. It became my worst fault. Can you feel the judgement
| in this comment? Thanks, Dad & Mom.
| gpt5 wrote:
| The moment you stop blaming others on your faults is the
| moment you'll start improving.
| mleonhard wrote:
| Why do you assume that I'm not improving?
|
| I started improving after I took a free 10-day meditation
| course (the Goenka one), four years ago. At the course, I
| gained the ability to notice changes in my emotions and
| mental state. Suddenly, I could see when my mind switches
| to a judgmental attitude. I began intentionally trying to
| prevent the switch. I also intentionally restrain myself if
| I do switch into that mode. Changing mental habits is
| difficult and worthwhile. I have improved a lot in this
| area in 4 years.
|
| Two years ago, I realized that my parents taught me to be a
| judgmental jerk. Since that time, I have considerably
| reduced the bad mental habit. People close to me confirm
| this. Therefore, my experience contradicts your statement.
| ponow wrote:
| Despite my half century and having repeatedly listened to
| and ruminated about "being judgemental", I can't fully
| fault "making judgements", for without judgement we have
| no comparison of worse vs better, and without that we
| have no basis for improvement. At issue mostly is _hasty_
| judgement, uninformed, and without humility of all the
| potential and unknowable errors in judgement. But we
| definitely must judge, or stagnate.
| handrous wrote:
| Judging pointlessly is a big one, too. Especially if
| unhelpful levels of ill emotions are all wrapped up with
| judging things to be bad, which is so common I think it's
| fair to call that most people's default state, unless
| they've taken effort to change that.
|
| Fixing those (forming judgements when they serve no
| purpose; feeling excessive ill emotions over judgements)
| is about half of the self-improvement part of stoicism,
| as in "think the right way, and act the right way". It's
| most of the "think the right way" half.
| anp wrote:
| It's very difficult to improve oneself without
| understanding the mechanisms, context, and history that
| contribute to one's behavior.
| rogerclark wrote:
| 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.
| sjg007 wrote:
| I agree, and you can see this pass down through the
| generations. It's even possible to recognize it in yourself
| and still have trouble because you don't know what else to
| do. So called default mode behaviors etc...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > "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."
|
| This is an interesting one, and in direct contradiction to
| the adage: "Hard times create strong men, strong men create
| good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create
| hard times."
|
| My life experience agrees, tough times mostly produce
| emotionally damaged people
| PeterisP wrote:
| I don't see the contradiction there, it's pretty much the
| thing that saying is talking about.
|
| A community full of emotionally damaged, unhappy people is
| also generally full of tough, no-nonsense people who know
| the dangers from personal experience, know how to avoid or
| eliminate them, do what needs to be done, no matter the
| cost and then afterwards perhaps drink themselves to death
| while abusing their family, but many of them also ensuring
| that their kids have a much better life than they did -
| slowly creating the good times.
|
| And a few generations later a community of happy,
| emotionally well-adjusted people haven't had horror in
| their childhood, and they don't know how to handle real
| adversity and recognize abusive evil because they don't
| have the skill and experience for that, and spend their
| struggle/effort over meaningless trifles and status games;
| are emotionally principled and don't let ends justify the
| means - so when eventually push comes to shove (often due
| to some external circumstance or an interaction with
| another, exploitative community) they are unwilling or
| unable to take decisive action and sacrifices (including
| moral sacrifices) to prevent someone much more violent and
| unprincipled from taking over and causing hard times for
| you (and perhaps better times for themselves at your
| expense).
|
| It's essentially about a cyclic change in the tradeoff
| between the qualities required to be happy, satisfied and
| cooperative versus the (very different and often
| incompatible) qualities required to be effective in the
| face of brutal adversity. Warrior mindset is harmful in
| peacetime, and pacifist mindset is ineffective in wartime.
| And perhaps it makes sense to raise "weak" men - friendly,
| open-minded, forgiving, sharing, optimistic and perhaps
| just naively expecting the best in others - whenever we can
| afford to, because it's just better and more sane, and we
| raise disproportionally strong, brutal, ruthless, efficient
| (and also damaged and abusive) men and women when we're
| forced to by circumstances that would just grind down
| people like those described in the previous sentence;
| damaging them until they either become "strong" or just
| break down.
|
| Perhaps a bit related is the issue of parenting styles.
| Maximizing potential of kids is often quite abusive and
| results in unhappy and perhaps "damaged" kids; when looking
| at biographies of e.g. olympic champions it often (but not
| always - there certainly are exceptions) seems clear that
| they would have been much more emotionally healthy without
| as much early age pressure; but they also wouldn't be
| champions then, they would be outcompeted by someone just
| as lucky in the genetic lottery but willing (or, more
| likely, pressured) to sacrifice more and live a less
| balanced life.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| We are still reeling from WW2 that wiped out massive
| numbers of (mostly) men who were then missing fathers. All
| the down-stream effects of that are fascinating.
| nradov wrote:
| I always thought that saying applied more to economics and
| politics than personal relationships. Look at the leaders
| who came of age during the Great Depression, then took the
| US through WW2 and the subsequent postwar boom. Many of
| them were massively fucked up in their private lives but
| still managed to perform well in public.
| Falling3 wrote:
| It seems that there are specific kinds of difficult
| experiences that promote growth and others that inhibit it.
| There are certain kinds of widely felt hardships like
| economic downturn that can unite communities and help bring
| out the best in people. There is a definite silver lining.
| There's no upside to shitty parenting.
| taddevries wrote:
| Maybe this is more accurate.
|
| "Hard times create weak men, weak men create hard times"
|
| I've never believed that adversity creates strength, at
| least that has not been my experience in life.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| >I've never believed that adversity creates strength, at
| least that has not been my experience in life.
|
| Except this is true in the most literal sense.
| nradov wrote:
| Adversity might not create strength but it certainly
| filters out weakness.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That's survivor bias. If you throw a million 8 year olds
| into the ocean, you'll create hundreds of swimmers.
|
| The "good times create weak men" I have less of a story
| for, but it's perhaps something like this:
|
| If you throw a million 8 year olds into the ocean while
| wearing life-preservers, you will end up depriving some of
| them the chance to learn to swim, and wrongly teach many of
| them that there's nothing dangerous about the ocean.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I mean, that adage about hard times, while entertaining,
| has zero truth to it. It's not something supported by
| history. It just sounds cool to say is all.
| ajot wrote:
| After reading "The Fremen Mirage Collection" [0], I can't
| read that adage/meme without feeling snarky.
|
| While I believe that, in an individual scale, harsh times
| can help develop toughness and resilience, most times it
| seems to lead to resentment, anger and frustration.
|
| [0] https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-
| mirage-...
| Cerium wrote:
| I'm not sure it is contradiction, both the strong and weak
| alike can be emotionally damaged. Many see dictators, or
| want to be dictators as strong men, yet they are often
| obviously damaged people.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Surely this is a contradiction in terms? A strong boxer
| who is missing a leg is a weak boxer.
|
| I don't think dictators are a good example, you only see
| the PR spin, it's not like you get a chance to meet Putin
| in person to realise he is actually clueless about whats
| happening in his own government.
| starfallg wrote:
| > This is an interesting one, and in direct contradiction
| to the adage: "Hard times create strong men, strong men
| create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men
| create hard times."
|
| "Strong" in this context means ability to survive, not the
| ability to thrive. A society of "strong" men and women
| often results in "good times" of material progress, which
| masks the negatives in society. Unmasking all the ugliness
| cause society to lose cohesion, resulting in breakdown via
| internal or external factors and hence resulting in "hard
| times".
| warent wrote:
| I've been estranged from my family since my teens due to an
| unpleasant childhood and young adulthood.
|
| Eventually, the flames of the furnace of life reaches all
| of us; some younger than others; some more acutely than
| others. In skillful hands, it can temper us to become
| purer, higher quality versions of ourselves. In unskilled
| hands, it can damage us. All of us acquire wounds, it is a
| part of being human, being unskilled, and being alive.
|
| Strength is just another word for empathy, love, and
| kindness. Everyone is capable of that, regardless of their
| pain. That's what makes humanity beautiful.
| rednerrus wrote:
| Most emotional damage that I've seen comes in the good
| times phase. That's when genx's parents were born. In the
| good times everyone is free to do as they please and have
| to find their own meaning, this creates weak men. Weak men
| create hard times. We're entering the really hard times
| now.
|
| When things really go to shit, you'll find your purpose and
| have to rely on others. That creates strength and good
| times, eventually.
| kelnos wrote:
| This reminds me of a friend who has gone through some bad
| life experiences. She once told me that "everything happens
| for a reason" is the kind of garbage only said by people
| who have never had bad things happen to them.
|
| Yes, dealing with adversity can teach us things and make us
| stronger. But there are limits, and adversity can also do
| permanent mental and emotional damage. The latter outcome
| is way more common than some people would like to believe.
| throwaway803453 wrote:
| Repeating annoying phrases that casually dismiss
| suffering seem to be human nature. It likely irritated
| Voltaire so much he wrote the tragic novel Candide in
| 1759. In that book the phrase is "everything is for the
| best in this best of all possible worlds" is
| thoughtlessly repeated during times of unspeakable
| cruelty and horror.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Candide is a critique of Leibnizian optimism: https://en.
| m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds
| brightball wrote:
| Just as a couple of counter points to that phrase (to
| people who say and and those who hear it), because I know
| a lot of people hate hearing it.
|
| People saying it are trying to impart hope on the people
| that they are saying it to. If you believe that
| everything happens for a reason, this will be a
| comforting reminder even though you're going through
| something awful. It's intended to remind people of the
| countless stories of individuals and groups of people who
| have suffered only to find out later that such suffering
| prepared them to make a difference later in life.
|
| For some, this could mean that a tragedy in your life
| will leave you prepared to help others who are going
| through something similar later in life.
|
| It's not intended as a dismissal of your pain. It's only
| to say that one day, the lessons you learn from this pain
| may help you to help others or yourself.
|
| Simple examples:
|
| - You lose a loved one to a horrible disease but then
| organize people to fund research to cure the disease,
| grow up to become a doctor or help support people coping
| with it
|
| - You get dumped in a relationship and you're devastated,
| but on reflection you realize things about yourself that
| you need to work on, make real changes in yourself and
| later meet the love of your life
|
| It's not meant to be dismissive.
|
| On the flip side, for people who throw this phrase around
| you need to know that it gives the impression that God is
| controlling everything like some type of puppet master
| without any free will or random occurrences in the world.
|
| The Bible doesn't reflect that perspective at all. It's
| worth the read to understand it better.
| dpweb wrote:
| As someone who was abandoned as a child and still maintains a
| pretty good relationship w both parents, I'm sure they are
| oblivious to the effect that had on me as a child. Nor are they
| willing to talk about it now. They feel what's done is done and
| in the past, and don't want the awkwardness of that
| conversation.
|
| It's cool, but sometimes you wanna cry for that child. As an
| adult, I've heard the mistake is looking at what happened to
| you through a _childs_ eyes. Ya can 't really ever let it go.
| sjg007 wrote:
| You are allowed to and should grieve for that child. There's
| therapy based on attachment theory where you learn to how to
| be the parent to that (inner) child.
| throwaway23429 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kevstev wrote:
| 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.
| zwieback wrote:
| 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.
| bitexploder wrote:
| The context and interpretation is always shifting and
| different. The human condition is always the same. So much
| comes back to simple communication. Things people often
| struggle with that are required for honest communication:
| listening, empathy, vulnerability, patience. It isn't some
| great unsolved puzzle in most relationships. I have often found
| it only takes one side to start bridging the gap to start truly
| communicating. It is when both parties insist on being right
| and aggrieved and conceding nothing that estrangement happens.
| Of course there are many complex situations, mental illness,
| etc. It works the same way in business. Everything is so much
| easier when you can listen and empathize with people. Actually
| empathize, not just empathize with the goal of making a point
| or convincing someone of decision, etc.
| burgessaccount wrote:
| I think the article really under-emphasizes the role of
| capitalism in this. If I need help with my kid, I don't call my
| mom, I hire a babysitter. If my mom needs medical help, she
| won't call me, she'll pay a nurse. Goods and services that used
| to be procured through social bonds are now procured with cash
| - which creates a feedback loop where people then neglect their
| social bonds to acquire more cash.
| zwieback wrote:
| Yeah, my pet theory is that there were two major shifts in
| human societies: nomadic to settlers and barter to money -
| everything else is details.
|
| Of course I'm an engineer and know next to nothing about
| anthropology.
| gruez wrote:
| >and barter to money
|
| >Of course I'm an engineer and know next to nothing about
| anthropology.
|
| You're probably wrong here.
|
| >There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, of a
| society in which barter is the main mode of exchange;[32]
| instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the
| principles of gift economy and debt.[33][34][35] When
| barter did in fact occur, it was usually between either
| complete strangers or potential enemies.[36]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money#Non-
| monetary_...
| burgessaccount wrote:
| "Barter" may not be the best term for it, but until the
| 18th/19th century (varied a lot by location), most people
| procured the physical goods they needed through their own
| family's effort (subsistence); through in-kind payments
| and mutual exchange (old contracts used to specify that
| people would be paid in firewood, or candles...); and
| through favors. The switch from that model to a model of
| surplus and specialization, where people were paid in
| cash which could then be exchanged for any number of
| products, procured from distant places and from
| strangers, was indeed one of the most dramatic
| transformations in human history. I think we still don't
| appreciate how much it shook up our old systems, and we
| blame things like divorce rates or child estrangement on
| newfangled values or bad morals when in fact they are a
| natural result of structural changes.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Indeed. In Marxist theory this is called Alienation, or
| rather, this is one aspect of alienation. Humans no longer
| engaging in productive labor for the common good and
| providing what they can to their community, but existing as
| atomic economic units existing to produce and consume.
| khawkins wrote:
| The divorce rate is higher and it's easier to be comfortable
| living independently, both of which are stated in the article
| and are unquestionable. There might be other reasons, but these
| are definitely breaking down relationships.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _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._
|
| It matters a lot! First of all, it matters legally. An
| entirely different set of laws and procedures will be invoked
| depending on which it was. But, second, it matters because it
| tells me something about what to expect from you in the
| future. It tells me something about how you feel towards me.
| It tells me something about your character, about your
| capacity for violence.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Don't ignore the sentence that "it doesn't matter" _applies
| to_ :
|
| > You still caused me damage and it's still not crazy for
| me to hold you accountable.
|
| Obviously it matters in other ways.
| dionidium wrote:
| Yes, my first objection addresses that part directly. Of
| course you're still accountable, but you're accountable
| in totally different ways. It matters a lot even just in
| _how_ one should be accountable. Even if the topic is
| limited to accountability, there 's no possible way to
| say it doesn't matter. It informs every aspect of that
| discussion.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I don't disagree, it is everyone's job to work on
| relationships.
| Hobli wrote:
| Social media no doubt is inflicting brain damage in much the
| same way being surrounded by the wrong people does.
|
| But putting that aside, when reasons have acummuluted over time
| for a relationships to weaken the main question is whether
| there are reasons to connect. And whether it gets verbalized,
| acknowledged and built upon.
|
| If there are common interests, activities that generate energy
| on both sides (as simple as cooking a meal together, gardening
| together etc) then it gets easier to maintain connect cause
| there is something positive for the mind to focus on inspite of
| all the negatives. Then there is hope.
| shagie wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I've been tempted to write a blog post "Toxic Considered
| Harmful"
|
| One of the biggest problems with the toxic label is there isn't
| anything that can be said in response. Its an attempt to get
| sympathy and/or end the discussion.
|
| "That's toxic" and well... there's not many places that a
| conversation can go from there. It is often incredibly
| difficult to refute someone making a claim that something is
| toxic - especially when much of the diagnosis of the situation
| is based on a one sided and often idealized view.
|
| Additionally, applying the label of toxic to a wide range of
| situations reduces the descriptive nature of the word and the
| options available within a wider vocabulary selection.
| didibus wrote:
| Replace usage of "Toxic" by "makes me feel like shit" and I
| think you'll understand better.
|
| What would you want to debate against someone who says
| something makes them feel like shit? There's not a lot to say
| beyond: "I don't care how you feel", "That sucks you feel
| that way, what would make you feel better", and "It's
| unreasonable to ask me to change in ways that make you feel
| better, so suck it up".
|
| Now imagine one person telling another their behavior is
| toxic, which means they are telling them that they make them
| feel like shit. Well the response will dictate what happens
| to the relationship. If the response is anything but "That
| sucks you feel that way, what would make you feel better",
| well the logical move for the person feeling like shit is to
| find a way to never have to interact with the toxic person
| again or force them to change their behavior.
|
| What else would you want to discuss?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The obvious fourth possibility is "you're wrong to feel
| shitty about this and should find a way to feel good
| instead". But of course, that's precisely the possibility
| that the framing of toxicity excludes - both "you're wrong
| to feel this way" and "it's unreasonable to ask me to
| change" can only be expressed as "that's not toxic".
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > It is often incredibly difficult to refute someone making a
| claim that something is toxic
|
| Perhaps a lot of the "toxic things" are subjective based on
| someones experience, so there is not much to refute.
|
| If someone says the way they were treated by another was
| toxic, who are you to refute its toxicity? People tend to be
| able to understand how some thing affects them and if it is
| good for them.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| The correct response is not to refute the label, it's to
| explore the feeling and ask what makes them feel that way.
| I'm sure some people will shut you down at that stage, but
| most people will open up if they actually want resolution.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| But that's exactly the concern, that "toxic" is both
| hypercharged with negative affect and can't be disputed.
| Similar labels don't have that problem - I would and do
| tell friends things like "she's not contrarian, she just
| has strong beliefs you haven't fully understood".
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Imagine if HN supported downvote reasons and "toxic comment"
| was one of them. Would I even be able to see your downvoted
| comment? I have "show dead" turned on in my settings, FWIW.
| cronix wrote:
| That, and the "news." If you watch CNN/MSNBC/NBC/CBS/ABC/PBS
| you are led to think that anyone who supports Republicans is
| the devil and only show things that support that viewpoint. You
| rarely see them agree with anything the Republican put forth.
| If you watch FOX/OAN or other similar networks, you are led to
| think that anyone who supports the Democrats are the devil. You
| rarely see anything in a positive light. It's as though each
| side is incapable of doing anything the other side might also
| agree with. The extremist language on all networks has gone
| into overdrive. It's interesting if you take a few weeks and
| watch all sides, as unbiased as you can, and listen to the
| names and language they use towards each other. They are chalk
| full of specific buzzwords, which are inflammatory. Seriously,
| transcribe them and look at the unnecessary adjectives used to
| "tell a story." Count them. Hundreds uttered every 30 minutes.
| It's a ratings show for them, but ripping the rest of us apart.
| deanCommie wrote:
| The way you're presenting the "both sides" of "FOX/OAN" vs
| everyone else sounds like you are presenting the FOX/OAN
| perspective that the media has a liberal bias and they are
| the counter.
|
| The truth is much more nuanced:
| https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/
|
| Most of your listed 'left' news sources only "skew left" but
| focus mostly on "fat reporting". Compared to FOX/OAN who are
| "hyper partisan right" and focus on "selectve, incomplete,
| unfair persuasion, propaganda, and other issues"
|
| When the most important facts of the day (electoral fraud,
| climate change, pandemic health and safety, vaccinations)
| have a "liberal bias" - in that the left is on the side of
| factual reality, and the right is on the side of unfounded
| conspiracy theories, you simply can't compare the news media
| the way you have.
| landryraccoon wrote:
| I don't think false centrism or compromise for the sake of
| compromise is beneficial here.
|
| Let's take the most clear example.
|
| Who legitimately won the 2020 US Presidential Election?
|
| Did Biden win the election fairly and legitimately or not?
|
| Does your position permit "splitting the difference"? How
| would that work? Are you advocating that we meet in the
| middle and say Biden won but not legitimately? Or that Trump
| lost but it wasn't a fair election?
|
| Some positions just don't work like that. OAN won't simply
| say that Biden is the legitimately elected President. What do
| you propose is the appropriate "compromise" solution in this
| case?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| one of the worst things to happen to society was pay per
| click advertising and news being funded by advertising
| dollars based on viewership numbers.
| acituan wrote:
| > 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'.
|
| You're spot on. The article coyly makes a mention of the real
| cause in this clause:
|
| > For most of history, family relationships were based on
| mutual obligations rather than on mutual understanding. Parents
| or children might reproach the other for failing to
| honor/acknowledge their duty, but the idea that a relative
| could be faulted for failing to honor/acknowledge one's '
| _identity_ ' would have been incomprehensible."
|
| Although identity has many, and positive, functions[1], here it
| stands for "unquestioned affirmation of one's narcissistic
| self-image", in other words "what I think I am, being reflected
| to me". Social media can do this almost perfectly, most of them
| are perfectly fine tuned for our engagement, what we think we
| are, what we would like to hear, and what we would like to get
| angry at (which confirms our identity through opposition).
|
| Anything that fails at this confirmation is expelled via the
| magic word "toxic"[2] and parents take their share for not
| being able to match this self-constructed, _unearned_ narrative
| of an identity.
|
| [1] Identity is a useful narrative that explains us to
| ourselves and others through time and space. But it is only
| useful to the degree it actually conforms to the reality, else
| it loses its adaptivity. Which means identity needs to stem
| from our relationships to the world; it doesn't come from
| within, it does't come from without, it comes from our genuine
| relationship with reality as we test it. If the majority of the
| reality we had to conform to was internet, where we can block,
| downvote, silence, cancel _and_ get recommended to by an entity
| that are really interested in us sticking around, our identity
| becomes seriously self-deceptive and not useful across time and
| space outside the internet. In a sense, internet replaced the
| narcissistic, toxic parents we were running away from, except
| this parent is perfectly, and callously, able to tell us what
| we want to hear.
|
| [2] Toxic exists. But not everything that pisses us off, or
| threatens our sense of identity is toxic. Narcissistic family
| systems are toxic because they put their needs above the needs
| of the child, that includes the need of the child to hear the
| harsh truth at times. What I see today is some parents are
| switching strategies by trying to outcompete with internet in
| being endlessly accommodating their children and not
| implementing necessary but unpopular structures their children
| might need. They couldn't have won anyway.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| "Toxic" is just a catchier-sounding synonym for "harmful." It
| doesn't imply intent -- in fact, that's one of its strengths,
| and one of the major components in the shift in the way we
| collectively talk about things over the past couple decades.
| Part of the conversation around race, for example, has been an
| awareness by more and more people that _unintentional_ harms
| are far more prevalent than intentional ones, and in total are
| something to be taken seriously.
|
| What if everyone _is_ a "bad" parent? What if _no_ parent
| lives up to their child 's expectation? Intentional harm or
| not, people coming of age have to reckon with the gap between
| their idealized understanding of/hope for their parents, and
| their increasing understanding of the tradeoffs adult life
| demands. Personally, I think putting that reckoning front and
| center is a good thing. Burying our resentments doesn't solve
| things--talking them through and understanding each others'
| perspectives does.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _" Toxic" is just a catchier-sounding synonym for
| "harmful."_
|
| It's more subtle than that. "Toxic" is used as a synonym for
| " _irredeemably_ harmful", and that very distinction makes
| all the difference. If a person is labeled a "jerk", they are
| potentially redeemable and able to be reformed, but if
| someone is labeled as "toxic", the _label itself_ declares
| that there is no helping them. The label itself prescribes
| ostracism.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| I mean, same with "harmful" right? But I've rarely heard a
| _person_ described that way. Usually it 's a behavior.
| teddyh wrote:
| Since "harmful" isn't generally used to describe people,
| it's not generally an issue. "Toxic", on the other hand,
| I see applied to people _all the time_.
| bseidensticker wrote:
| I don't think "toxic" means "irredeemably harmful". It just
| means harmful and makes no judgement on intent.
| pkghost wrote:
| It's more than harmful--prior to the latest common usage,
| toxic usually meant potentially lethal for sufficient
| dosage.
|
| So, while it is indeed free of connotations of intent, it
| evokes disgust and, in fact, invites ostracism. If
| something is so dangerous that it can kill you, there's
| rarely much wisdom in attempting to talk it out of being
| lethal. Better to just remove it from your environment.
|
| In any case, I agree that the word is tragically
| overworked. And don't we all know that overwork can be
| toxic.
| bseidensticker wrote:
| uh ok, sounds like you've thought about this a lot.
|
| I just meant to say that *to me*, toxic doesn't imply
| irredeemable. It's just a popular word for harmful.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| That may be an accurate technical meaning but lay people
| still just meant "harmful" well before it started being
| applied to behavior.
| ellyagg wrote:
| It's not "just" anything and it's definitely not just
| catchier. Toxic is a far more forceful word that is often
| used to convey more force than is deserved for the situation.
| It steals discussion territory without justifying its claims.
| It's a bit like a clickbaity headline.
| mcguire wrote:
| Have you ever had a long-term relationship with someone who
| would lie to your face, or lie to others about you, in
| order to get something they want?
|
| There are plenty of people in the world who you would
| better off just staying away from.
| kazinator wrote:
| Toxic implies that some negative influence seeps out of
| people or situations, which causes harm proportional to the
| duration of exposure.
| mcguire wrote:
| What happens if one party, either parent or child, will not
| "understand the other's perspective"? What happens if
| "talking them through" just turns into another replay of the
| same argument?
|
| I have come to the conclusion that my parents, who of course
| had their flaws, were damn nigh perfect.
| rayiner wrote:
| Resentment arises from a gap between expectations and
| reality. Maybe the problem is the idealized expectations. And
| talking about things doesn't help that. Kids need to learn
| that life sucks and then you die and really internalize that
| in order to bring expectations in line with reality.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Agreed. Except now, idealization doesn't only apply to
| "white picket fence" experiences or "going to college." Now
| it applies to _inner identity_ , and sometimes aggressive
| or even militant _external identities_. It 's an impossible
| situation for a parent. Sometimes, the only way for the
| parent to survive emotionally is to allow the child to fail
| and hopefully learn from the failure.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Have to wonder if that identity is the final refuge of
| generations that feel helpless and worse-off than prior
| ones.
| dabbledash wrote:
| Which suggests maybe we aren't doing a good job teaching
| history.
| rayiner wrote:
| Or current events.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Or someone isn't looking out the front windscreen to
| worry about climate change looming ahead...
| koolba wrote:
| > Kids need to learn that life sucks and then you die and
| really internalize that in order to bring expectations in
| line with reality.
|
| I'm convinced that the world is cleanly divided into two
| categories of people. People that internalize this early in
| life, and people that never do at all.
|
| Along with learning to be bored, it's the most important
| life lesson you can pass on to the next generation to
| ensure a happy productive life.
| mcguire wrote:
| Are you sure? Because there are more lessons that I have
| seen people learn from their parents...
|
| * no one cares about your opinions or ideas,
|
| * no one has any actual affection for you; they only appear
| to when you have something they want,
|
| * in a choice between your physical or mental well-being
| and their short-term happiness, you take a rather distant
| second,
|
| * and then you die.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I think if your kid grows up knowing you love them and you do
| your best to educate and teach them right from wrong then you
| are probably a good enough parent.
|
| "Personally, I think putting that reckoning front and center
| is a good thing" I really disagree. If you parent was a
| monster, then absolutely. Otherwise, if they met the 3 points
| above then what good does calling them out and telling them
| that what they did was in your mind, harmful? They cant
| change anything and all it will do is make them react in
| hurt; they are still just people and you are invalidating
| their core life achievement. My parents were far from
| perfect, but they loved me and did their best, what would
| calling them out on any perceived failures do? I feel like
| people have lost the ability to just take things in stride
| these days. I can only speak from the personal experience of
| me and my siblings of course. My brother and I are very
| different in almost every way especially politics (He is pro
| Trump, I am not) but we just assume the other is coming from
| an honest place and doing what they think is best in their
| mind for their family and have good conversations and our
| families hang out often. My sister is unable to take anything
| in stride and assumes anyone that has different opinions than
| her is coming from a vindictive place. She has elected to
| completely remove herself from the family based on us not
| being far enough left for her (and I am pretty left). I find
| if one just assumes positive intent on another's actions as
| long as reality and not being a sucker allows then things are
| good. I always just assumed positive intent on my parents
| past actions or simple human flaw and all is good.
| watwut wrote:
| People estranged from parents are often reacting to parents
| still doing harm. It dont stop when kid grow - the
| narcisstic or controlling or abusive parent dont change
| when kid grows.
| throw58942 wrote:
| > My parents were far from perfect, but they loved me and
| did their best
|
| Not all parents do that, when a divorce happened at least
| one of them thought that as well. The thing is: not
| everything is abuse but things can still be bad enough as
| also pointed out in the article. That's when you call it
| toxic I guess. It's this fuzzy new word to describe some
| hard to grasp behaviour that is maybe only so hard to grasp
| because it's that outlandish. One time I was with my sister
| and my father on holiday - my mother gave us a cell-phone
| so we could call in case he would abduct us. In any case,
| my mother was completely overwhelmed with raising 2 kids
| and cut some corners. Also my father did his best to put
| pressure on my mother, mostly financially. (He moved far
| away and blames anything bad that happened on my mother or
| me) And the list goes on. My sister is completely unwilling
| to talk about any of this. My father is like described in
| the article saying I'm rewriting history and having a
| complete lack of empathy. Is this abuse? Probably not,
| unless you go with a crazy strict definition. But toxic for
| sure. What upsets me the most that this is just some really
| fuzzy stuff that happened, I cannot pin-point any isolated
| root cause. So to come up with a reasonable explanation why
| I chose estrangement, I would have to tell quite a long
| story and some details are too personal. Still I'm much
| happier now.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| I think that if its not single-handedly causing this, its by
| far the biggest factor. The ways in which our world has been
| altered by the rise of the internet are things we haven't even
| begun to comprehend. I think most of our modern societal "ills"
| that we frequently lament about today seem to all trace back to
| extreme individualism and narcissism, both of which are fueled
| largely by the internet and social media.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| A few years back there was a movement on Facebook with groups
| called "Survivors of Narcissistic Parents" and similar that
| encouraged people to cut off their parents. It seemed wildly
| popular and had tons of engagement. People would diagnose their
| parents with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, discuss how
| every problem in their lives could be traced to their parents,
| and that was that.
|
| I've also saw more than one person disown their parents after
| being sucked in to the anticircumcision movement - men who had
| until that moment seemingly normal lives but were then
| convinced their sex lives would never reach their potential
| because of a decision their parents had made.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > A few years back there was a movement on Facebook with
| groups called "Survivors of Narcissistic Parents" and similar
| that encouraged people to cut off their parents....
|
| > I've also saw more than one person disown their parents
| after being sucked in to the anticircumcision movement - men
| who had until that moment seemingly normal lives but were
| then convinced their sex lives would never reach their
| potential because of a decision their parents had made....
|
| That's a really good point. Before the internet, and
| especially social media, people had weird and arguable toxic
| ideas, but it was almost always impossible to form a
| geographically-based community around them, so they'd almost
| always peter out and their effect was limited. The internet
| broke geographical limits, allowing intense purely
| ideological communities to form around almost every idea and
| validate them, no matter how wrong and misguided. In our very
| online times that can have serious social consequences,
| sometimes for good but often for ill.
| jrumbut wrote:
| What's weird is some of these communities aren't even
| wrong, a lot of people do have parents with personality
| problems or whatever, it's just their nature to go off the
| rails and have unpleasant real world effects.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Also their congregation creates the conditions for other
| similar types of thinking and cross pollination of other
| niche ideas which explains Q-like, super-conspiracy groups
| that are like a rotating prix fixe menu of paranoid
| nativist memes and fit neatly adjacent to neo-nazi,
| sovereign citizen, and even incel movements.
| antattack wrote:
| As the saying goes:
|
| The apple never falls far from the tree.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The statistical apple can only fall so far from the
| statistical tree. Some apples may roll down hillsides or
| into rivers but it's unwise to bet on any one apple doing
| so.
| gsich wrote:
| They have a point, since the foreskin has many nerve endings.
|
| You are not doing your sons any favors if you circumcise them
| when it's not necessary.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I doubt there's much science behind this. Only adult males
| can really A/B test this, and circumcision of an adult
| penis may very well risk damage. There's no reason to think
| uncircumcised males enjoy sex more than those circumcised
| in infancy.
| gsich wrote:
| In parent it was about the "potential", which you can't
| reach anymore if you are circumcised. Whatever
| "potential" means. Could just be not having to use lube.
|
| It remains genital mutilation though.
| jandrese wrote:
| I would take any post on a "Survivors of Narcissistic
| Parents" or similar group with a grain of salt. While many of
| the stories are true, sometimes the speaker is the
| narcissist.
|
| If someone tells you that everybody around them is always
| lying they are usually the liar. The same way some people who
| can't seem to work anywhere without having constant drama are
| the source of the conflict.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > after being sucked in to the anticircumcision movement
|
| Did it take a lot of sucking into considering that they've
| been subjected to genital mutilation?
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Considering that I'm circumcised and every male I know is,
| and none of us even give it a second thought or feel that
| our genitals have been "mutilated", I would say it requires
| a bit of sucking. There has to be some existing
| dissatisfaction or disorder for someone to get so up in
| arms about that.
|
| Anyway, it was an example I saw, I had intended to remain
| neutral on the subject.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > There has to be some existing dissatisfaction or
| disorder for someone to get so up in arms about that.
|
| How about undergoing a non-essential and medically
| unnecessary surgery without your consent? Doesn't that
| bother you at least a little bit?
|
| I was baptised as an infant and most of the people I know
| were as well, but I recognize it for what it is - roping
| me into a membership in an organisation which requires me
| to jump through many hoops to leave, because it needs the
| numbers (at least on paper) to maintain power.
|
| Fortunately this is reversible, but circumcision isn't.
| disabled wrote:
| What is even weirder is that there are "estranged parents'
| forums". A good read on that rabbit hole is here (see
| "contents" on the right hand side for more links):
| http://www.issendai.com/psychology/estrangement/index.html
| pjc50 wrote:
| > anticircumcision movement
|
| This is one of those things that is specific to the Jewish
| religion, in which it serves as an irreversible symbol of
| membership and has done for about three thousand years ...
| and also a subset of Americans, who do it for reasons which
| they suddenly find difficult to explain to their adult
| children.
|
| If it's important for adult life, but not actually urgent,
| leave it until the child is old enough to be asked for their
| meaningful consent.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| It is very much not specific to the Jewish religion. Jews
| make up 0.2% of the world population while ~33% of the
| worlds males are circumcised. Its very much a part of the
| Islamic religion as well; being nearly universal in the
| middle east. In addition ~80% of American men are
| circumcised.
| Falling3 wrote:
| > and also a subset of Americans
|
| I think you're underestimating just how many American men
| are circumcised. The WHO puts it at between 76 and 92%.
| chmod775 wrote:
| That sounds terrible.
|
| It's fine to disagree with decisions someone (shouldn't have)
| made on your behalf, but learning to judge people by intent,
| not result, is part of adulthood.
|
| Punishing someone who loves you for doing the best they knew
| to do is one of the most cruel things I can imagine.
|
| In other words, disliking someone for something they did to
| you does not automatically mean they deserve punishment and
| you should hurt them return. Especially since causing harm to
| a loved one also already hurts oneself.
| glenda wrote:
| Continuing to let someone degrade you because "they're
| doing the best they can do" is equally cruel. All
| relationships take work, if one party isn't willing to work
| on it then thats not a relationship worth putting energy
| into.
| watwut wrote:
| It sounds like a lot of those people are cutting those
| parenta off to make their own lives better. Not to punish
| parents.
|
| They have choice of being estraged and happier, under less
| stress and less pressure. Or keep contact and have to deal
| with manipulation, stress and so on.
|
| Finally, adulthood also means that you know that not just
| intent matter. The people are affected by consequences of
| your actions regardless if intent. Too many people write
| about this as if once you have good goal, you dont have to
| learn more or think what you are doing. As long as you dont
| care to check whether you might cause harm, you dont get
| any responsibility dor what you do.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > Parents are just people doing the best they can.
|
| I'm not willing to be this generous by default. Beyond the
| basic manslow hierarchy of needs, people choose their
| priorities. Career, Friends, Family, Children, Recreation,
| Education, Health -> These are all facets of an adult
| priorities and they choose how much to allocate to each of
| these.
|
| Many of those that have children do it out of obligation, ego,
| legacy, society. Many have unrealistic expectations about how
| much control they have in shaping their spawn, and do not
| handle well when this new independent human does not match
| their expectations.
|
| These people end up causing genuine harm, and when we look back
| at what they did we should absolutely call out their
| prioritization and choices as harmful or toxic, and learn from
| them.
| raverbashing wrote:
| "Gens Y and Z getting lower salaries, higher rents, higher
| costs of education, limited choices, etc" Sure, it must be the
| fault of social media /s
|
| Sure, not all harm is intentional, but when they get labeled as
| "lazy, useless, incompetent, etc" by the boomers it's hard to
| not blame them.
|
| I am lucky to have been relatively successful, but I see that a
| lot of people (a couple of years) younger than me are really
| struggling.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "when they get labeled as "lazy, useless, incompetent, etc"
| Where are they getting labeled as this on?
| dcole2929 wrote:
| The news, court rooms, congress floor, board rooms, hiring
| committees, college admissions, and yes on social media.
| But let's be honest here. We have two subsequent
| generations whose economic outlooks have been substantially
| harmed by the previous generation being blamed for not
| being successful and it's in more or less all corners of
| the world that imply power.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| There was a viral video I saw yesterday of a baby crying, and a
| deer rushing out of the woods probably trying to protect it.
|
| Anyways, the lady who posted it got a ton of comments about her
| shitty parenting style from literally a 6 second video, to the
| point where she had to make a response video saying "No, I
| don't just place my newborn on a wooden porch", and explain why
| her child was on its stomach, and why it cried, etc.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Social media invites all sorts of low effort "you ought to"
| or "look I know about X" comments. These people don't really
| care about her baby. They care about getting virtue points
| for pretending like they care. It's a twilight zone at the
| intersection of virtue signaling and bike shedding.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Don't forget "trauma"!
| burgessaccount wrote:
| I'm not so sure about blaming social media. I really wish the
| article had included any sort of concrete data on whether
| estrangement has actually become more common over time. In my
| family, my grandfather didn't talk to his parents because they
| were alcoholic money-grubbers. My grandma didn't talk to her
| dad because he'd left their family to start another family. My
| aunt didn't talk to my grandma because my grandma discouraged
| her from having a career. Reading biographies and history
| books, it seems like there have always been shitty, "toxic," or
| difficult parents, and there have always been disowning,
| abandonments, and silent treatments. Add to that the fact that
| our social support structures (babysitting help, end-of-life
| care) can be paid for in cash, rather than social favors, and
| you have some pretty normal and understandable dynamics. People
| barely have time for friends these days. What are the odds that
| both parents are fun, awesome people you really want to hang
| out with and spend extra time with? FWIW, I get along great
| with my parents. But I also recognize that they were better,
| healthier, more supportive, more present parents than what most
| of my friends had growing up.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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-
| ru...
| spideymans wrote:
| A lot of parents unfortunately believe that respect is a one-
| way street.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| 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.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| 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.
| frankish wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| kbenson wrote:
| This is an important topic that I think it unfortunately too
| taboo to discuss in most places and instances. On the one hand,
| the blanket belief that reproductive rights are core and cannot
| be curtailed is so ingrained in some subcultures that even
| broaching it immediately makes people think of human rights,
| and on the other, overcrowding is a thing and planning for the
| future is important.
|
| For example, I can't imagine denying someone the chance to have
| the joy that is a child, but I'm also not sure there's a lot of
| benefit in the modern world in people having ten (or twenty)
| children, where I have a hard time believing they can even have
| a full relationship with their children because there's so many
| of them (leaving out the obvious issues with too much
| population growth). Also, how would we go about changing the
| status quo? Criminalizing too many children is far too
| dystopian for my taste, and incentive programs just mean that
| families with many children have less resources, which hurts
| the children, not the parents that make that decision.
|
| Honestly, I'm not even sure what's been discussed already on
| this topic, because it's somewhat taboo to speak about in our
| society.
| frankish wrote:
| First and foremost, I strongly believe in educating or
| encouraging, but am strongly against forcing/coercing.
|
| A big part is likely just normalizing that it is okay not to
| have kids: in particular, there is so much social pressure to
| have them. There is also significant government incentive for
| a population to grow both for the economy and for retirement
| programs like Social Security.
|
| I do think the best thing we can do is live by example. We
| can choose not to have kids. Additionally, being heavily
| involved with helping our friends or families that have kids
| may be beneficial as well: not just babysitting, but helping
| get them curious and engaged in school, save for their higher
| education, or ensuring the mental well-being of the family in
| general.
| reader_mode wrote:
| >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.
|
| If your retirement plan is point blank shotgun than this is
| sustainable. Otherwise pray for automation, depending on how
| old you are, it might work out.
| robryan wrote:
| It is a pyramid scheme though, each generation needing to be
| bigger than the last to support the previous generations
| retirement. It has to end at some point.
| ta2157 wrote:
| Each generation doesn't have to be bigger than the last.
| Two people create two children, those two children create
| two children, the grandparents die, the grandchildren
| create two children, etc.
|
| That stabilizes the population (technically population goes
| down due to accidental deaths, diseases, etc. but you get
| the idea).
| gumby wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > _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".
| buescher wrote:
| I really dislike the term "adult children". Check out the google
| ngram:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Do you have a better term to suggest?
| buescher wrote:
| 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.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Children. Or grown children. Or offspring.
| buescher wrote:
| "Grown children" is interesting if you look at google books
| cites - it more typically meant children older than infants
| than someone's children that have reached adulthood.
|
| "Offspring", maybe, but you can look at the differences in
| use and decide for yourself. It might confound you to find
| that "adult offspring" is less common than "adult children"
| but follows the same shifts in use and a similar ngram
| pattern.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| I'm unsure if its related to estrangement, but I don't think
| its farfetched to assume its a big factor. Its interesting to
| me that for many who consider themselves non-religious often
| have taken up something else (overwhemingly, politics it seems)
| to fill the hole, often with the same zeal and dogmatic outlook
| that they look down on in traditional faith-based belief
| systems.
|
| But I also think its more than simply the abandonment of
| religion. It is the abandonment of religion combined with the
| rise of the internet/social media. It isn't only religion that
| has suffered participation declines in the previous decades.
| Local communities of all kinds have crumbled. The internet has
| provided people with a means of escape from anyone that could
| possibly disagree with you and allows you to find perfectly
| insular cultural bubbles. This is immediately more gratifying
| than real world relationships, but it also conditions people to
| have zero tolerance for anyone in "meat space" that isn't in
| complete alignment with them, in which case they simply
| distance themselves from the relationship. But at the same
| time, many of these online community relationships tend to be
| more shallow and superficial than real life ones, which is why
| so many people report strong feelings of loneliness in their
| lives.
|
| We've essentially dismantled most of our traditional local
| sources of community and replaced them with superficial but
| unsatisfying online ones.
| iammisc wrote:
| 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.
| kenjackson wrote:
| The article isn't saying this happens to all families.
| michaelscott wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I don't think I understand that either. My view of family
| is definitely one of obligation not understanding.
| polka_haunts_us wrote:
| 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.
| iammisc wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This is what I can't understand. I get not wanting a
| relationship if your parents were abusive. But if you
| 'appreciate your parents raising [you]', then clearly you
| think your childhood was 'good enough', so don't you
| think you owe them something? Anything? MY childhood was
| hardly perfect. My mother and father are both incredibly
| flawed individuals who still get on my nerves, to the
| point of tears many times. But... they're my parents. I
| mean, I've made them cry before, and I know I have all
| kinds of negative personality traits. I can't imagine
| them just leaving me like that. Sounds terrible
| baseballdork wrote:
| > don't you think you owe them something? Anything?
|
| IMHO, no. You don't owe your parents anything for doing
| the job they signed up for. I have a great relationship
| with my parents and had a great upbringing. It's very
| difficult for me to imagine cutting off contact. However,
| I also don't feel like I owe them a single thing and I
| think they'd agree with me on that.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Hmm, I have a hard time relating precisely with this.
|
| For example, if my parents someday needed a place to stay
| (maybe they can't take care of themselves). I'd feel
| responsible for them. I definitely feel like I'd owe them
| that and would feel responsible for their well being.
|
| Though, that wouldn't be unconditional. I can certainly
| envision a bunch of situations that would change that.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is it's complicated to me.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| It sounds like you had a decent family, but are you able
| to see that your experience isn't universal? Can you
| imagine that many other people have vastly worse
| families, with a wide range of abusive and predatory
| behaviors?
| iammisc wrote:
| Yes, I have considered that. I know many people who
| rightly rejected their own family. It is sad and very
| tragic and scary.
|
| However, I also know a lot of people raised like I was
| who have left as well, and see no problem with it. They
| had perfectly fine childhoods, but treat their parents
| like trash.
| watwut wrote:
| You dont see into other families unless you are really
| really close. Neither into their childhoods nor into
| their adult relationships. People and kids are kept away
| from internal conflicts and issues, whether abusive or
| non abusive.
|
| Sometimes you are 47 years old when you learn about stufd
| like alcoholism, gambling, violence in own extended
| seemingly model familly. Pretty heavy stuff and still
| managed to be quite hidden. Less heavy stuff is even
| easier to keept away from others.
|
| Plus people who distance or leave parents as adults often
| react to how relationship looks now and what it does to
| them. And sometimes it is done to protect your own kids
| or so that you are not forced to entangle yourself into
| new dramas.
| octostone wrote:
| On mobile so I can't look now, but from what I recall the
| people who have looked into it (and quite a few have) find that
| the causal relationship goes in the other direction, at least
| in the US --- young people have abandoned religion because of
| religions treatment of homosexuals, women (including access to
| abortion), and, for white evangelicals, their treatment of
| racial minorities. Religious organizations in the US have
| persecuted their culture war at great expense. IIRC they're
| currently replacing those lost young people with people who are
| attracted to their movement specifically because of these
| various bigotries, so I think they're holding about even, but
| given demographic shifts I don't know how long that will be
| sustainable.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| why didn't previous generations do the same? religion was
| even more bigoted then.
| mbg721 wrote:
| Isn't that abandonment of religion exactly the same
| estrangement that the article is talking about? The sexual
| revolution is all about realizing an identity built around
| personal growth and happiness; the young people who have
| bought into that idea have high expectations of religion, but
| get disillusioned with these organizations' failings and cut
| them off.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Sexual revolution started really with the Boomers, and I
| believe it is technologically driven.
|
| Invention of the Pill (and similar biotech medical
| advances) changed everything forever in ways we still don't
| understand. And the consequences/reasons don't cleanly
| break along Culture War fault lines. (The Culture War was,
| in many ways, created by The Pill, too.)
| bigbillheck wrote:
| 'The' sexual revolution (i.e. the big one) started in the
| 60s and pretty much stopped in the early 80s (you can
| probably guess the reason; it's usually spelled with 3 or 4
| letters, depending). That's far enough ago that children
| born afterwards are old enough to have estranged children
| of their own. (For an anecdote, which is of course the
| singular of 'data', I have a close relative born in the
| late 70s who is already a grandparent).
| mizzack wrote:
| It's quite simple, really. The "communists" won the culture
| war. I don't mean this flippantly.
|
| Deconstruction of the nuclear family and organized religion are
| and always have been core to the process.
|
| > On January 10, 1963, at the request of constituent Patricia
| Nordman, Herlong read into the Congressional Record a list of
| 45 goals of communism from the book The Naked Communist by W.
| Cleon Skousen.[5]
|
| [5] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-
| CRECB-1963-pt22/pdf/...
|
| p35
|
| > 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity, as
| "normal, natural, healthy."
|
| > 27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion
| with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the
| need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious
| crutch.
|
| > 40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage
| promiscuity and easy divorce.
|
| Take a look at the rest of the list and tell me this isn't the
| same ideological warzone we see today with the current fringe
| right and progressive orthodoxies.
|
| Edit: added scare quotes to "communists"
| pjc50 wrote:
| This is just warmed-up McCarthyism. Reading a rant from a
| right-wing source isn't actually evidence of anything. And
| the Soviet Union has been dead for thirty years.
|
| It is the same warzone though. But the people fighting it
| from the right look increasingly like the one Japanese guy
| who refused to acknowledge the surrender until the 1960s.
| mizzack wrote:
| Different boogeymen, same orthodoxies.
|
| Edit to your edit: They are looking fringe because the
| other side won ;)
| drewbuschhorn wrote:
| If you cite Skousen as proof of anything, you've made a real
| mistake.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_Society
|
| They're the seed of QAnon.
| mizzack wrote:
| I'm not spouting anything as proof of anything. Just
| demonstrating as a matter of record that culturally this
| battle has been waged before.
| drewbuschhorn wrote:
| >The communists won the culture war.
|
| You then cite Skousen's talking points as if those were
| the "communists" actual goals and not his fever dreams.
|
| The JBS lost, "communists" or "progressive orthodoxies"
| (conflating the two shows your priors) didnt win.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity, as
| "normal, natural, healthy."
|
| When Stalin came to power, homosexuality became a topic unfit
| for public depiction, defense or discussion. Homosexual or
| bisexual Soviets who wanted a position within the Communist
| Party were expected to marry a person of the opposite sex,
| regardless of their actual sexual orientation
|
| The Khrushchev government believed that absent of a criminal
| law against homosexuality, the sex between men that occurred
| in the prison environment would spread into the general
| population
|
| The first Khrushchev-era sex education manual...described
| homosexuals as child molesters: "...homosexuals are aroused
| by and satisfy themselves with adolescents and youngsters,
| even though the latter have a normal interest towards girls
|
| ....
|
| Thousands of people were imprisoned for homosexuality and
| government censorship of homosexuality and gay rights did not
| begin to slowly relax until the early 1970s
|
| ....
|
| In 1984, a group of Russian gay men met and attempted to
| organize an official gay rights organization, only to be
| quickly shut down by the KGB
|
| ....
|
| On 27 May 1993, homosexual acts between consenting males were
| legalised
|
| > 40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage
| promiscuity and easy divorce.
|
| The 1944 Edict... sought to preserve the family unit by
| making divorces even more difficult to obtain
|
| You'll have to provide some evidence that your list is
| anything to do with McCarthyist Commumism fears
| cogman10 wrote:
| Tying everything you don't like to communism, like Skousen
| LOVED to do, is a pretty poor argument. EVERYTHING that these
| quacks and racists didn't like was tied to communism [1].
|
| If you can explain to me how government controlled production
| has ANY relationship to culture or the acceptance/rejection
| of homosexuality, I'm all ears. Bare in mind, communist
| governments have routinely banned homosexuality. [2]
|
| To the likes of Skousen, everything that isn't accepting
| mormonism as the one true religion is a communist plot.
|
| [1] https://sites.google.com/site/heavenlybanner/crtool
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_China
| mizzack wrote:
| Added scare quotes to "communists". I'm not talking about
| literal communists. 50's boogeyman communists. Maybe I
| _did_ mean that flippantly.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I don't really see your point then. Why bring this up at
| all? Just to show that the worst fears of extremists have
| come true?
| benlivengood wrote:
| I'd say that you really have to look back farther to the
| enlightenment for the source of basically all of those
| bulletpoints. It's not communism that came up with any of
| those ideas, it just happened to find them useful/worthwhile.
| erdos4d wrote:
| Rather than religion, I would expect the real driver in this is
| just a shift in culture between the generations, with religion
| being one of the fault-lines. If one looks at the boomers or
| gen X, for all the countercultural ideals they may have
| experimented with, they have turned out to be remarkably
| conservative once into later life, following closely in their
| parent's cultural footsteps. I feel the millenials and gen Z
| are legitimately different people, much more willing to live a
| lifestyle and hold values extremely different than their
| parents. Your example of gay acceptance is just one in a long
| list of genuine cultural differences between the older and
| younger generations.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It may be my upbringing, but it's really hard for me to pull
| the two apart. In my small home town, religion was (and to a
| large extent is) the local culture. Everything revolved
| around the local religion. 90% of the town practiced the same
| faith, so edicts from that faith's leadership would
| invariably effect everything. Cultural acceptability was
| measure by the standards of the faith. Granted, that was a
| VERY controlling faith.
|
| For me personally, what drove me away from my childhood
| religion was simple research into it's history. Why should I
| care if my leaders claim homosexuality is a sin when they've
| done far worse in the past also claiming to come from god?
|
| Yet for my parents, going against the leader's edicts is
| unthinkable.
|
| All that comes back to my thoughts on estrangement and
| religion. While that's not a route my parents have taken, it
| happens a lot from the online stories I've read.
|
| I guess this is a long winded way to say I'm still trying to
| figure out how much culture causes religion and religion
| causes culture. How many of these wild generational
| differences are due to just general cultural shifts from
| things like media, and how many of these changes came from
| things like leaving a faith behind? Did A cause B or B cause
| A or is it too complicated to be answered in a HN comment
| section.
| jahnu wrote:
| I grew up in Ireland and it was still very conservative and
| religious back in the late 70s to the late 80s of my youth. We
| only legalised divorce in 1997!
|
| But since then there has been a sea change in attitudes.
| Marriage equality, abortion on demand, an openly gay man as
| premier. Little backlash against migrants even when the economy
| tanked in 07-08. But this did not cause much in the way of
| estrangement. Indeed I have seen the older generations change
| too, not just put up with things.
|
| I can only speculate as to why. I think partly because people
| started to travel and see how things were better in other more
| enlightened countries and imported those values to Ireland.
| Life was also improving for most people as an amazing rate
| which leaves little reason to look for people to blame for
| things. The church destroyed it's own standing by being totally
| uncompromising in its attitude to change and covering up abuse.
|
| I believe Ireland also looked on in horror at American politics
| descending into a complete shit-show with scant respect for the
| principles it once stood for. You must understand that up till
| the 90s most Irish thought the USA was the pinnacle of western
| society. We still hold great affection for the people in
| general and artistic culture and landscape but the toxic
| politics, uncompromising religious attitudes and so on are
| something we view as having held us back in the past and once
| we abandoned that or at least compromised we made progress.
|
| Anyway, this is just a bit of a brain dump of one point of
| view. Take it as it is ;)
| cogman10 wrote:
| I mean, 70s and 80s was the peak of the troubles. Things
| didn't really settle down until '00.
|
| I have to wonder how much the violence of the last few
| decades impacted ireland and the nations ability to just
| accept "the other".
| jahnu wrote:
| It must surely have had an effect. Hard to really say what
| though. However, in the Republic the troubles were almost
| always a thing that happened "up north" and didn't really
| have any bearing on day to day life in the south for the
| vast majority of the people. To illustrate how little
| people of the Republic cared about religion; I was raised
| Catholic and my best friend in high school was an Irish
| protestant and I didn't even know that about him for 3
| years! And not because it was taboo, but because it was
| uninteresting to us. In my experience by the early 90s,
| religion or nationality was just not high up the list of
| things that defined people. E.g. lots of English people
| moved to Ireland in the 90s as it became a more desirable
| place to live and found themselves welcomed. (I'm speaking
| generally, I'm sure some people had negative experiences
| and don't wish to diminish that).
|
| The Irish struggled a bit more with immigration from more
| different cultures and racism is a challenge everywhere but
| compared to many other European countries Ireland is on a
| better path I would say.
|
| I'm rambling a little, but to your question about how the
| troubles shaped Irish attitudes it's worth noting as a
| result of the Belfast (good Friday) Agreement our
| constitution does acknowledge every citizens right to
| define their own identity.
|
| Also, here's an interesting story about how Irish view the
| "other" today
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/14/pitching-up-
| anc...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Honestly, there's probably a deeper cultural change that's
| driving both: ever increasing individualism and increasing
| unwillingness to sacrifice the expression of that individualism
| for anything.
|
| This from the OP was pretty poignant and struck me as very
| true:
|
| > ...This freedom enables us to become untethered and protected
| from hurtful or abusive family members.
|
| > Yet in less grave scenarios our American love affair with the
| needs and rights of the individual conceals how much sorrow we
| create for those we leave behind. We may see cutting off family
| members as courageous rather than avoidant or selfish. We can
| convince ourselves that it's better to go it alone than to do
| the work it takes to resolve conflict. Some problems may be
| irresolvable, but there are also relationships that don't need
| to be lost forever.
| twiddling wrote:
| > Honestly, there's probably a deeper cultural change that's
| driving both: ever increasing individualism and increasing
| unwillingness to sacrifice the expression of that
| individualism for anything.
|
| 2020 with the US election and the spectrum of response to
| COVID has thrown this into stark relief. As someone in their
| late 40s, I have been shocked by the selfishness of my fellow
| citizens.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think people confuse individualism with narcissism.
| There's nothing inherently bad about individualism: Self-
| reliance, independence (vs. interdependence), etc. I think
| these are mostly seen as good traits, at worst neutral.
|
| What we saw building in the last decade or so, and come to
| a head in 2020 is out-of-control narcissism: Selfishness,
| entitlement, lack of empathy, this belief that life is a
| movie and you are the main character. This is the kind of
| thing that not only estranges one from family, friends, and
| society, but prevents any sort of collective action for
| societal good.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Unless you live alone in the woods, alleged individualism
| is usually a narcissistic or selfish denial of one's true
| dependence on others for support
| jgilias wrote:
| 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.
| kbenson wrote:
| 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.
| SamPatt wrote:
| Do it. I lost both my parents in my late 20s. I didn't have
| the level of contact with them the last few years that I wish
| I had, partially because I assumed I've have time for that
| when they retired. They didn't make it.
| kbenson wrote:
| Already did! :) Yeah, _way_ past my 20 's, which is all the
| more reason to make sure I keep in touch. They're both
| getting up there in age (although admittedly my dad is
| probably in better shape than me...)
|
| Sorry for your loss. I'm at the age where I've lost a few
| of my good friends now, and it never feels like you had
| enough time.
| rhacker wrote:
| Both of you have me tearing up while reading this. Probably
| the most humbling feelings I've had in a while.
| warmcat wrote:
| Maybe its just me...I have been staying away from my parents in
| a different country since the last 13 years. With a wife and a
| toddler, I still feel uneasy if I don't speak to my parents
| twice a day. Even though we don't have much to talk about every
| day, it's just the feeling of seeing them and hearing their
| voice which calms me down.
| redisman wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUNZMiYo_4s
| jasonbourne1901 wrote:
| I relate to your story, I definitely got to be that self-
| centered twenty-something for a good long time. Would love to
| be able to call my dad right now.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| I still think of calling my sister once in a while, "Oh, I
| should tell her that", and it's been ten years. And it still
| hurts.
| socialist_coder wrote:
| The best time to call your sister was 10 years ago. The
| second best time is right now. Just do it.
| elzbardico wrote:
| From the tone in OP comment, unfortunately I think that
| this is not possible anymore.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I think it's implied that she passed away.
| holoduke wrote:
| The love for a child will always be more than the love for a
| parent. From the day of birth the child detaches himself from
| the parent. Every day a little more than the day before. This
| is a good thing and makes live bearable.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| "It was only much later that I found out that she basically
| cried for three days straight after that call."
|
| That got me crying.
| jakubp wrote:
| Many people cry, shout or even try to manipulate you when you
| tell them their behavior (based on excessive attachment or
| dependency of some kind) is an issue for you. Many of the
| same people's loved ones realize that and are in a clinch: do
| I distance myself, hurting them? do I not distance myself,
| hurting self? It's not something you can just ask about: "I'm
| not as attached to you as you are to me, what do we do?"
| Wolfenstein98k wrote:
| There was no attempt to manipulate here - as the author
| stated, they didn't find out about the mother's crying for
| a long time. It was never made known.
| [deleted]
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| My parents...are a mixed bag. They weren't or aren't abusive.
| At least, not physically or sexually or anything like that.
| Emotionally...that depends on how you want to interpret events
| and what your perspective is.
|
| But.... there's a gigantic cultural (rural vs suburban),
| generational (Xenial/Milennial vs Boomer), political (die hard
| Republicans vs Greenwald-esque progressives) and religious
| (baptist vs atheist) divide between us.
|
| To complicate matters - they, especially my mother who's
| suffering depression from chronic illness, can be quite toxic
| and stress-inducing at times. They're judgemental, my mother
| can be a tad manipulative - nothing is every enough. I could
| call every day, i could see them once a week, they freaking
| moved within a 20 min jog of my house ffs. They're pushy.
|
| To quote Kill Bill Vol 2: "Because he's a very very very old
| man. And like all rotten bastards, when they get old, they
| become lonely. Not that that has any effect on their
| disposition. But they do learn the value of company."
|
| And that's the conundrum of them. They are characters and they
| are a lot to take in and a lot to ask my wife to habitually
| tolerate.
|
| But on the flip side, they're incredibly thoughtful, giving,
| will stop anything at the drop of a hat to help with problems
| big and small, physical, financial, you name it. (though i
| never take them up on the $$). They... were incredibly flawed
| parents and i didn't walk out of childhood without issues.
|
| But man, does being a parent change things. It makes me
| hypersensitive to just how i'm going to fuck up my kid, what
| kind of an annoyance i will be to him. The bond i have with my
| child is already something i can't explain to people who don't
| have kids and even to a few who do. And the idea that one day
| he'll just be too busy for me, or even being a teenager and
| being too cool for me.. it depresses me.
|
| I didn't have him to burden him with me. but it's a
| relationship that i value higher than anything else.
|
| i'm getting older - i've had medical ordeals, watching my mom
| suffer medical problems and it's just hit me how short and
| temporary all this is.
|
| And i dunno. I understand a bit more now, and am tolerant a bit
| more now. I'm more grateful for what was done for me and less
| judgmental about differences. Life is hard, life is fragile,
| relationships are hard but... they're worth the extra effort
| (on both sides).
|
| I don't have a lot of friends. I just never fit in anywhere.
| But whether i did or didn't, it really strikes to the core of
| just how important family is, looking down and up
| generationally. No one wants to die alone.
|
| No one wants to pour all that effort, love, attention, money,
| heart-ache, struggle to doing the best you can for a kid, just
| for that kid to be like "fuck off" (for whatever reason, sans
| abuse). To dedicate 18-25, sometimes more, of your life to
| someone and them to just ...be too good for you now?
|
| I was that kid at 25. At 40 with a 5 year old, i am not. And i
| will not be.
| [deleted]
| jseliger wrote:
| Much of what seems to have held parents and adult children
| together used to be grandchildren; with fewer people having
| children of their own, and waiting until later in life, that
| might be a lot of cause of the estrangement. Anecdotally, I've
| noticed a lot of people in their 20s or 30s get much closer to
| their parents when the first kid arrives.
| Angostura wrote:
| When I went to university, my parents simply asked me to call
| them once a week on Sunday at around 10am, which I did pretyt
| much every week and carried on doing for the rest of their
| lives until they died a couple of years ago in their 90s.
|
| The calls were pretty consequential and really not verty long,
| quite often just 20 minutes but over the years they morphed
| from the being worried about me, to me being worried about
| them. My eldest daughter goes to Uni this summer. Despite
| mobile phones, I might see if she would consider doing the
| same.
| hedberg10 wrote:
| Do it. All the anxieties "Should I call?", "Am I a
| nuissance", "Am I a burden?" matter not.
|
| I am genuinely curious why "memento mori" never seems to
| stick. Maybe thats part of it's power.
| kixiQu wrote:
| It's _much better_ to communicate that you 'd like a routine
| like this than to try to have irregular contact that you'll
| both have to think about and plan for. I have a weekly video
| call for my mom and it's very good for us.
| bentcorner wrote:
| My son went off to college a few years ago and we've
| established a pattern of having him call us every Sunday. TBH
| I don't have a ton to talk about (and am not really a
| talker), I just want to make sure he's ok and everything else
| is pretty inconsequential.
|
| I would recommend setting expectations early around weekly
| calls so they become a habit. Even if you have nothing to
| talk about you can small talk for a few minutes. I suspect
| you will have a lot to talk about if your child is starting
| university.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > Some time later there was a period when I would contact my
| parents every few months or so.
|
| You post almost made me cry. My father passed away a few years
| ago and one of the things I regretted the most was that the
| last time I talked to him was 'a few months ago'. It took me a
| long time to come to terms with that and to stop beating myself
| up for it. People, call your parents.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I had a strange relationship with the keeping-in-touch thing.
| When I was a kid my parents' generation was scattered all over
| the world, and long-distance calls were expensive. Plus there
| were a lot of them, and a lot of kids. So they developed a no-
| news-is-good-news attitude. You'd get the occasional call for
| life events, or you'd phone them if you heard there was an
| earthquake where they lived.
|
| When I moved away from home I kinda thought it would be the
| same with me. After all, not that much happens during the
| average working week. I worked, I ate with friends. So why call
| all the time?
|
| Turns out I think they just missed me. To a degree parents live
| through their kids. Are you enjoying your work? Have you found
| a girlfriend? It's like living through that age again.
|
| Technology really helped. The last few years before they died
| they'd call weekly to check on their grandchildren. Often short
| calls, but still pretty good. In fact my last contact with my
| mom was via a video chat.
| hondo77 wrote:
| > To a degree parents live through their kids. Are you
| enjoying your work? Have you found a girlfriend? It's like
| living through that age again.
|
| Or maybe they just...you know...cared.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Isn't that the same thing? When you care about someone,
| don't you put yourself in their shoes?
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| This is the actual definition of empathy, yes, not the
| currently trendy use which is much closer to sympathy in
| the way it is used.
| castlecrasher2 wrote:
| I imagine most would agree that the phrase "live through
| their kids" has a negative connotation and "caring about
| someone" does not.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Fair enough, I'm probably in minority. I don't see
| anything wrong with living through the kids, for me it's
| just one way to explore the world.
| sircastor wrote:
| I think that's a very smart way to explore the world, but
| I think with the premise of "living through your kids",
| you're forgetting to live yourself.
| LordHumungous wrote:
| Yeah it does seem like many of the "no contact" people are
| themselves childless. I doubt this is a coincidence.
| avidiax wrote:
| It's definitely not a coincidence, but it is certainly
| complicated.
|
| Damaged kids become damaged adults, and if they realize it,
| they may decide that they wouldn't be good parents and
| rightly opt-out of it.
|
| Children that didn't have the right opportunities, whether
| that's their parent's fault or not may not have enough
| achievement as an adult to take on the burden of being a
| parent. One can argue whether it is harder being young today
| than it was 20-30 years ago, but you can't argue that being a
| parent requires lots of resources in both time and money, and
| if you don't have both, it's the right choice to not be a
| parent.
|
| Another layer is that the parents often want grandkids and
| will use them as an excuse or as leverage to maintain contact
| despite lack of respect for boundaries or even outright
| abuse. So there is an element of spite in denying them
| grandkids, and an element of self-protection in the same.
| zadler wrote:
| Though it's unclear if they are no contact because they have
| no appreciation for what their parents might be going through
| (since they don't yet have kids) or if their parents are just
| too toxic to deal with at all (perhaps contributing to their
| not having kids).
| [deleted]
| socialist_coder wrote:
| Totally agree. I didn't realize how much my parents loved me
| until I had kids of my own. Now I get it.
| LordHumungous wrote:
| 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.
| bloopernova wrote:
| 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.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| 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.
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Rapid change already has slowed down. Not too much
| significant has happened over then past decade. The period
| of greatest change is already behind us in the early 20th
| century. Technological and social change can not be ever
| accelorating. It follows a logistic curve.
|
| I agree that macro scale change did fuel a lot of micro
| social behavor changes like increase in divorce rates, etc.
|
| In the past family was more sacrosanct because it had more
| utility for example working on farms together, family
| cottagw industry. With the industrial revolution the
| individual became relatively more valuable than before.
| Method-X wrote:
| I hope you're right. Maybe in the future we'll look back
| on the 20th century as a time of Great Change and the
| 21st was when we had to figure out how to make it all
| work.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Not too much significant has happened over then past
| decade
|
| That's a bold statement, and IMO a very incorrect one.
| You just can't see it right now because you're too close.
|
| Electric cars, batteries, and solar power in general have
| taken off. Autonomous driving draws ever closer.
|
| Covid has changed work culture, education, and lifestyles
| the world over, probably permanently. And mRNA tech could
| revolutionize healthcare.
|
| SpaceX made great strides in making launches cheaper.
|
| FAANG became a thing. Social media really came into its
| own, meaningfully affecting the real world at scale.
|
| The Trump presidency set the world on a radically
| different course, on issues such as climate change, the
| West's relationship with China and Russia, and NATO.
|
| Gay marriage became legal in a slew of countries.
|
| This is just the stuff I can recall off the top of my
| head.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| most of these things, in my studied opinion, are either
| insignificant or overhyped. To pick a few examples
| driverless cars as a usable transportation commodity are
| no where near close.
|
| True AI is no where near close.
|
| Spacex is a stunt, not something like inventing AC.
|
| Trump was far less significant than Bush II and 9/11,
| while that was less significant than the fall of
| communism, and that in turn was less significant than
| WWI...
| triceratops wrote:
| I suppose time will tell.
|
| IMO the only difference between my examples and yours is
| the amount of time that has passed, giving us
| perspective.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| What's the difference between FAANG now and IBM, HP,
| Dell, Sun, Yahoo!, and Apple of yesteryear?
| cookieswumchorr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| tablespoon wrote:
| You're focusing too much on technology, but OK, let's go
| with that:
|
| Let's say Canada banned social media tomorrow. Facebook,
| Twitter, Snapchat, Reddit, etc. are all blocked and go
| dark. Implementation of the ban is perfect. In exactly
| what way would this cause Canada to "[fall] behind and
| [become] an irrelevant province of the earth"?
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I feel like you skipped a step here. Why would needing to move
| to a city and use computers cause "toxic" behavior?
| meepmorp wrote:
| I think they mean the parents behave in a toxic way.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| They were referring to the parents being toxic, not the
| child.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Sure, I got that. I just don't see how it obviously follows
| that the parent's assumed ignorance about the modern
| economy would automatically lead to toxic behavior. I think
| that step needs some spelling out.
| everdrive wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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]
| wutbrodo wrote:
| I agree to some degree, but what I don't get is the
| mechanism by which that's assumed to translate into
| toxicity, let alone enough toxicity to engender
| estrangement. Parents not understanding their children's
| world is as old as time, or at least as old as
| industrialization.
|
| I experienced this myself to a pretty significant degree,
| and I wouldn't describe my parents' misunderstanding of the
| modern economy as "toxic" in any way, so my personal data
| point is not helpful here. Hence my question: what is the
| mechanism by which this understanding gap is assumed to
| lead to toxic behavior?
| Method-X wrote:
| I think "toxic" is a bit hyperbolic. It's likely they're
| just frustrated with how out of touch some baby boomers
| can be.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > 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.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| 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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-14 23:00 UTC)