A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement • Hacker News Board

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#51

Post by everdrive » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #47

everdrive wrote: post #26

>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 unwil…

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.

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#52

Post by wonderwonder » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

dcole2929 wrote: post #48

wonderwonder wrote: post #36

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…

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…

I don't disagree, it is everyone's job to work on relationships.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#53

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #51

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Well, isn't there some boundary at which a belief is completely unreasonable?

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#54

Post by bitexploder » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

zwieback wrote: post #35

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…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#55

Post by pmichaud » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #30

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 continuin…

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?

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#56

Post by queuebert » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:10 PM UTC

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#57

Post by imbnwa » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #26

>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 unwil…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#58

Post by tablespoon » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

cookieswumchorr wrote: post #41

tablespoon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 la…

> 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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#59

Post by dahfizz » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #26

>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 unwil…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#60

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #7

wutbrodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you skipped a step here. Why would needing to move to a city and use computers cause "toxic" behavior?

They were referring to the parents being toxic, not the child.

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.