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A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

theatlantic.com

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Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#81

>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…

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…

>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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#82
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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, but that doesn’t make it gaslighting.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#84
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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#85
post #63
post #8

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 Millenni…

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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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#86

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.

> 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…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#87
post #85
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

Different boogeymen, same orthodoxies.

Edit to your edit: They are looking fringe because the other side won ;)

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#88

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?

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#89
post #63
post #8

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 Millenni…

[flagged]

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#90
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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, i…

ok, billie eilish.
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