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

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#121

Post by tablespoon » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #62

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…

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 per…

> 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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#122

Post by vangelis » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:30 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #43

throwaway98797 wrote: post #38

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…

The younger generation had significantly less tetraethyllead exposure. I wonder if that had any impact.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#123

Post by bart_spoon » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

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…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#124

Post by Method-X » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

morpheos137 wrote: post #92

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.

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 sacrosan…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#125

Post by cookieswumchorr » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

tablespoon wrote: post #58

cookieswumchorr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fata…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#126

Post by tablespoon » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #115

nkingsy wrote: post #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…

edit: i guess my comment was a little too personal to state.

How is this in response to the GP at all? Did you reply to the wrong comment?

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#127

Post by throwaway284534 » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:41 PM UTC

throwaway29435 wrote: post #97

throwaway284534 wrote: post #14

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 a…

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 ever…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#128

Post by jahnu » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #113

jahnu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

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".

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...

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#129

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

twiddling wrote: post #77

tablespoon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> 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.

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#130

Post by nkingsy » Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #115

nkingsy wrote: post #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…

edit: i guess my comment was a little too personal to state.

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.