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A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

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Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#151

Post by chmod775 »

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…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#152

Post by iammisc »

throwaway284534 wrote: post #106
iammisc wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 th…

> 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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#153

Post by delecti »

buescher wrote: post #74

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?

Do you have a better term to suggest?

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#154

Post by queuebert »

polka_haunts_us wrote: post #142
queuebert wrote: post #56

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 resea…

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…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#155

Post by spookthesunset »

polka_haunts_us wrote: post #142
queuebert wrote: post #56

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 resea…

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…

> 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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#156

Post by dionidium »

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…

> 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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#157

Post by tclancy »

vangelis wrote: post #122
tclancy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#158

Post by Tade0 »

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…

> 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?

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#159

Post by arrosenberg »

shagie wrote: post #143
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…

> 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 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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#160

Post by throwaway0a5e »

oh_sigh wrote: post #150
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…

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 crie…

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.
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