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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

#221

Post by buescher »

kgwgk wrote: post #175
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?

Children. Or grown children. Or offspring.

"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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#222

Post by dabbledash »

Apocryphon wrote: post #206
nathanaldensr wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have to wonder if that identity is the final refuge of generations that feel helpless and worse-off than prior ones.

Which suggests maybe we aren’t doing a good job teaching history.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#223

Post by burgessaccount »

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…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#224

Post by minikites »

conductr wrote: post #96
someguy321 wrote: post #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 surpr…

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 man…

>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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#225

Post by dragontamer »

tolbish wrote: post #195
samatman wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acceptabl…

But mental/emotional abuse and neglect are perfectly fine? Those can be just as irreparably damaging as physical abuse.

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#226

Post by wonderwonder »

cronix wrote: post #218
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…

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…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#227

Post by watwut »

chmod775 wrote: post #151
nsxwolf wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sho…

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#228

Post by emptysongglass »

tolbish wrote: post #195
samatman wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acceptabl…

But mental/emotional abuse and neglect are perfectly fine? Those can be just as irreparably damaging as physical abuse.

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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#229

Post by shadowoflight »

samatman wrote: post #181
hackeraccount wrote: post #139

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 thin…

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 acceptabl…

> 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.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#230

Post by lazide »

tolbish wrote: post #195
samatman wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 acceptabl…

But mental/emotional abuse and neglect are perfectly fine? Those can be just as irreparably damaging as physical abuse.

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.

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