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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

#301

Post by dudeman13 »

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…

>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

You lost me a little there. How does not wanting kids makes you think that our socialization has taught some of us that humans have little inherent moral worth as individuals?

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#302

Post by Falling3 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #282
rogerclark wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In therapy circles and attachment theory land, this is exactly what's supposed to happen when you receive "good enough parenting". Good enough parenting means your parents actually tried and either worked through any of their issues preventing them from giving care to their children, or didn't have those issues in the first place. So the idea goes, you end up developing a relationship based on mutual respect, love, a…

> "Lots of people are massively fucked up and still have kids anyway, either accidentally or otherwise. And then their kids are put at a massive disadvantage in life and in human relationships." This is an interesting one, and in direct contradiction to the adage: "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” My life experience agrees, tough…

It seems that there are specific kinds of difficult experiences that promote growth and others that inhibit it. There are certain kinds of widely felt hardships like economic downturn that can unite communities and help bring out the best in people. There is a definite silver lining. There's no upside to shitty parenting.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#303

Post by Angostura »

jgilias wrote: post #285

When I was around twenty my Mom used to call me every other day or so just to have a chat. One day, after she asked me how my day was, I shot back something along the lines of: "I don't have anything to tell you, really. You're calling so often that nothing new manages to happen in between the calls." So, she stopped calling. I would go home every other week as usual and everything seemed fine. It was only much later…

When I went to university, my parents simply asked me to call them once a week on Sunday at around 10am, which I did pretyt much every week and carried on doing for the rest of their lives until they died a couple of years ago in their 90s.

The calls were pretty consequential and really not verty long, quite often just 20 minutes but over the years they morphed from the being worried about me, to me being worried about them. My eldest daughter goes to Uni this summer. Despite mobile phones, I might see if she would consider doing the same.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#304

Post by iammisc »

nate_meurer wrote: post #260
iammisc wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds pretty extreme and absolutist to me. I am giving a social absolute. Your absolute regarded abuse, a crime, and a serious one at that. A statement being absolute is only concerning if it's also extreme. Labeling deference to parents as abusive is extreme.

What exactly is a "social absolute"? > Your absolute regarded abuse, a crime, and a serious one at that. No, there is no crime of "abuse" per se. Take, for example, the constant, relentless degrading and insulting language that one of my friends directed at his son since he was a little boy, which destroyed the kid's self esteem and has now undermined his agency as an adult, resulting in depression and addiction. I c…

> What exactly is a "social absolute"?

A social absolute is something like 'always be nice to people'. This is different from 'any attempt to be nice to someone is abusive'. one relates to human social interactions. The other relates to what is typically considered a serious crime.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#305

Post by Y_Y »

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…

> the "shift" is more like an unveiling

Is there a name for this phenomenon? I think many articles could plausibly be "This Bad Thing is Downright Ubiquitous, But We Only Just Realised!".

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#307

Post by foolmeonce »

I'm not sure I believe this diagnosis. I think communications has made for more formal estrangement since it's pretty hard to find a lifestyle that explains why you can't video chat from anywhere anytime and the cost of even trans-continental travel is rarely a quarter of a year's salary.

The further you go back, the easier it was to have excuses to greatly limit contact and only have contact that is very impersonal. The average American is a decendant of adults who were never going to see their parents again. Most would have felt a great deal of social pressure to treat that as a hardship and disguise if it was their primary motivation.

I think hunter gatherers would have been predisposed to finding new groups at adolescence even if their culture lacked a specific rule for which sex does so, and the priorities of agricultural societies to keep land rights are probably not particularly compatible with our evolutionary past.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#308

Post by oxymoran »

morpheos137 wrote: post #243
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me personally there are aspects I don't like about myself that are clearly a result of how my parents raised me. As a much younger man I was bitter about this, but I came to realize that my parents are human and made some mistakes, but over all did sacrifice a lot for my and my sister's well being. I also realized we didn't do a lot to make raising us any easier. So rather than remain resentful towards them, I ju…

>did sacrifice. On the one hand I agree children and young adults can be overly entitled or have too high expectations for their human parents on the other I think that framing raising children as a sacrifice is wrong. It is kind of the core point of biological life. In past times children were seen as a blessing now some times in the west they are seen as a burden. This inversion is part of the larger narcissism epi…

I agree. My parents held their “sacrifice” over our head and I don’t think I really got over it and I think it’s why I never wanted kids until fairly recently. I used to respond to that by saying that I never asked them conceive me in the first place which made me feel like poo. Now being a parent myself, I can see why parents would feel like they made a sacrifice, but I am never going to hold that “sacrifice” over my child’s head because I also see how that felt terrible as a kid.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#309

Post by crazygringo »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #282
rogerclark wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In therapy circles and attachment theory land, this is exactly what's supposed to happen when you receive "good enough parenting". Good enough parenting means your parents actually tried and either worked through any of their issues preventing them from giving care to their children, or didn't have those issues in the first place. So the idea goes, you end up developing a relationship based on mutual respect, love, a…

> "Lots of people are massively fucked up and still have kids anyway, either accidentally or otherwise. And then their kids are put at a massive disadvantage in life and in human relationships." This is an interesting one, and in direct contradiction to the adage: "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” My life experience agrees, tough…

I mean, that adage about hard times, while entertaining, has zero truth to it. It's not something supported by history. It just sounds cool to say is all.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#310

Post by mcguire »

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…

Had a friend who told the story of her aunt: Her aunt's mother married a man and had several children, including the aunt. Her aunt's mother left her husband as he became an abusive alcoholic and returned to her family. Who proceeded to treat the aunt's mother like a pariah for deserting her husband. The aunt grew up living in a converted chicken coop and being completely ignored by her extended family.
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