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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

#331

Post by jseliger »

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…

Much of what seems to have held parents and adult children together used to be grandchildren; with fewer people having children of their own, and waiting until later in life, that might be a lot of cause of the estrangement. Anecdotally, I've noticed a lot of people in their 20s or 30s get much closer to their parents when the first kid arrives.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#332

Post by taddevries »

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…

Maybe this is more accurate.

"Hard times create weak men, weak men create hard times"

I've never believed that adversity creates strength, at least that has not been my experience in life.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#333

Post by aidenn0 »

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…

That's survivor bias. If you throw a million 8 year olds into the ocean, you'll create hundreds of swimmers.

The "good times create weak men" I have less of a story for, but it's perhaps something like this:

If you throw a million 8 year olds into the ocean while wearing life-preservers, you will end up depriving some of them the chance to learn to swim, and wrongly teach many of them that there's nothing dangerous about the ocean.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#334

Post by hedberg10 »

Angostura wrote: post #303
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 abo…

Do it. All the anxieties "Should I call?", "Am I a nuissance", "Am I a burden?" matter not.

I am genuinely curious why "memento mori" never seems to stick. Maybe thats part of it's power.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#335

Post by Falling3 »

pjc50 wrote: post #202
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…

> anticircumcision movement This is one of those things that is specific to the Jewish religion, in which it serves as an irreversible symbol of membership and has done for about three thousand years ... and also a subset of Americans, who do it for reasons which they suddenly find difficult to explain to their adult children. If it's important for adult life, but not actually urgent, leave it until the child is old…

> and also a subset of Americans

I think you're underestimating just how many American men are circumcised. The WHO puts it at between 76 and 92%.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#336

Post by msbarnett »

neuralRiot wrote: post #289
michaelmrose wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If society collapses it will be because we ignored existential threats like climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare etc.

> If society collapses it will be because we ignored existential threats like climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare etc. All that where created by an individualistic approach. Party now and let future generations deal with the dirt.

> All that where created by an individualistic approach.

How so? TFA attributes this modern alienation to changes in the American family structure that took place in the last half of the 20th century. All three of the threats the person you’re responding to listed, nuclear war, (modern) biological warfare, and climate change, were developed or essentially locked in in our society prior to the last half of the 20th century – largely by people born before or right around the end of the 19th century, who were presumably much more attuned to this “dutiful family obligation” mindset, since those are the very people TFA is contrasting these post-1950 changes against.

The plain history of these developments would seem to argue that post-1950 societal changes had nothing whatsoever to do with these threats, unless you’re arguing that the effect preceded the cause.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#337

Post by ajot »

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…

After reading "The Fremen Mirage Collection" [0], I can't read that adage/meme without feeling snarky.

While I believe that, in an individual scale, harsh times can help develop toughness and resilience, most times it seems to lead to resentment, anger and frustration.

[0] https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#338

Post by 77pt77 »

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…

Children were mostly seen as a blessing because they were indentured servants that worked for very little.

Childhood as it is seen today is a very recent creation.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#339

Post by ceilingcorner »

not_jd_salinger wrote: post #320
ceilingcorner wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Societies have dealt with far worse situations and managed to survive. Societal cohesion is what prevents anarchy in the long run, not avoiding natural disasters.

Can you please list some of this "far worse situations" than nuclear war and climate change as we are currently facing? "Societal cohesion" doesn't do too much to help us survive crop failures and wet bulb temperatures over 35C. Aside from that, I think you might misunderstand your causal arrows a bit. It is fair more likely that massive industrialization and late state capitalism led to a society that valued the ind…

Black Death and Mongol Invasions were probably worse on a per-person basis for those affected than even a realistic nuclear war would be.

Re: A shift in American family values is fueling estrangement

#340

Post by ceilingcorner »

msbarnett wrote: post #318
ceilingcorner wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Societies have dealt with far worse situations and managed to survive. Societal cohesion is what prevents anarchy in the long run, not avoiding natural disasters.

Precisely none of “climate change, nuclear war, biological warfare” constitute a natural disaster, nor has this quasi-neo-confucian conception of societal cohesion via filial piety historically triumphed over anything worse than any of these modern extinction scenarios.

None of those things would result in the complete extinction of human beings.

The Black Death was pretty horrible and yet European society still exists.

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