Kate, I know that you don't want to make specific accusations, so these are my words, and I don't expect you to necessarily agree. As the son of a severely narcissistic and borderline mother (readers-Mommie Dearest levels of abuse, yes, I'm serious) both these women look like narcissists to me.
I call the behaviors you described "leading indicators." By that I mean, "A behavior so far outside the norm and reasonable decency that likely only a Cluster B would do this. It's not something a normal person would do on a bad day."
Bill Eddy, who runs The High Conflict Institute (worth checking out) has a formulation, too. He refers to these people as "high conflict," but most of the time he's talking about Cluster Bs while staying away from diagnostic language (I have no such scruple about it, but that's me). He asks people to think of the "90/10" rule. Ask ourselves, "what would 90 percent of people do in this situation." If the answer is "they would not have behaved this way," Bill says you've almost certainly identified a "high-conflict person."
In my terms, you've identified a clinical-level narcissist or close.
Your MIL's behavior is all I need to know to form a pretty accurate assessment of her character. I know these people inside and out. My mother was not the only such person in my life by a long shot.
And your maid? What awful, manipulative, unprofessional behavior. A woman her age should be ashamed of herself. She did take advantage of you, she knows she did, and she still tried to make you soothe her. Classic Cluster B behavior.
I understand why you were triggered--I was just reading this. I walked away from the computer and deleted my reactive response. *I know this in my gut because I grew up with this.*
You're right about boomers and millennials. Your generation was so manipulated and under-parented, and parented in the wrong ways, that your cohort is largely disconnected from reality and proper emotional functioning. The parents were not goddamned good enough by a long shot.
My generation, X, is not blameless either.
Take heart though that you are the fully grown up mature woman that your elders are not, and that many in your peer group are not. I've met a lot of you. Come sit at the Gen X lunch table eh? I'll bring the Corn Nuts.
PS-Those who react with "stop labeling people" are either feeling personally stung, which is their work not yours, or they're acting as enablers for people or themselves who behave this way. "Stop labeling" is very popular, but in real grown up world, it actually means "stop communicating specific information that does not flatter me. I am going to characterize your normal and reasonable attempt to categorize and identify patterns as 'being mean' to socially defang your point of view."
The truly tragic thing is that the child-led approach, while often motivated the way you describe, *still* makes kids responsible for figuring out how to satisfy their parents needs, but with even less clear information about what those needs are.
One hundred percent. It puts them in the drivers seat, which is another form of parentification!
A lot of the trans kids have parents like this. They say they will follow their kids lead. But they don’t actually do that, like other child-led parents. They still lead but covertly.
"Blaming each other"... When the point of the article was that boomers have a serious problem in millennials are cleaning up the mess?
Sounds like that quote is more about blaming the victim.
If you feel it is appropriate to laugh at the real problems of other people, that would indicate a problem with your character.
The answer here is for X Y and z to recognize that we are in this together and that none of us need to pretend we are better than one of the other groups.
Gen X slacked off to show The establishment that they had no right to rule over us ..lots of civil disobedience. Gen Y said "this world is unacceptable" and rocked the boat like crazy. These two phases paved the way for Gen Z to come in and grab the wheel, IE control of their own relationship situations.
Being needlessly divisive is just not the way to go here. We have power. To be petty is to relinquish that power. Mature adults learn to compliment others for the strength that they have and to build others up for doing the hard work, and they redirect their belittling comments to the people who actually deserve it: the perpetrators.
Interesting analysis, Kate. The danger here is making "boundaries" into basic selfishness and narcissism, which seems to be a particularly common affliction of the millennial generation as well. As you point out, the boomers have their own issues. And if we set aside all the generational mumbo jumbo and the psychobabble, what we're left with is our own self-development, which seems endless (because it is endless). I think aiming for a kind of stoicism is our best approach. Is your kid truly being damaged by exposure to influences that are different from your own? I mean, so long as nothing actually abusive is going on, we have to allow folks to be themselves, no? Seems to me, after all is said and done, we learn from each experience and try to find better solutions for the future. I mean you're not going to change your mother inlaw, but you can come up with a strategy that satisfies her, your kid and yourself. As for the maid, you did come home early, and she probably would have gotten a lot done before your return, but the deep clean, maybe not to the degree you would have liked. That sort of thing is difficult to assess, and it's likely best if you part ways because it's the sort of thing that can't be fixed. There is now a trust issue there. Perhaps with future maids, the bonus and just time off would be best. Live and learn. And that's your message from a GenX.
Another epic generational therapy session where millennials are simultaneously analyzing and performing emotional labor while boomers are busy being... well, boomers. The absolute chef's kiss of this entire saga is how the author basically wrote a 2,000-word essay about firing a housekeeper that could be summarized in two sentences: "My cleaning lady didn't clean. I fired her."
Yeah, so why did Gen X go from Badass Latchkey kids to Helicopter Parents? There’s a lot in your own mirror that needs to be addressed before throwing rocks.
I'm a 75 year old " Boomer". I've learned most people are not nice. Your "maid" did a half ass job. Welcome to the world. It appears you have a big problem dealing with others.
Sweetheart, it sounds like you are the one with a big problem dealing with others. If you get your depends in a twist just reading an article about an assessment of someone's negative life experience, then you need to calm down and focus on gaining some maturity. You don't have much time left. No one can do it for you. You have to want it.
When I read things like I realize how lucky I was in childhood. I do not relate, at all. I never had to manage the feelings of my parents and today, I'm pretty firm with my son.
I do think I would have handled the situation with MIL differently, if it were me. I probably would have just said "knock it off" and not gone into all the psycho-babble about "needs being met".
“Knock it off” would have been the perfect response! I’m glad you CAN’T relate.
My response was futile, exhausting, and zapped my emotionally energy, and just gave an excuse for MIL to play victim.
My vignette shows how narcissistic family units, which I believe were common with a certain boomer child rearing style (authoritarian & immature at once), affected the millennial generation, myself included.
And this can make one struggle to understand boundaries and how to make our personal limits clear, otherwise known as being assertive.
Happy for you :). Thanks for reading and your comment.
I had a colleague once who would say "I accept that you did not do any of the things you are accused of, now stop doing them". It was very effective (albeit hard to keep a straight face).
Scottish jurisprudence recognizes this phenomenon also. In addition to Guilty and Not Guilty, there is a verdict of Not Proven, which means, “you didn’t do it and don’t ever do it again.”
When my son was maybe around 18-months, we were at a family holiday and my husband’s boomer grandmother was there. My son was happily sitting on the floor playing with blocks, and the boomer started saying his name and telling him to come give her a hug. He didn’t hear her and kept playing. He was barely a toddler and almost still a baby and he didn’t know what she was saying, nor did he care. She finally lost it and started yelling at him saying, “get over here you little brat! I’m your great-grandmother!” I didn’t know what to do, so I picked him up and took him in the other room, while the grandmother switched from yelling at him to yelling at me about how “disrespectful” he was.
This is the same woman who abandoned her own children when they were teenagers to go have a career and ‘find herself’. The same woman who inherited all the generational wealth and died broke, leaving none of it for her own descendants. I wish I could say she was an exception, but my own boomer grandparents did the same exact thing, and the boomer parents and grandparents of many people I know.
My own boomer grandfather inherited a fortune in generational wealth, and then disinherited my dad and my aunt (his only children) because he didn’t agree with their religious beliefs. He also abused them when they were children. Yet he still expects them to take care of him now that he’s old…. and guess what... They do. They’re not millennials like me, closer to super-young boomer, elder gen-X, but it’s the same dynamic.
We all better tiptoe around the feelings of the boomer “ME” generation! We better rearrange our lives and our values to make them feel loved and respected, even though they didn’t do so for us or our children! We better do whatever we can to accommodate those who destroyed the middle class, tanked our economy, and have three houses, when for us, just owning a safe home to raise our children in seems like an impossible dream! We better cajole and console the emotions of the boomers even if they’re terrible people, because that’s what they’ve trained us to do.
Unfortunately this story is something I can completely relate to, and there must be some generational element here. You said it well. Of course, there are boomers that I like, and who don’t behave like this. Every individual is as they are— some are more self aware, and some are not. There are people from all generations who can behave like this. But I believe there is a cultural element that affected the beliefs and norms, and even personalities of different generations.
Speaking in broad strokes, “Respect” is a huge one for boomers. But it doesn’t mean the same thing as it means to other generations. Respect, to the boomer generation, means entitlement to your deference to their authority. Respect means, you owe me something because I brought you into the world.
For younger generations, respect means something totally different. How would you define it?
Yes, every person is their own and painting a whole generation with a broad brush can miss a lot of nuance. However, we can recognize patterns, and I think there was something about them being raised in the growing wealth of the post-war era and then the social revolutions of the 60s and 70s that just created a culture of selfishness for the boomer generation that we in the younger generations are still being hurt by.
As far as “respect”, I would say the definition is treating someone with basic politeness and decency. I believe we should all treat others with basic respect as living beings. But respect doesn’t equal deference. There are different levels of respect, and the higher levels are earned by reciprocation.
For example, growing up, I had two grandfathers. My dad’s dad was the boomer grandfather I spoke about, and my mom’s dad was a silent generation WW2 vet. My mom’s dad babysat me when I was a baby so my mom could go to college. I have so many memories with him: taking rides on his tractor, him taking by brothers and I to the county fair, the wooden toys he made for us, him teaching me about gardening, him teaching me to drive when I was 15 and letting me drive his brand-new truck. He passed way when I was in my 20s and I still have the shirt I wore when I visited him in the hospital. He said, “you look beautiful, Lin!” the last time I saw him, so I can’t bring myself to get rid of that shirt, even though I’ll never fit into it again. When my boomer grandfather passes, I probably won’t shed a tear. Though, I will be sad for a life wasted in selfishness. When I see him at Thanksgiving, I give him respect by having polite conversation, but I don’t have the deep respect for him that I had for my other grandfather. I have deep respect for my mom’s dad, not because he was my elder, but because he was a good man.
Millennials: “You fucking boomers really did a crappy job and screwed my generation”. Also millennials “I think my son is really a girl in biological camo. I think I’ll cut his balls off”.
Oh sweetheart, you must be one of those people who believes that the trolls and bots you read online represent the majority. Look up the Open Society Foundation to find out who is putting out all this pro trans propaganda nonsense. And then look at the age of the people who actually run it. Spoiler: they're boomers.
Little news flash: x y and z all see the problem with the boomers. You are wildly outnumbered. Your days are almost over. You should probably improve now. Or not. But your time grows very short.
This is interesting to me. Thank you for an honest layout of the millennial and boomer interplay.
So you were correct in the preamble. I’m Gen X and I really don’t understand and I’m also laughing at the whole thing (I’m not laughing at you but with you).
We truly don’t understand. I mean I understand the arguments and the points but I don’t understand from experience. I can’t put myself in either the mindsets you’ve laid out here of millennials and boomers.
I’m so much more direct in my communications. When I sense manipulation coming my way I recoil from it like a hot flame and then I become irritated and go to stamp it out.
In fact when people try to manipulate me into being responsible for their feelings I can become quite direct . It pisses me off much more than people just being jerks. It just comes off as embarrassing and pathetic which are somehow worse sins to me.
Gen X here and I was thinking the exact same thing. Absolutely, my mother made her needs first and at a very young age I was tasked with trying to make life better for her so she could be happy. However, rather than take that on as my mantle in life, I saw her behavior as childish. I recall being 9 y.o. when I realized that I was the more mature one and rather than desire to appease her, I found her pathetic. Still do and yes, when people try this with me, as boomers and millennials both will, I am direct. I throw up my boundaries. I recoil and will not even engage. I'd rather sip my wine in the corner and stay as far away from the drama as possible. I have a Gen X friend who wears a t-shirt that says, "No one cares. Try harder." I agree with this sentiment. I'm not sure if it's all Gen X, I have a lot of female X friends who are all about the feels and taking responsibility for other's feelings the way millennials do, but in general I think if you meet an Xer who isn't on social media, they don't understand the boomer/millennial interplay and want nothing to do with it.
I do always feel a little sorry for the MILs in these situations, *without condoning or agreeing with their actions*. They grew up in an era when only what the adult wanted mattered, and what the children wanted or needed did not. Now it is finally their turn to benefit from that arrangement, and we flipped it to only the children matter, and not the adults. They did not get to experience any time at all when they felt like they mattered.
Good point. But nobody has any entitlement to that as adults. We don’t get to seek our unmet childhood needs from our children or grandchildren, of all people. We have got to meet our own needs. The love and nurturing has got to flow from parent to child, otherwise the cycle continues indefinitely.
Agreed. I can feel sympathy without agreeing with or participating in the actions. I really do think they got the short end of the stick on both sides of life.
It’s not only about the child’s perspective mattering though. I think it’s about the fact that they are human beings who deserve rights of their own. When an emotionally immature adult seeks to meet their own needs at the child’s expense, it’s not building any kind of loving or intimate relationship. They had a lifetime to deconstruct and heal, and learn how to genuinely connect with others. It’s not a kids problem that they didn’t, but kids are easy marks for abuse. That’s why I struggle to hold any sympathy for the adult in these situations. It’s actually super gross and thank god more parents today hold healthy boundaries for their children, who are in a position of great disempowerment against the emotionally immature adults who “love” them.
Are you under the impression that anyone is disagreeing with you? There is a big difference between understanding why someone does something and agreeing with them doing it. I am capable of empathizing with their experience as a child who did not matter, and their acting that out as an adult.
This comment is going off on a little tangent. I only vaguely recognized the caricatures you were presenting.
I’m an older Gen. Xer (born in ‘68) of older Boomer parents (both born in 1941) back when the norm was to have all your kids before the age of thirty.
The lines between the generations seem somewhat blurred now that the norm is to have most of your children in your thirties and possibly the last child in your early 40s.
I grew up thinking the boomers’ children were the ever-neglected, practically feral Gen X kids…the last generation to enjoy total freedom and autonomy in a relatively safe society.
But male (less often female) boomers got divorced and essentially, abandoned their 1st marriage’s kids to start 2nd (even 3rd) families with much younger women.
They felt ENTITLED to do so and were resentful that we Xer kids weren’t celebrating their new-found happiness with a downgraded substitute for Mom. These younger women had very different ideas about child-rearing, and consequently, our half-siblings were truly obnoxious. We avoided interacting with them whenever possible. It wasn’t just the age difference thing.
In my mind, those are the Millennial kids - the half-siblings who are about 1/2 generation younger than Gen. Xers, but not a full generation separated from us.
Subsidizing a 2nd (and sometimes 3rd) family is why our boomer parents claimed poverty and we Xers had to take out loans to attend college.
No prizes for guessing that when our boomer progenitors kicked the bucket, we Xers received an inheritance of $0. We Gen. Xers have the distinction of being the first generation to be treated like strangers when the Last Will and Testament was read.
You are correct about the Gen. X bemusement over obsession with communicating feelings. The interjection of psychobabble terminology into daily conversations has always felt awkward and false. Duplicitous even. I strictly avoid engaging in it.
As a Zoomer (As per the name) who grew up with core GenX parents, I can say that this attitude extends to following generations.
I think - as another commentator on this thread has wisely noted - this comes from a lack of care in their child years mixed with an inability to be a mother (At least my mother is like this. Both of my grandmothers were like this, but not with me) when they should've been - constantly at work or emotionally out to lunch. This results in an odd fascination with being a grandmother rather than a mother as it is the perfect escape into childlike responsibility when they should be an adult.
Also, yes, the baby-like talking when you're trying to have a serious conversation is infuriating. Doubly so when they get upset at you not falling for the manipulation and seem to get unreasonably angry to 'punish' you for not playing along.
I think you're on to something about it being an inability to be a mother more than a perhaps even a generational thing. My mother (youngest of the Silent generation) was completely checked out emotionally and still is. She's forever trapped in her childhood and as a result LOVED being a grandmother, until the kids grew up and no longer wanted to play with her. So strange. She also always told me I was too smart to be a mother, motherhood would be a waste of my potential, and that her biggest regret in life was getting married. My generation, X, then spent all our time at work. We weren't home mothering. I know this because I was one of the few who in the end, did stay home with her kids, and when I'd go out to walk with the boys or go to the park, the neighborhoods were EMPTY. At 7:30 am, all the garage doors would open, the minivans would exit, and then the neighborhood stood silent until 5:30 pm when they all returned and then went into their houses. It was incredibly lonely for me as the rare SAHM, but the conversations among the women at parties that I attended had the general feel that if they stayed home with their kids, they'd be miserable, just like their moms. So, perhaps this is a modern female phenomena, one generation teaching the next that mothering is beneath them, which infers to the child herself that she is beneath her own mother and causing her mother pain with her mere existence, which obviously harms her own development and so on and so forth. Being people pleasers, we try to make our moms happy to make up for the inconvenience of being born and carry that with us. And no, you don't make up for it when you're a grandmother of littles. Your grandchildren are not a second chance. Sorry.
I agree with this assessment. I think the Generational thing is useful in marking key movements that might affect said generation. Both of my grandmothers were in this odd generation where wealth exploded in our homeland, but their mothers were constantly stressed out or working. No real community or stability. However, my mother is a typical GenX.
As I've grown older, I see that in my culture there was a pattern of having the 'reliable' child (ie. the one you raised to be a workaholic) and then the child you used for children. I think it's a pattern that develops when there is no community/strong man in the house (Both of my grandmothers were single mothers). You manipulate your children into becoming what you need at a future date.
Anyway, my mother was supposed to be a careerist, but it went south due to her anxieties. In the end, even when she had the opportunity to be a mother to me, she was too self-absorbed in her miseries to properly view me as a daughter and not someone who would love her no matter what. She used to remind me that I "saved her" which always felt wrong. Parents should exist for their children, not the other way around. To this day I feel equally responsible for her emotions and health as I did as a girl.
Well, now I'm older and I hear her harp about how eager she is to be a grandmother and all the wonderful things she wants to do (Things she never did with me despite being a stay-at-home mother) and I would be a liar if I said it didn't aggravate me.
No, I want to be a mother to my children when I have the chance. You had your chance and you used it to weep on me, ceaselessly. I will not intentionally put myself in a position (Like countless women have done before in my family) where I work and you finally get to be a mother. You had your chance to be nurturing. I want mine.
I can only pray that she realizes the error in her ways. It'll be painful, but better than this horrible tradition of having no real 'mother'. May God bless you.
You've got me thinking...I was a software engineer in my 20s. When I had my child, my mother insisted I still keep working because I was "so talented and had so much potential." Don't stay home with the baby and throw your life away, she said. However, she refused to help at all with childcare. It was her time to shine, she'd raised me, now I had to raise my own. All my Indian and Chinese female colleagues however, their mothers were raising their kids. But white boomer women didn't do that, so I had to put mine in daycare. It was horrible. My only regret in life was giving my infant away for 9 hours a day. I lasted two years and then decided to stay home with my kids when the second one was born. In the end, I agree that if you get the chance to raise your children, do it. There's nothing work can offer you that is better than being the mother of your family. And you're also right that it is your time to be the nurturer, not your mother's Creating your own home is truly empowering. Homemaker is amazing. However, when I went to my husband's retirement party at a major tech firm, every woman in the room was either right out of college, or if they were his age, they were Asian or Indian. I believe this is because their mothers helped them raise their kids, so they stayed in the field. I'm not saying that's better or worse, simply that our choices affect the workplace as a whole society, not merely within our own families. I've told my sons that they don't have to buy into the narrative that Gen Z can't afford kids. That either we'd help them financially so one of the parents can stay home with the kids, or I'd be willing to be free childcare for them. It is best for the baby and in the long run, for them as well. Regardless, I want them and their wives to have choices that are beyond what society has told us is the right way to be and rather put children first again as important. May God bless you as well.
Jesus Christ.
Kate, I know that you don't want to make specific accusations, so these are my words, and I don't expect you to necessarily agree. As the son of a severely narcissistic and borderline mother (readers-Mommie Dearest levels of abuse, yes, I'm serious) both these women look like narcissists to me.
I call the behaviors you described "leading indicators." By that I mean, "A behavior so far outside the norm and reasonable decency that likely only a Cluster B would do this. It's not something a normal person would do on a bad day."
Bill Eddy, who runs The High Conflict Institute (worth checking out) has a formulation, too. He refers to these people as "high conflict," but most of the time he's talking about Cluster Bs while staying away from diagnostic language (I have no such scruple about it, but that's me). He asks people to think of the "90/10" rule. Ask ourselves, "what would 90 percent of people do in this situation." If the answer is "they would not have behaved this way," Bill says you've almost certainly identified a "high-conflict person."
In my terms, you've identified a clinical-level narcissist or close.
Your MIL's behavior is all I need to know to form a pretty accurate assessment of her character. I know these people inside and out. My mother was not the only such person in my life by a long shot.
And your maid? What awful, manipulative, unprofessional behavior. A woman her age should be ashamed of herself. She did take advantage of you, she knows she did, and she still tried to make you soothe her. Classic Cluster B behavior.
I understand why you were triggered--I was just reading this. I walked away from the computer and deleted my reactive response. *I know this in my gut because I grew up with this.*
You're right about boomers and millennials. Your generation was so manipulated and under-parented, and parented in the wrong ways, that your cohort is largely disconnected from reality and proper emotional functioning. The parents were not goddamned good enough by a long shot.
My generation, X, is not blameless either.
Take heart though that you are the fully grown up mature woman that your elders are not, and that many in your peer group are not. I've met a lot of you. Come sit at the Gen X lunch table eh? I'll bring the Corn Nuts.
PS-Those who react with "stop labeling people" are either feeling personally stung, which is their work not yours, or they're acting as enablers for people or themselves who behave this way. "Stop labeling" is very popular, but in real grown up world, it actually means "stop communicating specific information that does not flatter me. I am going to characterize your normal and reasonable attempt to categorize and identify patterns as 'being mean' to socially defang your point of view."
Thank you for this 🙏
The truly tragic thing is that the child-led approach, while often motivated the way you describe, *still* makes kids responsible for figuring out how to satisfy their parents needs, but with even less clear information about what those needs are.
One hundred percent. It puts them in the drivers seat, which is another form of parentification!
A lot of the trans kids have parents like this. They say they will follow their kids lead. But they don’t actually do that, like other child-led parents. They still lead but covertly.
„ If you are Gen-X, you will be laughing at how obsessed we are with caricaturing and blaming each other for all our problems.“
Damn straight. Happy New Year!
🤣 happy new year! Thanks for reading :)
"Blaming each other"... When the point of the article was that boomers have a serious problem in millennials are cleaning up the mess?
Sounds like that quote is more about blaming the victim.
If you feel it is appropriate to laugh at the real problems of other people, that would indicate a problem with your character.
The answer here is for X Y and z to recognize that we are in this together and that none of us need to pretend we are better than one of the other groups.
Gen X slacked off to show The establishment that they had no right to rule over us ..lots of civil disobedience. Gen Y said "this world is unacceptable" and rocked the boat like crazy. These two phases paved the way for Gen Z to come in and grab the wheel, IE control of their own relationship situations.
Being needlessly divisive is just not the way to go here. We have power. To be petty is to relinquish that power. Mature adults learn to compliment others for the strength that they have and to build others up for doing the hard work, and they redirect their belittling comments to the people who actually deserve it: the perpetrators.
To go a little deeper, read this next: https://open.substack.com/pub/katewand/p/the-kitchen-is-a-womans-domain?r=8somb&utm_medium=ios
Interesting analysis, Kate. The danger here is making "boundaries" into basic selfishness and narcissism, which seems to be a particularly common affliction of the millennial generation as well. As you point out, the boomers have their own issues. And if we set aside all the generational mumbo jumbo and the psychobabble, what we're left with is our own self-development, which seems endless (because it is endless). I think aiming for a kind of stoicism is our best approach. Is your kid truly being damaged by exposure to influences that are different from your own? I mean, so long as nothing actually abusive is going on, we have to allow folks to be themselves, no? Seems to me, after all is said and done, we learn from each experience and try to find better solutions for the future. I mean you're not going to change your mother inlaw, but you can come up with a strategy that satisfies her, your kid and yourself. As for the maid, you did come home early, and she probably would have gotten a lot done before your return, but the deep clean, maybe not to the degree you would have liked. That sort of thing is difficult to assess, and it's likely best if you part ways because it's the sort of thing that can't be fixed. There is now a trust issue there. Perhaps with future maids, the bonus and just time off would be best. Live and learn. And that's your message from a GenX.
Agree!!
TLDR for GenX only:
Another epic generational therapy session where millennials are simultaneously analyzing and performing emotional labor while boomers are busy being... well, boomers. The absolute chef's kiss of this entire saga is how the author basically wrote a 2,000-word essay about firing a housekeeper that could be summarized in two sentences: "My cleaning lady didn't clean. I fired her."
Edit: she fired herself 😂
Yeah, so why did Gen X go from Badass Latchkey kids to Helicopter Parents? There’s a lot in your own mirror that needs to be addressed before throwing rocks.
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/from-latchkey-kids-to-helicopter
https://open.substack.com/pub/mperrone/p/what-do-you-want-your-kids-to-do?r=1tj7lo&selection=70a8e2c2-a26b-466b-94b4-bf7fa35dde62&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web
I'm a 75 year old " Boomer". I've learned most people are not nice. Your "maid" did a half ass job. Welcome to the world. It appears you have a big problem dealing with others.
Sweetheart, it sounds like you are the one with a big problem dealing with others. If you get your depends in a twist just reading an article about an assessment of someone's negative life experience, then you need to calm down and focus on gaining some maturity. You don't have much time left. No one can do it for you. You have to want it.
Do you speak to your grandmother like that?
Do you speak to your grandmother like that?
When I read things like I realize how lucky I was in childhood. I do not relate, at all. I never had to manage the feelings of my parents and today, I'm pretty firm with my son.
I do think I would have handled the situation with MIL differently, if it were me. I probably would have just said "knock it off" and not gone into all the psycho-babble about "needs being met".
“Knock it off” would have been the perfect response! I’m glad you CAN’T relate.
My response was futile, exhausting, and zapped my emotionally energy, and just gave an excuse for MIL to play victim.
My vignette shows how narcissistic family units, which I believe were common with a certain boomer child rearing style (authoritarian & immature at once), affected the millennial generation, myself included.
And this can make one struggle to understand boundaries and how to make our personal limits clear, otherwise known as being assertive.
Happy for you :). Thanks for reading and your comment.
I had a colleague once who would say "I accept that you did not do any of the things you are accused of, now stop doing them". It was very effective (albeit hard to keep a straight face).
Brilliant!
Scottish jurisprudence recognizes this phenomenon also. In addition to Guilty and Not Guilty, there is a verdict of Not Proven, which means, “you didn’t do it and don’t ever do it again.”
When my son was maybe around 18-months, we were at a family holiday and my husband’s boomer grandmother was there. My son was happily sitting on the floor playing with blocks, and the boomer started saying his name and telling him to come give her a hug. He didn’t hear her and kept playing. He was barely a toddler and almost still a baby and he didn’t know what she was saying, nor did he care. She finally lost it and started yelling at him saying, “get over here you little brat! I’m your great-grandmother!” I didn’t know what to do, so I picked him up and took him in the other room, while the grandmother switched from yelling at him to yelling at me about how “disrespectful” he was.
This is the same woman who abandoned her own children when they were teenagers to go have a career and ‘find herself’. The same woman who inherited all the generational wealth and died broke, leaving none of it for her own descendants. I wish I could say she was an exception, but my own boomer grandparents did the same exact thing, and the boomer parents and grandparents of many people I know.
My own boomer grandfather inherited a fortune in generational wealth, and then disinherited my dad and my aunt (his only children) because he didn’t agree with their religious beliefs. He also abused them when they were children. Yet he still expects them to take care of him now that he’s old…. and guess what... They do. They’re not millennials like me, closer to super-young boomer, elder gen-X, but it’s the same dynamic.
We all better tiptoe around the feelings of the boomer “ME” generation! We better rearrange our lives and our values to make them feel loved and respected, even though they didn’t do so for us or our children! We better do whatever we can to accommodate those who destroyed the middle class, tanked our economy, and have three houses, when for us, just owning a safe home to raise our children in seems like an impossible dream! We better cajole and console the emotions of the boomers even if they’re terrible people, because that’s what they’ve trained us to do.
Unfortunately this story is something I can completely relate to, and there must be some generational element here. You said it well. Of course, there are boomers that I like, and who don’t behave like this. Every individual is as they are— some are more self aware, and some are not. There are people from all generations who can behave like this. But I believe there is a cultural element that affected the beliefs and norms, and even personalities of different generations.
Speaking in broad strokes, “Respect” is a huge one for boomers. But it doesn’t mean the same thing as it means to other generations. Respect, to the boomer generation, means entitlement to your deference to their authority. Respect means, you owe me something because I brought you into the world.
For younger generations, respect means something totally different. How would you define it?
Thanks for your keen insights!
Thank you! I’m honored.
Yes, every person is their own and painting a whole generation with a broad brush can miss a lot of nuance. However, we can recognize patterns, and I think there was something about them being raised in the growing wealth of the post-war era and then the social revolutions of the 60s and 70s that just created a culture of selfishness for the boomer generation that we in the younger generations are still being hurt by.
As far as “respect”, I would say the definition is treating someone with basic politeness and decency. I believe we should all treat others with basic respect as living beings. But respect doesn’t equal deference. There are different levels of respect, and the higher levels are earned by reciprocation.
For example, growing up, I had two grandfathers. My dad’s dad was the boomer grandfather I spoke about, and my mom’s dad was a silent generation WW2 vet. My mom’s dad babysat me when I was a baby so my mom could go to college. I have so many memories with him: taking rides on his tractor, him taking by brothers and I to the county fair, the wooden toys he made for us, him teaching me about gardening, him teaching me to drive when I was 15 and letting me drive his brand-new truck. He passed way when I was in my 20s and I still have the shirt I wore when I visited him in the hospital. He said, “you look beautiful, Lin!” the last time I saw him, so I can’t bring myself to get rid of that shirt, even though I’ll never fit into it again. When my boomer grandfather passes, I probably won’t shed a tear. Though, I will be sad for a life wasted in selfishness. When I see him at Thanksgiving, I give him respect by having polite conversation, but I don’t have the deep respect for him that I had for my other grandfather. I have deep respect for my mom’s dad, not because he was my elder, but because he was a good man.
When you never experienced how to be a good mother it makes perfect sense that you have no idea how to be a good grandmother.
Millennials: “You fucking boomers really did a crappy job and screwed my generation”. Also millennials “I think my son is really a girl in biological camo. I think I’ll cut his balls off”.
Oh sweetheart, you must be one of those people who believes that the trolls and bots you read online represent the majority. Look up the Open Society Foundation to find out who is putting out all this pro trans propaganda nonsense. And then look at the age of the people who actually run it. Spoiler: they're boomers.
Little news flash: x y and z all see the problem with the boomers. You are wildly outnumbered. Your days are almost over. You should probably improve now. Or not. But your time grows very short.
I will never again complain about being generation-X. Didn’t know things were so dramatic and complicated for you, geez.
😂😂😂
This is interesting to me. Thank you for an honest layout of the millennial and boomer interplay.
So you were correct in the preamble. I’m Gen X and I really don’t understand and I’m also laughing at the whole thing (I’m not laughing at you but with you).
We truly don’t understand. I mean I understand the arguments and the points but I don’t understand from experience. I can’t put myself in either the mindsets you’ve laid out here of millennials and boomers.
I’m so much more direct in my communications. When I sense manipulation coming my way I recoil from it like a hot flame and then I become irritated and go to stamp it out.
In fact when people try to manipulate me into being responsible for their feelings I can become quite direct . It pisses me off much more than people just being jerks. It just comes off as embarrassing and pathetic which are somehow worse sins to me.
I don’t know why exactly.
It’s a good piece and fascinates me.
Gen X here and I was thinking the exact same thing. Absolutely, my mother made her needs first and at a very young age I was tasked with trying to make life better for her so she could be happy. However, rather than take that on as my mantle in life, I saw her behavior as childish. I recall being 9 y.o. when I realized that I was the more mature one and rather than desire to appease her, I found her pathetic. Still do and yes, when people try this with me, as boomers and millennials both will, I am direct. I throw up my boundaries. I recoil and will not even engage. I'd rather sip my wine in the corner and stay as far away from the drama as possible. I have a Gen X friend who wears a t-shirt that says, "No one cares. Try harder." I agree with this sentiment. I'm not sure if it's all Gen X, I have a lot of female X friends who are all about the feels and taking responsibility for other's feelings the way millennials do, but in general I think if you meet an Xer who isn't on social media, they don't understand the boomer/millennial interplay and want nothing to do with it.
I do always feel a little sorry for the MILs in these situations, *without condoning or agreeing with their actions*. They grew up in an era when only what the adult wanted mattered, and what the children wanted or needed did not. Now it is finally their turn to benefit from that arrangement, and we flipped it to only the children matter, and not the adults. They did not get to experience any time at all when they felt like they mattered.
Good point. But nobody has any entitlement to that as adults. We don’t get to seek our unmet childhood needs from our children or grandchildren, of all people. We have got to meet our own needs. The love and nurturing has got to flow from parent to child, otherwise the cycle continues indefinitely.
Agreed. I can feel sympathy without agreeing with or participating in the actions. I really do think they got the short end of the stick on both sides of life.
It’s not only about the child’s perspective mattering though. I think it’s about the fact that they are human beings who deserve rights of their own. When an emotionally immature adult seeks to meet their own needs at the child’s expense, it’s not building any kind of loving or intimate relationship. They had a lifetime to deconstruct and heal, and learn how to genuinely connect with others. It’s not a kids problem that they didn’t, but kids are easy marks for abuse. That’s why I struggle to hold any sympathy for the adult in these situations. It’s actually super gross and thank god more parents today hold healthy boundaries for their children, who are in a position of great disempowerment against the emotionally immature adults who “love” them.
Are you under the impression that anyone is disagreeing with you? There is a big difference between understanding why someone does something and agreeing with them doing it. I am capable of empathizing with their experience as a child who did not matter, and their acting that out as an adult.
No? Are you under the impression I’m arguing with you — because I wasn’t.
Then I congratulate you on the impersonation.
Hope your reply makes you feel better 🤷🏼♀️
This comment is going off on a little tangent. I only vaguely recognized the caricatures you were presenting.
I’m an older Gen. Xer (born in ‘68) of older Boomer parents (both born in 1941) back when the norm was to have all your kids before the age of thirty.
The lines between the generations seem somewhat blurred now that the norm is to have most of your children in your thirties and possibly the last child in your early 40s.
I grew up thinking the boomers’ children were the ever-neglected, practically feral Gen X kids…the last generation to enjoy total freedom and autonomy in a relatively safe society.
But male (less often female) boomers got divorced and essentially, abandoned their 1st marriage’s kids to start 2nd (even 3rd) families with much younger women.
They felt ENTITLED to do so and were resentful that we Xer kids weren’t celebrating their new-found happiness with a downgraded substitute for Mom. These younger women had very different ideas about child-rearing, and consequently, our half-siblings were truly obnoxious. We avoided interacting with them whenever possible. It wasn’t just the age difference thing.
In my mind, those are the Millennial kids - the half-siblings who are about 1/2 generation younger than Gen. Xers, but not a full generation separated from us.
Subsidizing a 2nd (and sometimes 3rd) family is why our boomer parents claimed poverty and we Xers had to take out loans to attend college.
No prizes for guessing that when our boomer progenitors kicked the bucket, we Xers received an inheritance of $0. We Gen. Xers have the distinction of being the first generation to be treated like strangers when the Last Will and Testament was read.
You are correct about the Gen. X bemusement over obsession with communicating feelings. The interjection of psychobabble terminology into daily conversations has always felt awkward and false. Duplicitous even. I strictly avoid engaging in it.
As a Zoomer (As per the name) who grew up with core GenX parents, I can say that this attitude extends to following generations.
I think - as another commentator on this thread has wisely noted - this comes from a lack of care in their child years mixed with an inability to be a mother (At least my mother is like this. Both of my grandmothers were like this, but not with me) when they should've been - constantly at work or emotionally out to lunch. This results in an odd fascination with being a grandmother rather than a mother as it is the perfect escape into childlike responsibility when they should be an adult.
Also, yes, the baby-like talking when you're trying to have a serious conversation is infuriating. Doubly so when they get upset at you not falling for the manipulation and seem to get unreasonably angry to 'punish' you for not playing along.
I think you're on to something about it being an inability to be a mother more than a perhaps even a generational thing. My mother (youngest of the Silent generation) was completely checked out emotionally and still is. She's forever trapped in her childhood and as a result LOVED being a grandmother, until the kids grew up and no longer wanted to play with her. So strange. She also always told me I was too smart to be a mother, motherhood would be a waste of my potential, and that her biggest regret in life was getting married. My generation, X, then spent all our time at work. We weren't home mothering. I know this because I was one of the few who in the end, did stay home with her kids, and when I'd go out to walk with the boys or go to the park, the neighborhoods were EMPTY. At 7:30 am, all the garage doors would open, the minivans would exit, and then the neighborhood stood silent until 5:30 pm when they all returned and then went into their houses. It was incredibly lonely for me as the rare SAHM, but the conversations among the women at parties that I attended had the general feel that if they stayed home with their kids, they'd be miserable, just like their moms. So, perhaps this is a modern female phenomena, one generation teaching the next that mothering is beneath them, which infers to the child herself that she is beneath her own mother and causing her mother pain with her mere existence, which obviously harms her own development and so on and so forth. Being people pleasers, we try to make our moms happy to make up for the inconvenience of being born and carry that with us. And no, you don't make up for it when you're a grandmother of littles. Your grandchildren are not a second chance. Sorry.
I agree with this assessment. I think the Generational thing is useful in marking key movements that might affect said generation. Both of my grandmothers were in this odd generation where wealth exploded in our homeland, but their mothers were constantly stressed out or working. No real community or stability. However, my mother is a typical GenX.
As I've grown older, I see that in my culture there was a pattern of having the 'reliable' child (ie. the one you raised to be a workaholic) and then the child you used for children. I think it's a pattern that develops when there is no community/strong man in the house (Both of my grandmothers were single mothers). You manipulate your children into becoming what you need at a future date.
Anyway, my mother was supposed to be a careerist, but it went south due to her anxieties. In the end, even when she had the opportunity to be a mother to me, she was too self-absorbed in her miseries to properly view me as a daughter and not someone who would love her no matter what. She used to remind me that I "saved her" which always felt wrong. Parents should exist for their children, not the other way around. To this day I feel equally responsible for her emotions and health as I did as a girl.
Well, now I'm older and I hear her harp about how eager she is to be a grandmother and all the wonderful things she wants to do (Things she never did with me despite being a stay-at-home mother) and I would be a liar if I said it didn't aggravate me.
No, I want to be a mother to my children when I have the chance. You had your chance and you used it to weep on me, ceaselessly. I will not intentionally put myself in a position (Like countless women have done before in my family) where I work and you finally get to be a mother. You had your chance to be nurturing. I want mine.
I can only pray that she realizes the error in her ways. It'll be painful, but better than this horrible tradition of having no real 'mother'. May God bless you.
You've got me thinking...I was a software engineer in my 20s. When I had my child, my mother insisted I still keep working because I was "so talented and had so much potential." Don't stay home with the baby and throw your life away, she said. However, she refused to help at all with childcare. It was her time to shine, she'd raised me, now I had to raise my own. All my Indian and Chinese female colleagues however, their mothers were raising their kids. But white boomer women didn't do that, so I had to put mine in daycare. It was horrible. My only regret in life was giving my infant away for 9 hours a day. I lasted two years and then decided to stay home with my kids when the second one was born. In the end, I agree that if you get the chance to raise your children, do it. There's nothing work can offer you that is better than being the mother of your family. And you're also right that it is your time to be the nurturer, not your mother's Creating your own home is truly empowering. Homemaker is amazing. However, when I went to my husband's retirement party at a major tech firm, every woman in the room was either right out of college, or if they were his age, they were Asian or Indian. I believe this is because their mothers helped them raise their kids, so they stayed in the field. I'm not saying that's better or worse, simply that our choices affect the workplace as a whole society, not merely within our own families. I've told my sons that they don't have to buy into the narrative that Gen Z can't afford kids. That either we'd help them financially so one of the parents can stay home with the kids, or I'd be willing to be free childcare for them. It is best for the baby and in the long run, for them as well. Regardless, I want them and their wives to have choices that are beyond what society has told us is the right way to be and rather put children first again as important. May God bless you as well.
This article really got me thinking about my experiences being raised by gen xers in a very different lifestyle. Thanks for sharing.