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.
I am genuinely curious why "memento mori" never seems to stick. Maybe thats part of it's power.
because simultaneously adults have been inundated with the news of the world and it isn't good, and as a result we're probably genuinely more anxious about our kids than for several generations (my father would be 114 this year, if he could be alive, and his stories of growing up pre Depression in London still make my hair stand on end and thank god for the mercies we do have. Age has made me sentimental and actually interested in what religion is about. But I also recognised both developments as being a deliberate blurring without any definite refocus, of all the accumulated worries into a indefinite emotional haze. If this is necessary for forbearance when my grandchildren err stupidly yet repairably, I'll take it, religion and all. But I don't remember my father in his nineties getting any fuzzier, only sharper. So I hope to overcome the apparent overload.
Still, whatever the reasons, I think we're letting our children's intelligence become too thinly spread across distractions when we are suffering from similar confusion, and I believe it's our job to clear more of the post modern clutter.
I'm the oldest of five. This pattern then continued and now my parents and my siblings and their families have that group call with everyone every week.
It's really helped us stay connected. You can't stay close to someone if you never talk to them. And a live interaction is superior to Facebook, etc
I would recommend setting expectations early around weekly calls so they become a habit. Even if you have nothing to talk about you can small talk for a few minutes. I suspect you will have a lot to talk about if your child is starting university.
When I moved away from home I kinda thought it would be the same with me. After all, not that much happens during the average working week. I worked, I ate with friends. So why call all the time?
Turns out I think they just missed me. To a degree parents live through their kids. Are you enjoying your work? Have you found a girlfriend? It's like living through that age again.
Technology really helped. The last few years before they died they'd call weekly to check on their grandchildren. Often short calls, but still pretty good. In fact my last contact with my mom was via a video chat.
Or maybe they just...you know...cared.
Where it starts being wrong is when people take "living through my kids" as "controlling and demanding my kids live the way I imagine I would have wanted to live, if I was in their shoes now".
Note: when I say "kids", I mean someone's children who are already adults and have their own life to live. I am not trying to say that kindergarten-aged children should be given full freedom to make their own life decisions and that any attempt to infringe on that is wrong.
Sorry for your loss. I'm at the age where I've lost a few of my good friends now, and it never feels like you had enough time.
Having gone through the same experience, I have to wonder if the simplest explanation for increased estrangement is that people are waiting longer to have children, and having fewer of them, than ever before.
That got me crying.
Damaged kids become damaged adults, and if they realize it, they may decide that they wouldn't be good parents and rightly opt-out of it.
Children that didn't have the right opportunities, whether that's their parent's fault or not may not have enough achievement as an adult to take on the burden of being a parent. One can argue whether it is harder being young today than it was 20-30 years ago, but you can't argue that being a parent requires lots of resources in both time and money, and if you don't have both, it's the right choice to not be a parent.
Another layer is that the parents often want grandkids and will use them as an excuse or as leverage to maintain contact despite lack of respect for boundaries or even outright abuse. So there is an element of spite in denying them grandkids, and an element of self-protection in the same.
It’s not like I were divorced. I’m precisely never married, never had a long girlfriend, despite not being ugly nor totally stupid, and my loneliness drove me crazy (in the literal sense – since Covid I’ve honestly snapped a few neurons, so it’s quite over for me). But before that, I used to be a fine person, but they didn’t give me any lead on the love life. EVERY father would be happy if the kid plays with girls at school, just not mine because they don’t want me to pump-and-dump - well they don’t have to worry about this for sure. I really don’t get how people succeed at the love life, it’s totally not working for me.
I’m now workaholic and if I stop working, I’ll go insane with ruminations in a few hours only. I’m quite fortunate my worklife offers me the opportunity of working more, I’m a programmer-entrepreneur.
Anyway, if I were successful at life, I’d certainly be happy to call my parents more. It’s just that their opinion led me to a general failure, so I can’t hear more.
Until we can do that, we aren't really adults. That's what sets adults and children apart: responsibility. Children are not responsible for their own lives; rather, they live under the guardianship of adults.
Adults are responsible.
And it is a hate crime that we have probably two generations in the West that have been raised to be actively irresponsible: to reject the mantle of responsibility, and instead spend their time loudly blaming... everybody but themselves.
It doesn't matter how well-deserved that blame might be! Blame itself is toxic.
Look, I get it. My parents did a number on me, too. But I also recognize that they too were broken in many ways, and that they did the best they could with what they had.
Yes, that means they gave me a lot of shitty advice. But it was good advice to their younger selves.
That's why I'm not angry with them anymore. Not for the cheating, or the divorce, or any of the rest. Because I am adult enough to take ownership over my own life.
If a close friend told you that their BF/GF abused them and asked you what was the responsible thing to do, would you not tell them that they should first remove themselves from their abuser? Is it not precisely the responsible and independent choice for a victim to leave their abuser behind and move on?
Blame isn't necessary for estrangement. I broadly agree, blame is often toxic, and it's healthy to have a sense of cosmic empathy towards even people who have wronged you. It's not really clear to me who's ultimately "in the wrong" here, but the person you replied to is clearly taking the reins on their life: evidently, they're now dealing with life without their parents' help.
And yet there are so many levels and shades to abuse. Just like the errors we see in the products and programs we build. We have to ask if it was malicious, neglect or ignorance. The longer we live the more I ask myself whether large swaths of that low level trauma I endured was malicious or their own timeline to grow up, be better, realize their mistakes. Not fair, but also true.
My mother is not the same person she was when I was 12/16/22 and I'm glad we had space, but never truly cut ties despite how painful it was for so many years.
We aren't all afforded the same time, space, community to mature.
- But my mother hates dogs because they’re competing with her in terms of affection (or total lack thereof), and relationships don’t click with me, because most parents develop their child’s socialization and mine acted as if socialization wasn’t a subject. In some sense, their education taught me to rely on my skills, not on socialization (independence as a principle, which became loneliness). I have no example in my 38 years where I could rely on others when I was in need.
- It seems I have the face of someone to be stepped upon (I don’t know, some people have a face you want to slap, perhaps I look weak and people instinctively profit from it).
- In any case, they pushed feminism and helped my sisters more, and either you admit that feminism has an impact and gives women a better life than men, especially in terms of confidence in society, either you admit it doesn’t, in which case why doing it. But as it stands, given women’s experience and expectations, it is not possible anymore for me as a beginner to start a relationship. They do expect a set of societal conventions that I don’t know about (from not-breaking-up-by-sms to saying the right thing when it’s time to split or not split the bill, not even talking about in bed).
I’ll just take a dog, but I’m enraged that people talk so much about helping others and can let people down just next to them when they’re were 99% decent humans before. I mean I’ve donated dozens of thousands to charities in the past, and none of them is able to pay it back to lonely men. I was a decent being until I became insane under the lockdowns.
2020's pandemic and the associated mess with society is a thing. Just look out for yourself. Therapy is fine, you don't have to broadcast to everyone that you've chatted about issues. I've had a few sessions and to be honest, even those few sessions have given me ways to have internal conversations with myself by just imagining what a therapist would say. Just thought I'd offer that.
Still, take care of yourself, we only have one life here on the planet, plus you can't depend on 100 percent of the folks you run into to be on your side, most of us can be pretty self centered but don't let external insanities live in your head rent free. Humans are just not perfect beings.
Look forward to the future, surprises can and do happen. Cultivate friendships where you can.
(this isn't meant to attack you for misclassification - but rather widen the pool of people who fall into this complicated class)
I know enough parents doing fine for their kids without much money and even less time that I’ll have to contradict you. It’s infinitely better to be alive than have stuff or even ample parent time. I can attest to that from personal experience. In the short term it’s certainly convenient to avoid having kids as having kids is hard and requires sacrifices. However, it’s a commonly held myth that for many kids are beyond them due to time and money, presumably as a justification for precluding or severely limiting children. One has the ability to make that decision but one shouldn’t lie about the motivation because for many the choice is made to put themselves first and reject the sacrifices of being parents.
In some places kids can play outside and have a village of school connected people / things to get through just fine.
I guess it's also easier to do fine if you have church groups to help, and some places have other community that can help I am guessing. Perhaps that mall in Beverly Hills is a fine babysitter and teacher of life lessons - the malls around other parts of the country stopped being good for that some years ago.
I also feel that fine is also a gamble.
You might get affordable child care that does not abuse your kids and you might get a school system that teaches them life fine.. but you may not, and if you don't have the time to find out, or the money to change things drastically - you are essentially gambling with an innocent's life.
Again I feel this varies quite a bit from location to location and situation to situation. But I don't feel it is right to suggest the choice is putting themselves first - at least not in all circumstances, and I'd guess it's not the main factor in most of these conscious choices.
If your response to child abuse, a lack of affordable childcare, and ok schooling is that the children shouldn't exist, you've lost me.
> you are essentially gambling with an innocent's life.
You lose all bets you don't make. Life is a gamble full-stop so you are always gambling when you bring a life into the world. My main point is that there is a whole lot more room to maneuver for many childless couples from a purely practical point of view before it'd be established that having children were irresponsible for them. People have way too high expectations and a lot of ulterior motives that are the real barriers. One way to look at it is, what would you do to help them if you children already existed? Would you move somewhere cheaper/safer/closer to family? Would you sacrifice your career? Would you lower your standard of living? Would you sacrifice your lifestyle? If the answer to any of those is "no" (be honest now) then you've discovered an important part of your true motivations.
No, the argument is that some children shouldn't exist because some parents cannot afford to be successful parents.
It's odd to see such a pro-gambling position. On any other topic, no one would encourage people to make a risky gamble with someone else's life & happiness as collateral. And by the way, the loss you incur by not making a bet is not even close to the loss you can incur by losing this gamble. Clearly, you've never witnessed fates worse than death. I would never consider a life of misery & abuse preferable to non-existence.
And parental sacrifice is hardly the only factor. We know that children in lower socio-economic groups have significantly worse life outcomes on average. They have lower academic achievement, lower income, higher incarceration and crime rates. Will you pin that all on parenting? Poor parents just don't sacrifice enough? Doesn't matter how much you sacrifice when you can only afford a place in a high crime area and your child runs in with the wrong crowd and begins a generational cycle of incarceration. Doesn't matter how much you love your children when you have to spend most of your time at work away from them to afford basic necessities. Doesn't matter how much you want your child to succeed in school when you have neither the time nor education to even know how to help them. And we haven't even gotten to mental disabilities and neuroses yet. It costs money to manage those issues, more than some parents can possibly afford.
Everyone should have the right to make that choice. Reproductive rights are human rights. But if you believe you lack the basic resources to setup your child for success when the cost of failure literally isn't yours to bear, I could never accept that as an ethical choice. Bad outcomes are always possible regardless of wealth, but your wealth significantly alters risk and the whole equation to the point where one can say "that's a bad/good bet". If you knowingly make a bad bet, that's on you, except now your child has to pay the cost.
- also 'what themacguffinman said' in this portion of this thread!
"lot more room to maneuver for many childless couples from a purely practical point" - I agree, and some may be on a path to success, for many it's you against the world and the world is really good at keeping you down/in debt / out of safer places, etc.
So I have been helping some children, a couple as official fosters for 6 months or so, and another non-official for 10 years or so. We/they have moved to cheaper which is safer in some regards (better schools) - and less safe in others.
In this process I/we have sacrificed career and portions of career (partially 'for the children') - closer to family would not make any of the things better, but that may change around age 16 - to some degrees.
We have lowered our standard of living and sacrificed a previously really fun lifestyle.
My motivations for children has always been to provide a safe environment where they can learn well. This is much easier if you make 250k / year than if you make 50k.
While I know it's possible to sacrifice and ask for help, and certainly there are safe places to raise cheaper, say some towns in Alabama - but it's hard to figure out all about the schools / towns / pollution / etc etc until you are in it.. and moving is expensive.
I was blessed to be raised in a place that had sidewalks and neighborhoods safe enough to walk / bike / bus anywhere anytime. At that time, in that place, it might have been considered abuse to keep a kid inside.
These days we have places where (I believe it's still the case) that you could be arrested for sending your kid to the park (it's not safe).
Being in a safe place is not just about affording childcare. It's about being able to afford good food, go organic as much as you can, avoid BPA, microwaving plastics and more.
It's about safe streets, safe schools, after school safety, and so much more.
Like I said my original comment - in some places for some people this is no problem, yet in many places in the US 'all the things' are less safe these days, and in many cases quite dangerous/toxic truthfully.
I've heard of some interesting safety nets for challenged children in California, and I've witnessed those heartfelt 'the village / church helped X do Y' - but we don't have the same state-paid-for child help here where I am, you even get kicked off food stamps when you get a raise to 11.30 per hour here.
If I had a new kid today I don't know what I would do. Probably look at going to portugal or something like that (much research would be needed to really pick a place). The days of assuming that staying in the US provides top notch safety and education are long gone imho.
15 - 20 years ago I was still cautious about having kids, not knowing where I could afford a safe growing-up environment. 10 years ago I still believed that the basics like safe water and good educators were guaranteed across the US.
Today I know more, and more of the things I worried about back then are less safe today, and the costs associated with escaping those things are higher than ever.
So I still feel that "I don't feel it is right to suggest the choice is putting themselves first - at least not in all circumstances, and I'd guess it's not the main factor in most of these conscious choices." is true.
Surely there is somewhere in the US where these concerns are not so paramount, and for those that have other circumstances with family/church/etc, different for sure.
I'm in a fairly modern, popular, growing city / burbs, and the basics here are not as safe as they should be - and I don't see much of that changing anytime soon - unless you can afford to get to brentwood/franklin, I think you'd be better off moving much further away for child safety.
Sure you could keep them inside 24/7 - homeschool if you have a partner and things like that, rice and beans etc, if you had to, I get it's possible, and so kids should exist.
I still feel it's easier to make that choice when you either make lots of money or have found a small safe community with options - of which I don't think there really are that many for most people here anymore.
I strongly disagree with this overbroad generalization.
> you can't argue that being a parent requires lots of resources in both time and money, and if you don't have both, it's the right choice to not be a parent.
I would be happy to argue this. Raising children is the most essentially human experience one can have. A society with fewer parents is a society well on its way to nihilism and extinction.
If that means trauma, then there is this concept of "Transgeneration transmission of trauma" not in terms of epigenetics (as this has not been proven yet), but in terms of behaviour of adults transmits trauma verbally and non-verbally to the child. I think this also applied to a whole range of responses/believes about how we approach life in general which is transmitted from parents to child. Yes, also the child has their own personality and might not be influenced that much, but nurture is pretty powerful especially in the forming years.
Not sure this is a 100% proven mechanisms in psychology (replicated and understood) but I can easily identify in my kid things that I wish I fix for myself and I see this in other parents with kids too.
I also think a child is a very powerful chance to change myself as kids can really be (specially when they are young and copy their parents) mirrors of their parents thus making identifying these mechanisms easily.
I am thankful that I think there are a lot of things that I caught early on, did a lot of work to fix them and managed not to transmit to the child.
We have a good relationship and they re good parents but I cut all attempts at having them take more space in my life than the minimum. It's so common in France we call that killing your dad (I googled and it seems to be a Freudian expression we started using to say growing up) and is part of growing up.
I have a kid now, and I want her to get the fuck out at 19, and start a life of her own with as little need for my involvment.
The funny thing is I moved to Hong Kong eventually and couldnt convince my french gf of 7 years to follow me because she couldnt tolerate being so far from her parents. I then met my current chinese wife, born here, who is in a very fusional relationship with her mom, who talks to her for hours everyday, so much she needs to kill her phone at night to stop it. And they live an hour apart...
It s clear to me there's something in Asia that's different because they all seem just as fusional (I find it unhealthy), but it may be also a girl thing more generally ? I have a sample of 2 so it's hard to know.
In any case, my daughter will be encouraged to "kill her dad" and be on her own. Even if her mom might disagree :D
“I just really enjoy your company.”
For years in my teens I was convinced that they didn’t believe my time was as valuable as theirs. Making me wait in a fucking bank.
I have two boys now and I take them shopping even when mom’s home.
I deeply deeply understand my parents so much better now. I’m so thankful for that because I think it lets me love them on a whole different level now. I now understand countless details of why they did what they did.
I have a mentor who told me that he was confused when got married, that his wife didn't come with him when he went to the store, to the bank, or on whatever random errand he was going on. Why? Because his parents (both incredibly highly educated and busy doctors) did everything together. If one was going to the store, the other came along, because they just enjoyed each other's company. I thought it was a beautiful depiction of what a familial relationship could, and perhaps should be like.
You post almost made me cry. My father passed away a few years ago and one of the things I regretted the most was that the last time I talked to him was 'a few months ago'. It took me a long time to come to terms with that and to stop beating myself up for it. People, call your parents.
Having your own kid puts into perspective all the failings you thought your parents had.
So when people were having kids at 20 (or earlier), yeah, you don't have two decades of delayed adulthood/extended teenagedom to complain about your parents.
This made me tear up. My dad had a stroke a couple of years ago and my mom is taking care of him. I dont call them nearly as often as I should. Thank you for the reminder.
The Cat's In The Cradle Harry Chapin 1974
I ve been abroad 7 years myself and I could not survive with such a need for contact. Did you follow someone ?
I know that it's never anything like that, but I have really toned down my vignette of a maternal reaction. You just never know how important you are - you said this yourself I only can't emphasise it enough. Emotional telepresence as once advertising had it, belongs to a boomer utopia, in my opinion.
But.... there's a gigantic cultural (rural vs suburban), generational (Xenial/Milennial vs Boomer), political (die hard Republicans vs Greenwald-esque progressives) and religious (baptist vs atheist) divide between us.
To complicate matters - they, especially my mother who's suffering depression from chronic illness, can be quite toxic and stress-inducing at times. They're judgemental, my mother can be a tad manipulative - nothing is every enough. I could call every day, i could see them once a week, they freaking moved within a 20 min jog of my house ffs. They're pushy.
To quote Kill Bill Vol 2: "Because he's a very very very old man. And like all rotten bastards, when they get old, they become lonely. Not that that has any effect on their disposition. But they do learn the value of company."
And that's the conundrum of them. They are characters and they are a lot to take in and a lot to ask my wife to habitually tolerate.
But on the flip side, they're incredibly thoughtful, giving, will stop anything at the drop of a hat to help with problems big and small, physical, financial, you name it. (though i never take them up on the $$). They... were incredibly flawed parents and i didn't walk out of childhood without issues.
But man, does being a parent change things. It makes me hypersensitive to just how i'm going to fuck up my kid, what kind of an annoyance i will be to him. The bond i have with my child is already something i can't explain to people who don't have kids and even to a few who do. And the idea that one day he'll just be too busy for me, or even being a teenager and being too cool for me.. it depresses me.
I didn't have him to burden him with me. but it's a relationship that i value higher than anything else.
i'm getting older - i've had medical ordeals, watching my mom suffer medical problems and it's just hit me how short and temporary all this is.
And i dunno. I understand a bit more now, and am tolerant a bit more now. I'm more grateful for what was done for me and less judgmental about differences. Life is hard, life is fragile, relationships are hard but... they're worth the extra effort (on both sides).
I don't have a lot of friends. I just never fit in anywhere. But whether i did or didn't, it really strikes to the core of just how important family is, looking down and up generationally. No one wants to die alone.
No one wants to pour all that effort, love, attention, money, heart-ache, struggle to doing the best you can for a kid, just for that kid to be like "fuck off" (for whatever reason, sans abuse). To dedicate 18-25, sometimes more, of your life to someone and them to just ...be too good for you now?
I was that kid at 25. At 40 with a 5 year old, i am not. And i will not be.
And of course, since she didn't recognize mental illness in herself, she also couldn't see in her children. So we never got care that we needed and are various degrees of fucked up now. We were just force-fed religion instead. We're all atheists now, but those scars never heal, and I'll never forgive my parents for putting us through that.
Maybe worth keeping in mind that they were probably doing what they were force fed to believe was the right thing to do. Everyone is just trying their best (usually, and even if they aren’t, it is generally better for your own mental health to go through life assuming they are).
i'm no less an atheist than i was before anxiety,but i'm certainly less of an asshole about it.
I'm going to say something controversial. Not everyone is grateful for their life. I've talked to multiple people who preferred to never be born. And event the best parents I know couldn't offer much more honest reason for having children than "we wanted to" which is basically ultimate selfishness.
> [...] and being decent at being parents as well.
That's way more universally good reason for treating your parents well.
> I'm going to say something controversial. Not everyone is grateful for their life. I've talked to multiple people who preferred to never be born. And event the best parents I know couldn't offer much more honest reason for having children than "we wanted to" which is basically ultimate selfishness.
> > [...] and being decent at being parents as well.
> That's way more universally good reason for treating your parents well.
I can verify this. I very much wish I wasn't tasked with being alive. Depending on your metaphysical beliefs, I feel like I'm wasting another soul's place in the world. I don't want to be here, maybe if another soul was in this body then it would put it to better use and be happy and fulfilled and desire this life. I have people who want me to be here and for their sake I continue onwards, always wondering why, and always wishing I didn't have to. I used to make the mistake of thinking I could confide in them these feelings I have, but eventually I realized that I cannot. Rather, I should not. My parents wanted to be parents, and they began preparing for me as soon as they found out I was on my way. They kept me from falling off of tall things or licking wall sockets or drinking cleaning fluid as a baby. No matter how you word it, there's no way to explain that you don't want to exist that doesn't tell a parent "everything you defined yourself by for the last few decades is a farce, the thing that you made doesn't want to exist." I am not grateful my parents made me, but I don't hate them so much as to want to hurt them by telling them that.
I really don't think that's at all objectionable or selfish to be honest. Couples that don't have children exist and bless them for deciding to go with their gut and not feel compelled by society into having a child. A child being born has absolutely no say in the matter - it's solely a decision of the parents and it should be one driven by whether the parents want and can care for a child.
The question of being grateful for life - that's a pretty complex philosophical subject. At the end of the day life is all you've got as an organism, you will experience pain from time to time but without life you simply would not exist. To those who go through severe trauma and pain, my heart goes out to you and I thankfully can't relate to that utter helplessness - but for most people existence is all we've got and if you run across someone that genuinely prefers they were never born I'd hope you can direct them to some therapists to work through their issues with, that can't be a healthy place to be.
You simply are not.
(and sorry if this is a bit deep or morose)
Further I would argue the antihuman sentiment offer by your argument that giving life is selfish only further contributes to the problem.
You can't really blame them. It's a consequence of evolution. Genes that make brains that want to have children tend to reproduce better than genes that make brains that don't.
Some time later there was a period when I would contact my parents every few months or so. Not really on purpose. Simply because other things simply took more of my time and attention, and calling my parents wasn't really high on my list of priorities.
Only when my son was born I started to realize what someone goes through as an individual and as a couple once a child comes into their lives. How it changes things. That not being thrown out of the window at 2 a.m. as an infant is already a blessing. I'm sure that thought has crossed the mind of many a young parent with a screeching infant on their hands in the middle of night. So, I felt ashamed of myself, and grateful to my parents for being there in the first place, and being decent at being parents as well.
Now I've made a point to myself to call them up at least once a week. As in, I have set up a reminder for that. I now know how much they value this. But it's not only for them. I realize very well that one day I will wake up and wish to call my parents to have a chat about something. But there simply won't be anyone to call anymore.
I'm not passing any judgement at all on people who have abusive parents. I have no idea how that feels like. I'm just happy that I didn't end up accidentally getting estranged to the decent parents that I have. At some point it really was going that way.