My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

AIBU?

AIBU to ask about your life *today*?

51 replies

AnythingMcAnythingface · 29/09/2016 09:33

I always hear how the 'future', the here and now, is so bad. I think it's pretty amazing, and practicing gratitude is really helping me appreciate that. (The leaves have started to fall so maybe I'm feeling a bit soppy!)

What is the number one thing in your life, that if your great-grandparents were alive today to see, their jaw would drop?

For me I'm thinking about housework just because I'm quickly sorting that right now, but I suppose I mean in any area.

My great granny's jaw would drop at my steam cleaner... they had an outside loo for all their life, so the idea that the loo is not only inside, but some crazy machine could blast steam and clean it to sparkle in 90 seconds would no doubt blow her mind!

My great pops jaw would drop that I run a business, and that my husband and I run the house and parent as a very joint affair.

I'd love to hear what you are grateful for or are amazed by in your life today!

OP posts:
Report
Skittlesss · 29/09/2016 09:37

Obviously not the number one thing but Internet Shopping! My grandparents, if they were still here, would be amazed that you could pick up your phone and tap the screen to buy anything you want. Gone are days of catching the bus to town and only having the choice of what's in the shops there. My nana would have loved it - especially the fashion. Mum and I were looking at Jimmy Choos and saying how she'd have had a pair.

Report
eggyface · 29/09/2016 09:39

My two beautiful, high-tech, medical miracle babies, who could never have been born even 10 years before they were. Vaccines. Clean drinking water. Reduction in global poverty. Rise in literacy.

Report
AGruffaloCrumble · 29/09/2016 09:44

Not strictly what you asked but DP's grandad tried pringles for the first time in his life a few months back. Blew his mind!

I think the fact that we all carry around smart phones and mobile data would be the biggest one.

Report
DerekSprechenZeDick · 29/09/2016 09:45

My great grandma is still alive Grin

She recently got a smart phone. She asked my brother about Snapchat but he's refusing to download her it

Report
ProfessorPreciseaBug · 29/09/2016 09:50

The traffic the poor roads and congestion..

Grandad used to love doing a ton up the A5 with us asking him to go faster.. now you would be lucky to hit 40.
It's worse now than when they died in the 70's.

Report
StrawberryQuik · 29/09/2016 09:51

I get my cousin to go round my 84 year old grandmas house so she can see baby DS on FaceTime from another country :)

Report
minipie · 29/09/2016 10:00

The welfare state.

My great granny had 5 kids and then her husband died. She was on her knees. Very little state help or services.

She would be Shock at the benefits and help available now (I know it's still not great, but it's a lot better than what there was back then). Though I do wonder if she'd be too proud to take it.

The acceptance (at least outwardly) of different races, sexualities, religions, classes.

Report
AnythingMcAnythingface · 29/09/2016 10:06

Keep these coming they are so great (may be quite emotionally open today as strawberry made me have a wee happy tear and gruffalo made me audibly laugh!)

OP posts:
Report
Isitjustmeorisiteveryoneelse · 29/09/2016 15:11

Well my GGPs were born in the late 1880s and I think the fact that I only have two DCs would be shocking to them. They had twenty two between them. Nope not joking. Blows my mind to think of it.

Report
alphabook · 29/09/2016 15:15

Possibly bringing the tone of the thread down, but my great grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust so I hope they would have been thrilled to see my grandma still going strong at 96, and their first great great grandchild on the way.

Report
FellOutOfBed2wice · 29/09/2016 15:17

How different my life is at 31 to how hers was. She was an Irish-Catholic living in East London with 6 kids and had been married for 13 years. Contraception was totally forbidden in her world and they had no money because her husband used to spend all his wages on booze of a Friday night and she didn't work. At the same age I've been sexually active as long, but only got two children, a career, a degree and have been married only four years. We aren't religious either which she would probably be appalled at!

Report
NowThatsClosureJen · 29/09/2016 15:27

DM article?

Report
StubbleTurnips · 29/09/2016 15:28

My GGM was alive to see everything in the 'modern world' as she called it, she died a couple of years ago and we all miss her. Every Christmas she knitted us bed socks, and was appalled we couldn't knit!

She was genuinely dumb struck that I was allowed to go to "poly technic" Grin

My Gran is still alive so my DD now has a GGM who is batshit crazy - so I hope she'll have interesting memories of her as she grows up.

Report
PubesintheChips · 29/09/2016 15:30

I guess pretty much everything we take for granted in everyday life now TBH.

I'm still pretty amazed by the internet and I'm only 30 Blush

My nan used to wash her clothes by hand and boil a kettle on the cooker until she died three years ago because she didn't trust mixing water and electricity.

Report
Spudlet · 29/09/2016 15:32

Skype, I think. That I can live 150 miles from home and still have a face to face conversation with DM, get DS involved etc.

And that DH parents equally, and that right now he's working at the kitchen table on a laptop.

And that DBro is alive, because he sure as hell wouldn't have been back in their day.

Report
StVincent · 29/09/2016 15:37

I think my great grandma would be amazed at so many things, but mainly at the fact that I work alongside the children of doctors, vicars, MPs, shop assistants, caretakers, teachers etc - all on the same level. And no-one cares or asks what our parents did.

My family were manual workers and servants, so the fact that I'm not subjected to any (impactful) social hierarchy would blow her mind.

Report
Lifeisontheup2 · 29/09/2016 15:44

Good things-that I've developed a whole new career in my 40's/50's. My Mum was heading for retirement at my age and would certainly not have been able to think about retraining. They would also have been delighted and shocked in equal measure that I have a jokey irreverent relationship with doctors at work.

Bad things-they would have been horrified at the lack of personal responsibility for health/behaviour etc.

Report
Hirosleaftunnel · 29/09/2016 15:47

My Great grandma would be amazed by our social mobility! She was an English Romany gypsy who had an arranged marriage at 14 (but didn't have first baby until 18). Her life was about her 12 surviving kids, she had my grandad at 43! My DSis is a doctor and I haven't done too badly. It would be inconceivable to her that we can even read and write I think. Not to mention internet etc. Not sure she would approve of the welfare state or how Godless people are.

Report
turkeyboots · 29/09/2016 15:49

My great grannies were born in the 1880s so pretty much all mod cons would be amazing. My 93 yo granny still speaks of the difference her first washing machine made when there were no disposable nappies and she had 10 children.

But the biggest thing would be financial independence and birth control.

Report
ProfYaffle · 29/09/2016 15:55

Tons of stuff! My Great Grandparents were all born end of 19th/early 20th Century.

I think they'd be amazed that:

  • We own our own home.
  • I (a woman!) drive myself everywhere and not only that but my husband doesn't fear for the state of the car
  • I have a chest freezer and buy half a pig at a time. Meat was a massive luxury for them.

    I think all of the above would lead them to think that we're very well off indeed.
Report
meridithssister · 29/09/2016 16:00

I work with the elderly. Many are very concerned about not washing clothes until they are really dirty, saying ' this blouse will do another day' etc even with gravy stains down the front. I try to explain that we can have the same outfit washed, dried and ironed in about an hour and a half. Blows their minds Smile

Report
BlueKarou · 29/09/2016 16:09

I think my great-grandparents would be most amazed by my son. He was conceived via IVF and using donor sperm so has been created fully through modern medical techniques. In their day I'd have had no chance of becoming a mum on my own, whereas today I am lucky enough to be able to hold my 7 1/2 month old, and to have the freedom of deciding if/when I want to try for another.

I think the amount I've managed to do with my life without being married would probably be pretty surprising to someone born at the turn of the 19th/20th Century.

Report

Don’t want to miss threads like this?

Weekly

Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!

Log in to update your newsletter preferences.

You've subscribed!

HoldMeCloserTonyDanza · 29/09/2016 16:11

Free education for both genders and every creed and colour.

My marriage to DH would have been met with open hostility if not forbidden altogether.

Report
JammyDodger16 · 29/09/2016 16:14

My nan's jaw would drop at buying ready made sandwiches and coffee to take away! Convenient (although pricey) and is just not something they had access to

Report
barefootbird · 29/09/2016 16:21

Paternal Grandmother - modern breast cancer treatments and survival rates

Maternal Grandmother

  • independence and the ability to divorce even if you where a SAHP
  • my washing machine, by the time she died she had progressed to a twin tub, when my mother was small she had a wash tub and mangle

-a man in the house who changes nappies, cooks and does housework
Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.