Actually, I really do mind mothers of adult children being portrayed as complete idiots

[springydaff]

So many threads that portray mothers of adult children as needing discipline to behave, as though they are complete moronic idiots.

Go to bed OP you're talking to yourself now

Well we can increase the chances by not fucking it up and abusing them.

How do we know we're not fucking up our kids?

We don't (even though we think we do!) . Just as it parents didn't know - for sure.

Pretty sure my mum knew when she ignored my sexual abuse that she was fucking it up. And the children who were burned with cigarettes, or kicked, or left alone while dad went to the pub and then came home and battered mum.

I've already said there may be things come out in 20 years to show "contemporary" mothers got it wrong. In which case they'd have a perfect right to moan on MN about that. They'd also have a right to moan if we behave like pricks when they're adults.

I don't abuse my children in the four ways we know are categorised as abuse - emotional, physical, sexual and neglect. Parenting and child safeguarding has hugely evolved from nothing to be child centric and, like it or not OP, people these days will fuck up less than when you were a "contemporary" mother.

In the meantime, stop worrying if MN user will be hated by their kids as adults, and stop taking it personally when they have a bona fide moan about their own mother. Not everything is about you you know

No, not everything is about me.

But I can have have an opinion, no?

I can recognise when things are out of wack. When severe cases, like yours, Glummy, dominate the narrative. I'm so very sorry you experienced all that awful abuse

The vast majority didn't experience those levels of horrendous abuse. Yet they judge the parents, harshly, for their failings that were common for the time. Unwitting but ignorant up to the knowledge we have now.

It's really not up to you OP to decide if people were abused is mistreated or not. It's up to them. Luckily not everyone experience extreme abuse like me but thy work experience and feelings are no less valid.

As for our own kids - well, time will tell if they think we mistreated them. It's the risk you take becoming a parent though - you may just be shit at it!

Either OP has some guilt she's trying to absolve, or she's too invested in other people's lives. This seems exactly like the kind of drunken ramble my own mother would go on when trying to justify why she was so shit.

Either way, you should probably clock off OP.

@springydaff ...Mum? Is that you?!

“Why do so many posters assume they were brought up by magic? That the tremendous sacrifices weren't afforded for them when they were children?”

My parents wanted to have kids, I don’t owe them special treatment if they’re being arsey.

Luckily mum is never arsey, but I once had to order my late father out of my flat because he was shouting - screaming really, he was an angry man - at me for his own bad mood and I don’t allow that under my roof. My roof, my rules. Which is pretty much how they brought me up...

If adults behave like toddlers, then they have to expect other adults to pull them on it, surely. Dad certainly learned to calm down after that.

Nobody is going to post about their mum being ok or great so it seems like there are a lot of "bad" mums.

I have been NC with my mum for several reasons

1. She's physically and emotionally abusive
2. She does not believe that a mother child relationship has to change as the child gets older. She does not recognise that I am an independent adult individual. She sees me as an extension of her so tries to control me if I don't toe her line.
3. she's narcissistic and has extremely vile opinions.

I know I've done the right thing going NC. My kids have never met her and are not fucked up because I stopped the cycle of abuse affecting the next generation.

I don't know how you can possibly defend crap mothering. I've seen at least 2 posts today where an adult is scared of their mum. Sometimes they need the support of their spouse to sort out an issue that should have been dealt with years ago because the mother has blinded them to reality.

But she loved me, despite her faults.

Sometimes love isn't healthy or good for you. For example you might love an addict but as an adult you need to protect your kids, spouse and more importantly yourself from being in the firing line.

Look springy you've done therapy and clearly reached the conclusion that it's better for YOU to let things go, put them in context and forgive. That's fine if that works for you.

Other people need boundaries, or to be low contact, or no contact. Or they just are still angry. They are as entitled to their process and their conclusion and you are to yours.

FWIW I've done similar with my mum. But along the way I did treat her like a toddler at points because I needed my boundaries. And that's OK. Also, I'm happy to acknowledge that I'm an imperfect parent but she struggles to. It's that way round.

It is your choice to forgive your mum, see her flaws as imperfections you can forgive but that is not for you to decide is the way for everyone. To me, it screams needing validation for your choices with your mum to insist one size fits all like that. And if your dc are upset on something they believe you've done, perhaps listen to them rather then use imperfections as an excuse.

Being a mum doesn't make you infallible or above reproach. Doing ones best sometimes isn't good enough. That's not for you to decide for anyone including your own dc.

When i had my babys i got a new appreciation for things my mum had 'done wrong' to fuck us up and i know my mum did do her best, and I'm sure I'll fuck up my dc somehow too. I just hope it's a minor fuck up due to flaws not an awful one due to my flaws and attitude. If it is the latter then I'll need to accept they feel that way (even if i didn't agree), to listen to my dc and try to make things work. Any less and I'll really be a pretty shit mum.

Nelly “ Nobody is going to post about their mum being ok or great so it seems like there are a lot of "bad" mums.“

Yes, just like no one posts about good friends or good partners. No one would read “I had a lovely time with my lovely friend”.

Some people's best is not good enough.

We all know the tremendous sacrifices that go with bringing up children. How hard it is, and can be.

Having children isn't compulsory. Children don't get to choose whether or not to be brought into the world. My parents were good (not perfect) and so am I, but I have frequently been saddened, horrified and angry when reading the stories of MNers who had terrible parents (some of whom may have been 'doing their best'). And some of those MNers' parents are still making their lives a misery decades later. Being cut off is what they deserve, and their adult children deserve peace and the freedom to live their own lives.

“ Having children isn't compulsory.“

1000 x times this.

I will speak to my mother like a child if she acts like one. I am doing my best to protect her whilst she wants to pop to Asda, Morrison’s, the post office etc. She doesn’t watch the news so had no idea what is happening and acts like a child!

Likethebattle ironically, I can’t defend that. If your mum goes to the shops, she knows what’s going on, she can’t just think social distancing cane from nowhere?

So if it’s her informed choice to go, that’s an adult informed choice.

Some people's best is not good enough.

Absolutely. Anyone who has any involvement with looked after children will be aware of just how inadequate some parents' 'best' can be. And those birth parents generally love their children, but that love does not necessarily translate into adequate parenting, even with a pretty low bar.

My parents genuinely did their best, but as two socially-isolated, functionally illiterate people taken out of school at twelve by indigent widowed parents, and who were themselves completely inadequately parented, they had absolutely no idea that there was more to having children than providing (barely adequate) food and clothing. They couldn't cope at all, but it never seems to have occurred to them to limit the size of their family, rather than keep having more children they couldn't afford in an already overcrowded slum house full of elderly extended family members. They'd dealt with no indoor plumbing, cold, overcrowdedness and poverty when they were young, and they thought it was normal life.

To this day, they have no idea they were inadequate parents. They think I am risking 'getting above myself' because I go and talk to DS's teacher if there's a difficulty at school and take him to the library or to the theatre. These are 'posh things'.

I know what you mean op. I can understand the lack of respect for parents if they were abusive or neglectful, but not for going to the shops too often at the moment. I think my dad isn't taking it seriously enough, but he's still my dad, he's an adult making his own decisions and I have no authority over him.

Please look at what I've written.

I am not saying there aren't awful parents (who could be us btw..), even those doing their best. Of course.

Of course there are abusive parents - I should know. My parents were abusive by default. We could be too.

I don't think I have forgiven my mum so much as accepted the whole sorry mess. That's the hand I was dealt.

I don't think I have the right to chide her like a naughty child, to scorn her and scold her as though she is an idiot. I don't have the right to sharply reprimand her like she is subhuman, a simpleton.

As MN is so quick to point out, she wouldn't take it from a stranger in the street, she shouldn't take it from me.

Many on here are positively authoritarian with their mothers - a trait we would be very quick to condemn if our parents were like it to us.

Have a bit of respect and common decency. It's not our place to whip our mothers.

If you went to therapy because you were struggling with the relationship with your parents and you ‘forgave’ them as a result, but feel anger now that other people don’t do the same, I’m wondering if the therapy you underwent wasn’t really in your best interests.

Thank you Ethel and Sara 🌹

The difference is your mother probably doesn't try and control a stranger in the street or push her opinions on them or tell them they could do better. In which case it would be acceptable to chide her - much like grown up children can chide their parents when they're being arseholes

I’m sorry, I cross posted. I see you have accepted the past and moved on, but incorporated her into your life. As you say, that’s different.

I think a lot of people (usually women) think they can get away with ‘calling out’ their mothers or mothers in law for relatively minor things. Things they would never dream to call out their fathers / father-in-law for.