Things your parents didn't believe in

[Aspergallus]

Inspired by the Timotei thread where someone mentioned that their mum didn't believe in hair conditioner, I realised there is actually quite a long list of things my parents didn't believe in that still leave me, at nearly 50 with DC of my own, feeling like I'm being ridiculously extra for doing every day things:

Hair conditioner as above -deemed totally unnecessary, not a real thing, and drain blocking by my parents. I had long, dry curly hair...

Vitamins -I bought my own as a teen as I thought it might help with acne. They behaved like I was shooting up H.

Make up. My mum believed that all make up (but particularly foundation) was the cause of all skin aging and would tell me (when I was wearing it to hide teenage acne) that once I was 40 I would look older than her as a result.

Tampons. Apparently if you used tampons, you'd have to go for a D&C every year or so due to "build up".

Deodorant. Not necessary if you washed apparently. They considered it something dirty people used in lieu of washing.

Sunglasses, especially when driving. Could make you go blind. Like the reading in the dark old wives tale. As a result my mum spend many a summer gardening with no eye protection and got early cataracts. Yet she still looks at me suspiciously, like I might crash, if I put them on to drive on a sunny day.

Contact lenses -seriously dangerous in their view.

Sun block -they were of that generation that used baby oil and encouraged me to do the same because I was so pale and unhealthy.

Changing job -you got one job and stuck with it or your CV would be ruined forever. And they took this literally, expecting me to stick with chambermaiding as a 17 year old. When I was in a professional role and given rotating training -shifting every 6 months, they were horrified. I'd never work again etc.

Hobbies including sport. They simply did not believe in hobbies or interests unless you were going to make it your whole life's devotion, career or it was going to take you to the Olympics. The idea that you might try something out, and not stick with it was outrageous.

I think my parents might have been particularly odd. There are other examples I can't bring myself to say out loud.

Please tell me other people have similar tales of things their parents didn't believe in...

oh this makes me laugh too. My hair is the dullest shade of mid brown. I have thrown various things in over it for years, now, I almost believe that my hair is this glossy chestnut shade but my mother always warned me that once I started I wouldn't be able to stop. What?! it's not crack. I can leave it 13 weeks, 15 sometimes. I always go back for a re-do because I want to, not because I'm jonesing for a tint

My DF still feels that eating in the street, (unless actual ice cream cones at the seaside) is very poor form. DM ignored him, as do we. In a functional family these little foibles are fine.

My parents didn’t believe in:
wasting money on having a nice house - my father thought investment in property was a waste of money our house was not a place of beauty.
Eating ‘foreign muck’ - plain English food for us
NOT wearing make up - my mother thought all girls of 14 plus should be fully made up when they went out. I must say I have great skin as a result as it protected me from the sun.
Ballet lessons - they believed it would give me muscley legs and forbade it.

Any idea where this stems from though?

New clothes. Everything I had came from
charity shops, even my hideous prom
dress, because it was the only one in the shop that fitted me. Unless they came from the clothes recycling bins she made me climb inside, or the clothes she found on the side of the road that she’d take home and wash then make me wear. All while she was spending a fortune on smoking 40 a day. I’m still angry about it. I make a point of buying the clothes I need now and even have the audacity to buy new underwear before the elastic goes.

Dishwashers

My parents have a dishwasher but never ever use it. They actively seem to dislike it so I don't know why they got it fitted. They used to make me and my brother help with the washing up as teenagers and when I asked why we couldn't use the dishwasher they would look like id asked if we could do something illegal.
They got a new kitchen a few years ago and put a dishwasher in that is used to store cleaning products like the cupboard under the sink in most peoples homes. They are otherwise totally normal so this always baffles me 😂

To be fair, it is horrible to see people eating in the street.

@woodhill I googled to see if I could find out some unknown etiquette about eating in public. First hit is a mumsnet thread discussing it!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/food_and_recipes/836392-WHY-is-it-considered-rude-to-eat-in-the-street

We weren't either, my parents didn't actually say anything it was just never done and now I don't do it.

Yep, some people think all this is an age/era thing and it often isn’t, some people are just bad parents. You only have to look at the awful reports of neglect and worse that we see now, where the parents are young, and some of it is rooted in apparent “beliefs” held by the parents. Being born this century doesn’t mean someone won’t be a terrible parents or believe things that are untrue.

Thanks . To be honest I would like to agree the assault traumatised me but I don't know. I already was terrified of men, was very shy, couldn't make eye contact, had terrible night terrors and other things simply from the discipline at home we had. Also self harming from a child and I would lie to get myself into trouble or out of it. I was very self destructive . I would set up situations where I would get myself hurt. I believed I deserved it I guess . I was terrified of my dad, I know that much. I believe something happened there but my memory won't allow me to process it . I did see him torture my sibling though . I hated when that happened. it didn't happen daily but the fear of it was often there. I didn't feel safe often.

I told a huge lie when I was a kid that got me into trouble. When my dad was angry he often would say things to me like "if you don't calm down in going to stick my fingers up your butt." I didn't realise he didn't mean it seriously . I was afraid of him because once when my mum left me alone he said he was going to drown me and I believed him ? So apparently I went round saying to my teacher that my dad touched my butt, which he never did, but I guess in my mind I thought it was going to happen, as I wasn't a stable child and tended to imagine things worse than they are. So obviously I was called in for a medical exam with police and social services they didn't find anything conclusive, a few scratch marks which were probably self inflict ed. I hurt myself a lot, I had eczema and often scratched myself to pieces, until I bled. And of course the social worker and my mum had a go at me for telling stories . So ever since I was 5 I was branded a liar. They made me see a psychiatrist who said I was a mostly happy child with obviously loving parents. I don't know how she got that impression. I mean I don't have memories of this except i was told this by my parents years later. I wanted to know why I had been such a dramatic neurotic little girl. I think that was when theories started. I have been told by more than one psychiatrist as an adult that I am dissociative and I do have a lot of memory blackouts.

I grew up in a place where the threat of being killed was a thing, as well as violence , weapons were used against the women and children, so I don't know what normal is. I never was like other children . my sister doesn't have a PD, but she is a bit ADHD and had suicidal depression since her teens. She holds down a job. My granddad was very sexual with me but I don't remember any of it. Only found out because another girl was there who witnessed it . But I know the violence didn't happen every day so it can't have had that much of an effect of me. And yet. When my therapist who I was seeing for BPD told me I also fit the criteria for CPTSD,.it somehow made sense. She told me that religion is a form of abuse in its own way.

Thanks

Yes I still wouldn't want to walk along eating.

Sweets are fine

My parents are and were lovely, completely adore them, but as immigrants they were still adjusting and definitely had some batshit ideas. Mainly it was not being able to do certain things that upset them.

Tampons - allowed, I think introduced to or made accessible to my mother in this country and she was a fan but she had taken the fear of TSS to heart. Often asked loudly and publicly about if I was wearing a tampon and how long it had been in. Including when arriving home from a night out at about 5am. She was furious as she hadn't been able to sleep from worrying about if I had changed my tampon and for probably the 100th time suggested staying indoors during my period!

Not being allowed to wear jewellery to school was a travesty. If baby me had not been bedecked in gold since birth then people with think we are poor, déclassé barbarians of the lowest order. I was always allowed piercings, which mum did at home with special needle. She hit the roof when school wanted them out. On the contrary tattoos were banned, brother had a 1cm tattoo on his back that can still bring my Dad to tears.

Germolene is the panacea to all medical problems. Often complain it isn't edible.

Not beginning all recipes with at least 3 onions. I must have reeked as a child.

Duvets, Deodorant and weirdly Anoraks were all sources of cancer as they stopped your body from 'breathing'. This combined with an obsession about fresh air.

Mince/Burgers/Sausages etc. Although I sort of agree. Lots of eyeballs and arsehole type comments. Had my first burger at 36, was livid with them!

Peanut butter was not to be trusted. Peanuts cannot be milked therefore this was some kind of scam food created by those with nefarious intentions.

My school friend wasn't allowed a fringe as her parents thought it would encourage forehead spots. She was always so sad about this. 😥

@AMessageToYouRuby hilarious. Peanut butter as a scam; I love that one :-)

She also doesn’t believe in women working after children. She banged on my entire childhood about how selfish my dads female relative was because she dared to have 3 children and go back to work (to pay for them)
She effectively retired at 30 and never worked again. Doesn’t approve of my and my sibling working even though neither of us could afford to bring our children up if we didn’t

What happened when you were sick? Because I would have been terrified of the consequences

Not me, but my DH's parents believed that music gigs were dens of drug and sex fuelled orgies that would eternally corrupt any youngster that attended one. As a result he didn't go to one until he was seventeen. Meanwhile (he's only nine months older than me) my liberal and neglectful parents happily waved me off into gigs on my own from the age of thirteen. Cheers, Mum. 😁

I was born in the 50s. My parents didn't believe in deodorant and I never used hair conditioner until I left home.

My Dad didn't believe in central hearing because he thought it made you 'soft'. They did get it put in when I was 17 although they didn't put a radiator in the bathroom so that was still freezing. Mind you my dad didn't have an indoor water supply until he was 15 just a tap in the yard.

They very much did believe in education snd bettering yourself. I was the first person in my family to go to university .

We were rarely allowed to roll the windows down in the car. I did anyway sometimes on Sunday drives down country roads but generally we were not allowed. Also weren’t allowed to open windows in the house for fresh air. So anytime I can I open windows I do and my son knows he can open his car window anytime. My husband doesn’t like for me to open any windows in the hour or car either 😦 Baffling.

My son has had to deal with not having a microwave most of the time. We left ours in the old house and I don’t see any reason to have one. So that’s my idiosyncrasy.

Also when I was growing up, the house would either be very very cold or very hot. In the winter waking up to get ready for school I remember hurrying to the living room to stand in front of the fireplace so the backs of my legs would get warm. We had radiators too via a coal furnace but only those hotspots would be warm, a vast cold chill enveloped the house always. Then summers were unbearable. My go to after coming in from playing outside was to run into the kitchen and stick my head into the freezer compartment (top of refrigerator) to cool off. Because it was the only cool spot in the house. Our basement was dank and cool but I didn’t want to linger down there. No attempt to have fans or decently working heat and air, it wasn’t a matter of finances.

Also, no one was interested in us kids as far as our grades, homework, nothing. ‘That’s the teacher’s job.’ Didn’t believe in guiding or helping us. I had to sign my own report cards with one of my parents’ names because no one was bothered to look at them. Had to write my own excuse notes when I was sick.

To be fair to your mum, she's not entirely wrong about any of these 🙈

My parents were weird about exercise like others have mentioned. I grew up in the 70s and have vivid memories of being in the car and every time we drove past someone running / jogging both of them would go on and on about how ridiculous they looked and what is the bloody point of jogging along a road and breathing in all the fumes, absolutely no point at all as it's not doing you any good. When I took up running in my 20s I didn't dare tell them for years.

Clothes all made and approved of by my mother, not remotely fashionable, whilst she however was the height of fashion.
Baths on Sunday, strip wash during the week; I was captain of the hockey team, table tennis team, swimming team and on the netball team. But deodorant gave you cancer and hot baths were not good for my psoriasis!

Drinking water - my DF was convinced until fairly recently that there is no need to drink any water and that the recommendations are overhyped. Unsure what finally swayed him!

Mental health issues - my parents seem to think that talking about issues makes them worse. I recently had a fairly traumatic birth and after asking about some of the details my DF said: "You know, there's a school of thought that reliving things doesn't make them better - probably best to put it behind you now".

I suspect a lot of the worries about tampons stemmed from toxic shock syndrome, I don't know when tampons became widespread but I guess most of Mums (those born before 1950s) would have been used to sanitary belts and huge towels.