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...

It's very well known that conditioner goes on the ends of your hair is it not?

I put it everywhere though.

I was born in 1959 and my parents (born in the early 30s) didn't have any of these odd ideas. I can hardly believe some of the strange things some parents thought. I don't live in the UK, maybe that makes a difference?

I was born in the early 1960s and my parents did hardly anything mentioned here. The ones I do relate to were a direct result of not having much money and living in a small house with one bathroom only, which I understood at the time.

They were also both quite happy to go along with an authoritarian view of the world - people in authority were to be obeyed, whether they were teachers, doctors, police, parents. That's perhaps a less prevalent way of thinking now, and my brother and I certainly don't adhere to it now! It was far from universal in their own generation too.

In my teens I used to think they were odd and we were an odd family, but looking back now I think that's a fairly normal teenage thing to think, and in comparison with many things mentioned here my parents did an OK job for the most part. My brother and I are still close to them now and fond of them, which I think tells its own story.

We were encouraged to do well at school, they were interested in what we were doing,, we chose our own O and A level subjects, they liked our friends, we had hobbies and could join clubs, etc etc. We took all this for granted at the time, but now I realise we were fortunate.

As with every generation, there will always be people who believe odd things and ignore evidence. It's not linked to being a specific age. Look at the prevalence of conspiracy theories now.

Agree about conditioner. My parents never had it or used it. Many women used to go to the hairdresser once a week to have a shampoo and ‘set’. They didn’t wash their own hair at all. My mother has never used it in her life .

Did anyone else have one family bath towel? Ours was shared by five of us through the week.

I was quite old when I realised most people wouldn't share.
I think a boyfriend asked if I had one for him and I pointed out mine that was hanging there - used 🤭

What will our kids be annoyed at us about though?

My mum wouldn’t let me use AI as she thought it was going to destroy the world. Insisted on doing everything from scratch and I was always falling behind.

I was forced to eat animal products as a child (yuck) because my parents believed you wouldn’t get all the nutrients you needed from a vegan diet and the only way to be healthy was to eat a tortured animal.

Everything came in plastic only to be thrown straight in the bin again. „Sustainable“ was just a massive con and unaffordable for families like „ours“. Absolutely no regard for the environment - if it was by one get one free didn’t matter about whether it was reusable. I remember the temu deliveries arriving and everyone getting excited about all the new plastic junk to clutter up the house.

Not saying I believe these things are right/wrong. Just that our kids are going to judge us in future for stuff too.

Yes we did this too.

Yep I'm an 80s child (born 85) and my mum wouldn't buy conditioner and I had long hair full of tangles 😖

What will our kids be annoyed at us about though?

Judging by Mumsnet posts as my own children are grown up:

Limiting screen time ('no-one else's parents do')
Not allowed a phone (ditto)
Putting a tracker on my phone
Not allowed to watch Peppa Pig
Not letting me play outside in the street OR making me play outside
Making me continue/ piano/violin/tennis lessons etc when I don't want to
Helicopter parenting
Having embarrassing arguments with teachers
Pushing me to have a part time job/ not allowing me to have a part time job
Interfering with employer of said job

These are just from my own memory of past threads but I'm sure an examination of the parenting board would supply all the answers.

My mum was bad for the glasses too. I was 13 when she finally relented and took me to the optician. I couldn’t see the board in Maths at school and the teacher told her at parents evening. She hadn’t listened to me but did the teacher! Needed glasses and I only realised then at 13 that you could see leaves on trees and they weren’t just a green blur. It was a revelation! She never believed you were ill or inured either, there had to be vomit or blood. My brother crawled around with a broken foot for a week before she took him to a&e.

@CallieQ

Come on... what kind of parents did you have?? Mine weren't anything like this you are making them out to be stupid

Have you not read the thread? There's about 20 pages of people with extremely similar experiences. (And many with similar and an extra dose of trauma). Turns out there's barely a thing I said that turned out to be particularly unique. Who knew. Perhaps you didn't read the thread, perhaps you aren't the same generation that experienced these ?socio-cultural ideas, perhaps you had a different experience...but surely you realise that your own experience isn't universal?

@110APiccadilly

I totally agree about the big glasses/see no frame rationale. From what I know of my parents most of their odd ideas came from some grain of truth or something that someone told them once. My mum could have easily been told this by an optician, decades before I needed glasses, and she will have held on to the advice as the absolute law forever after. Much, much later when I'd been an adult living away for decades, she visited wearing new glasses that were narrow height, wide metal rectangles. It was a total event, lots of talk about her small glasses after she'd stuck with the huge plastic ones for so long.

My parents didn't buy conditioner because they had never had it not because they thought it was harmful. I hadn't even heard of it until I left home. The things I had to do without were due to economy not ignorance.

Someone way back in the thread said people in the past were more worried about what other people thought. Have you ever read Mumsnet? There are loads of posts about subjects such as 'can I wear this over 40'. People are more concerned than ever due to social media.

This.. there was no social media to tell you how to use/apply care products. I had no idea if you put conditioner on wet or dry hair, putting something on to wash it out unless it was shampoo didn't make sense 😆 Remember hair mousse? No idea how to use it and no-one to ask.

I'm sure my kids in their 30s could add loads of wtf comments, as will their DC.

@ScreenPrinting yes, mid/late 70s (seems to be a common theme here).

The hair conditioner chat has raised horrible memories of have my poor scalp absolutely battered after a shampoo only hair wash.
My hair matted terribly in the end, my friends mother told me my mum should be sorting that out, and the shame I felt was terrible.
Oddly my mum did have very lovely pineapple bodyshop hair conditioner, even though she had very short hair.
I think it was cost based? For some reason now I still assume hair conditioner in the 90s was windy expensive?

No Deodorant ever, I didn't own any myself until I was perhaps 18? I remember my mum saying that she didn't sweat, and feeling triumphant when I saw sweat patches on a vest top once 😂

She also denied EVER cutting her toenails, and maintained that this was the truth to her death a few years ago.

I never got bought a bra 🤔 and had my sisters old m and s ones until i was about 16. I atarted buying my own.

Yes to pp of having a set weekly menu 😁Monday was always the worst (leftovers) and Thursday was the best (sausages).

It's interesting because I still struggle to buy myself things, I wear things into absolute rags and often feel that same embarrassment once I realise how scruffy I must look sometimes.
The one thing I never do without is beautifully soft hair 🥰

A quick google tells me conditioner for hair was invented in 1900 as Brilliantine. Then a product called "creme rinse" was popular in the 1950s/60s and were more like the conditioner we have now. My mum was born in the immediate post-war years, to a mother who had been born pre-WW1. There was not a lot of money sloshing about. Creme rinse would have been seen as an unnecessary luxury so growing up mum would have had her hair washed with whatever my granny used on her own hair, and no conditioner. And to be fair, when you have short hair as was fashionable with pixie cuts in the 60s, you don't need conditioner. My DH and sons don't ever use it.

"Listening to pop music before secondary school age. No, I don’t know why either."

Racy lyrics probably.

Was it pink, cos that sounds like Quick-Touch?

My mum used to put it on my hair, too.
I had long, curly hair that used to tangle up really quickly.

" My father in law was horrified when my kids didn’t wear slippers in the winter I case they ‘caught their death’."

I have to say that I think people should wear slippers when it's cold too! Not that you would die of it, but that you would...be cold. At least if you have hard floors.

Yes, absolutely. And it will be damning in different ways, I'd imagine. All this stuff about food and how bizarre to eat sit-down dinners on set days - well, I was born in the early 70s and virtually no child of my peer group was seriously overweight. So our parents were more clued up about what and when to eat.

And I don't want to derail the thread, but the fact that parents weren't swayed by ridiculous ideology seeded by the internet was a good thing. I was a tomboy and wore my brother's cast-offs and probably looked rather strange, but no-one was suggesting I was a boy. I feel thankful for that.

"Cabbage Patch dolls first came out I was desperate for one (the original OOAK dolls in the early 80's) but I was forbidden to have one because my mother 'had heard' that they were imported complete with the trapped souls of the Dead"

Sorry, but this is quite funny. Was she very superstitious in general?

Yes yes! It was quick touch! I can smell it now..
The combination of that and my mum's brute force and iron will had me tangle tamed every Sunday.

My f-i-l, bless him, told me recently that he didn't need hobbies or friends, because he has my m-i-l.

She has both, I should mention, so I'm not sure why he has that clingy attitude towards her.
She (quite rightly) likes time away from him and to pursue her own interests.

Oh dear, this is me now!

We live too far from town for a takeaway these days but we are very good cooks and in the days we could have picked one up, I wasn't impressed with the quality and a horrified at the price!

My parents were war babies but are all round lovely, supportive and kind and delighted for their DC's to have opportunities that weren't available to them. I feel so sad for so many people here who had painful childhoods.

They didn't have loads spare when we were young but one thing my DM always insisted on was properly fitting school shoes. Her feet were absolutely ruined by wearing winkle pickers as a teenager and my feet are lovely. I've done the same with my four DC's - despite some groaning by my elder DD - she'll thank me!

Due to concerns about sustainability and the cost of living crisis, its interesting how some things seem to be coming full circle.

Some things that irritated me as a teenager seemed understandable and now eco friendly once I had my own (quite large!) family eg taking a picnic to a theme park, rather than queuing for overpriced chips at a crowded cafe. Filling an empty squash bottle with diluted squash and bringing beakers rather than cartons of juice. Caravan/self catering holidays rather than hotels - still find hotels oppressive - would never choose a two week holiday in one expensive room!

Looking at old ciné footage I can see clothes handed back and forth between cousins, nowadays both my DD's love a Vinted or charity shop bargain!

My parents weren't mean at all but worked hard and lived within their average income at the time. Now they're very comfortable - and they're very generous.

I wonder what my DC's would say about me if they saw this thread!

"I look at my wedding photos with such sadness because I still hadn’t started tidying my eyebrows then and all I can are two massive caterpillars on my face!!"

I do the same with my school photos as I only dared to tweeze the bit in between. That had been my own decision though with no ban from parents. I did have a friend whose mum's eyebrows were too thin so maybe that's where it came from.