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...

Omg so many!
Microwaves - dangerous
Nail polish - hides dirt under your nails
Suncream - you won't tan otherwise
Recycling - all a con

I was born late 1950s and I promise you I have absolutely no propensity to gaslighting other people! My parents were children/teenagers during WW2. One of them was very much a gaslighter and rewriter of family history. It made me very determined not to do that to my own children. I learned from my parents how NOT to be a parent.
Yes, both WW2 and the Cold War had an effect on people who lived through those times. But it’s no excuse for anyone to mistreat their kids or lie to them. If anything it should make people want better for their children.

Lol at crimpolene

I did have some from M&S but could have jeans and cords

DM was quite stingy though with buying me stuff

My mum doesn't believe in doctors (just sharks in it for the money), especially what they tell you (smoking doesn't harm you).

She doesn't believe in statistics (they're all made up, especially race based statistics).

She doesn't believe in mental health (they all need a good kick up the backside).

This is now.

As a child she advocated sunbathing in olive oil and using vasoline as moisturiser. I had acne! Vinegar and lemon juice to dye hair.

My PIL don't believe in dentists or any advice nurses or midwives give you.

Raising my daughter is tough now!

Sunscreen
Dinner without potatoes
Feminism
Tampons
Music from after 1963
Buying clothes and vegetables - all hand made or home grown instead
Dishwashers
Basically they didn't believe it was no longer the 1940s

Oh man. So many responses since I popped out to the shops. This is cathartic. Hope not too traumatic for those of us still coming to terms with shit childhoods.

@thaegumathteth
Yes, my parents also believed (and still believe) that everything is a competition. I have no idea how they managed to have any real friends. They treated other adults around them like acquaintances who'd agreed to engage in unspoken competition. It was absolutely toxic and really affected my friendships by proxy. Any friendship I made, my mum would be in my ear "she thinks she's prettier/thinner/got better clothes", my dad "her family think they're better than us/got a better car". I had such odd ideas about friendship until I was an adult, and utterly paranoid that everyone was in this competition, scrutinising everything you wore, how you looked etc. What a revelation when I realised that this is not indeed everyone.

@StopStartStop but I can actually see my split ends. A hair that has gone dry and split into two. And the split progresses giving me dry bushy ends, if I don't get regular trims. I mean, I can see it with my own eyes so it's mind boggling to me that someone wouldn't believe it! Whether conditioner prevents this, I don't really know, but it certainly makes my hair easier to dry smooth and style.

bras
So many people have mentioned bras. Yes I remember weird ideas about these two. I was a D cup by the time I was about 13 yet I never got measured or got my own bras. Teenage girls didn't need their own bras until they were grown women who could buy their own apparently. I got her hand me downs. Not even a sports bra for PE. It was awful, now that I think about it.

shaving
Yep, wasn't allowed to shave my legs until they deemed it necessary. I have classic celtic dark hair on white skin. Nightmare. I was offered those sandpaper things you could rub on your legs when I got really insistent.

We were ok with microwaves, largely because my mum doesn't cook. She didn't like to cook any actual real food because of food smells. No meat etc. So everything we ate was some form of heated up freezer food/ready meal.

Shoes that were placed at arbitrary times -a new school year for example. Rather than when they were worn out or outgrown. I remember a term of walking to school with a flapping sole.

@snowballsinhell One of the first things my mum says to me when we have infrequent contact: "do you still have your cleaner?" It's clearly an important issue, but I haven't bothered to explore why!

painkillers
I have no recollection of ever being offered any kind of analgesia as a kid. Which seems incredible. There have been times in my parenting life I've wondered if my DC have had more calpol than food.

@Seeleyboo I was told the same about pants and socks in bed. I still worry about rotting!

@FatCatatPaddingtonStation children and decent clothes. Yes, yes, yes. Because we were children, not adults, we got the super cheapo stuff from "What Every Woman Wants" etc while my mum lorded it about in her M&S, Laura Ashley and Country Collection clothes. It was often quite humilating. Similar approach to food. Cheap rubbish for the kids, better quality for the adults. They believed this was the order of things without question.

@sadsack78 the exercise thing is so weird. I have been trying to understand the generational approach to this. Height of vanity as you say "oooh, so and so's out running who does she think she is" etc. My MIL (similar age to my parents) will also say things like "are you still cycling?" "are you doing your exercise" in a weird sort of mocking tone like I think I'm the Queen of Sheba or something...what is that about?

@PyongyangKipperbang Embarrassment amnesia. Perfect description. I am utterly gaslit if I ever mention any of this stuff to my parents. Didn't happen, I imagined it...

@FictionalCharacter don't worry I've been a happy tampon user since I left home at 19. And that particularly bit of madness came from my dad, not my mum, based on his own weird logic. And yes, it is extra creepy that it was a man telling me this, not a woman.

women being able to do any DIY

this was so ingrained that even after I'd learned to safely wire a plug in physics, both my parents refused to accept that 1) I could do this 2) that the lesson had actually occurred.

@TheCyclingGorilla long hair over 40! Yes my mum asked me the very question -what are you going to do with your hair now you are 40!

So many of you: believing children Yes, it always assumed that children told stories and most of what we said (or remember) is pure fantasy.

Another big related issue is:

That children can say no to hugs or kisses from adults without being considered bad manner or impolite God, how many times I died inside as I was forced to give a creepy neighbour that they didn't even like as adults a kiss or a hug. Bleurgh. I am so sorry for those of us who experienced much much worse.

Saying about careers: my mum thought I should be a nurse not a writer because nursing was an honourable profession and writing was a hide to nowhere. When I crashed and burned at nursing school, I went back to the idea of doing journalism/history at uni but again my mum said it's not a good choice you'll end up penniless blah blah.

So I worked in a shop.

Then got a job on London Underground, where I've been ever since.

My daughter is interested in history/photography/English Literature and my mum couldn't be more supportive. Same with my niece, who is training to be a musical actor. Why couldn't I be a musical actor?? Because I don't have any talent. But not the point.

For us it was because they were secular humanism and not bible based so therefore evil! 😀

I bought both my dds epilators as I don't think shaving is as effective

Immunisations,seriously!

A locum told my Mum he'd never had his children immunised and his kids were fine,well I fucking wasn't!

I had whooping cough when I was 3 and nearly died, I've had measles and I've had mumps and the whooping cough screwed my lungs over.

They also didn't believe in listening to your child ever! Because I didn't feel I could tell them anything I was sexually abused by someone else for years.

They were also big believers in sweeping everything under the rug with that in mind I was anorexic for 9 years and got no help and when I got married at 18 and he started raping me I told my Mum he was abusive and I was told I'd made by bed(they wanted me to marry him)so I'd have to lie in it.

They also believed in there being no choice for lunch, breakfast or dinner and fresh fruit was treated like a luxury.

You can't speak ill of the dead, yes dm, stepfather was an abusive twat to me when he was alive, he didn't suddenly become a saint when he died.

My father:

'women's lib' as he called feminism
deodorant
bathing more than twice a week
reading fiction or indeed reading anything but the driest of non-fiction
opinions other than his own, in particular the right of women to have them

My mother:

doing anything that might rock the boat and upset my father. He was emotionally abusive yet she considered that she had a happy marriage

choc my dm was just the same, didn't want to accept the all too horrible truth and constantly denied anything was wrong with him.

It should make them do better. I like to think the culture around how we treat children is better now. I guess for me I feel I have to consider they had a reason for being the way they were. Not an excuse but a reason . Else it means they were just evil people and wanting to cause pain, knowing what they thinking were doing and thinking that way feels scary.

Stopping at the services on a motorway. It didn’t matter how long we’d been driving, how much we needed the loo, or how hungry/thirsty we were. Stopping at the services was a waste of time and money and would not even be considered.

I stop every time now. Let my kids get whatever they want even if we’ve only been travelling for half an hour. And I see it at a massive treat!

Op are you my sister? 😄
Add pain killers. The only thing in our medicine box was plasters, bandages and Vicks vapour rub.

And anything to do with schooling- official school jumper, art supplies, the right colour shoes etc.

@ChocolateCinderToffee your parents sound just like mine. My mother claims that she wasn't abused. And she was happy. My limbic system and the CPTSD from growing up there tells me different !

@Ohdofuckofdear that "you've made your bed" mentality. I definitely grew up with the sense that any mistake I made was final and irredeemable. If I made the wrong choice of partner, or got pregnant young, wrong job...literally anything...that I would have made my own bed and I'd be on my own to suffer the consequences. It did not feel like any kind of idle threat and I think it just had the result of instilling in us (me and DSis) that we were on our own, from a young age, and both of us went off quite independently, around 18/19, rarely to return to them or rely on them for anything really.

Ooh this is quite a nasty thread !

My mother did not like me bringing a friend into the house. She would be rude and quite frightening to any child who 'called for me'.
If we were out and passed a friend of mine in the street she would ignore them.
She did not believe in me having friends and discouraged it.
She would not allow any 'foreign food'. My father once brought a red pepper home and asked her to stuff it with mince and bake it. She was furious and went on and on about it to all of us so we joined in with 'the hate 'on the pepper.
She did not believe in tinned tomatoes. It was not proper food
My mother did not allow any food other than an ice cream to be eaten in the street.
We were also not allowed to make butties with chips. It all had to be eaten on the plate with a knife and fork.
She certainly did not believe in gentle parenting. I was regularly beaten with a clothes brush - it was shaped like a paddle - and left marks on my legs and bottom.
Later she said it never did me any harm. Well it did.

"Buying rounds. They were obsessed with it being very expensive and frequently warned me against doing it"

I kind of agree with this if there are more than 4 people.

Even before I got to the most awful part of your post I was thinking - this sounds way more than a family with some daft ideas. I’m sorry it was so hard for you. You deserved so much more. I just wanted to acknowledge your post. To let you know you’ve been heard.

@Clingfilm I might well be your sister because I certainly never had any of the proper stuff for school either!

@JanieEyre , mine's a Luddite too.

Even if you needed the loo? So you had to hold it in all the way home? What happened if you couldn't , did you have to go behind a tree or something ?? That's bizarre. Sorry, not badmouthing your parents I just can't get my head round that one.

I was allowed to stop at services but not too often so I was ok as long as I drank very little in long car journeys I would get a dry mouth and a headache but dreaded the consequences of having to ask to stop too many times or Even worse having an accident . Depending on my dad's mood, the consequences could be very scary indeed

@honeybonbon My apologies if this thread has been triggering for you, or anyone else. I didn't expect it to take some of the dark turns it has.