to think the goalposts have moved and want to opt out?

[massivenamechange]

It's father's day in the southern hemisphere.

All my childhood I would be scorned by my parents for taking part in a capitalist load of rubbish if I made them mother's day or father's day cards. I learnt to chuck out the card made at school on the way home, since my parents didn't like it.

After living away for 5 years post university, I suddenly found myself being criticised for being a shit child because i didn't do things for mother's or father's day, during the speeches at my sister's wedding.

After living away for 5 more years I am now being openly criticised by email by my sister, my sister's husband, and my parents, for not taking part in what is now a multiple meals out, family picnic, big-present-giving affair. Quite apart from not particularly feeling like joining in, I don't have the money to be buying large expensive presents for people.

Is this really awful of me or does it seem faintly reasonable to just opt out?

I did say happy father's day to my father by email.

I mean "used to do".

sharra - thanks.

I do send them stuff/ phone them for birthdays and christmas (indeed i phone them once a week); it's just totally mismatched with their expectations, which seem to mushroom further every year.

It's a kind of more presents = more love = more happy family = more blotting out that nasty world full of miserable people.... to some degree that's nice and how things should be, but it's really out of hand here I think.

I shall just keep going the way things currently are - modest presents at birthdays and christmas, email or phonecalls at other times. It's not like they really go over the top with me anyway - given how often they forget my birthday (though undoubtedly some of that is passive aggression because they think I'm not doing enough for their birthdays etc) Will think about explaining it to them. But they might find that too confronting.

Major solution to it all = more work and more coffee here.

Cumfy - I can't ever remember my sister paying any of it any attention as a child. Maybe she did - I wouldn't know, she hated me and I learned to avoid her pretty much all the time.

I also don't know at what point it turned around to being somethign to celebrate - some time before her wedding, clearly.

It's now 5-6 expensive presents each for the fathers or mothers (one or two from each person), breakfast out, picnic lunch, dinner out.

But Massive, more presents only equals the illusion of more love. And in getting upset over what you do or don't do and in making you upset (or trying to) they sound terribly unhappy. Clearly their tactics of creating a happy happy world aren't working, because they believe things should be different from how they are.

Nobody ever got happy by trying to make somebody else change.

spiritmum I expressed that badly - I agree with you on that. They are unhappy for many reasons that have to do with the world not matching their expectations.

Well, you have to remember that you are not responsible for their happiness. That is solely their responsbility, not yours.

Do you think that perhaps your sister's dh's family are more into the cards/presents thing than yours used to be and she is trying to get your side of the family to emulate his?

I would just email back and remind them that fathers day is on a different date here so hard to remember, no cards in shops, etc. You could send an e-card if you wanted to appease them a bit?

But tbh they sound very odd and not worth engaging with.

If they want more contact they should phone you more often. But the time difference defeats a lot if people...

Maybe if they "forget" your next birthday you should consider saying to them that perhaps you should all stick to just exchanging cards from now on as postage is expensive, etc

'They are unhappy for many reasons that have to do with the world not matching their expectations.'

I know what you mean here - but this does rather suggest that the moving goalposts you refer to are going to carry on moving. There's no point you trying to fall in with what they claim to want now. They're using expectations of you as a patch for their wider disappointed expectations - you're easier to nag/rant at that the the world.

she hated me and I learned to avoid her pretty much all the time

Do you know why she hated/hates you ?

Sounds very sad.

cumfy- extreme levels of sibling rivalry, born of insecurity, but allowed to continue unchecked until it had got uncontrollable and grotesque. Parents didn't see it as something to be managed - they to some degree encouraged it by confusing it with healthy competitiveness or "acceptable" people bitching behind others' backs.

I don't think she hates me actively now, but she still does all the present-counting type stuff..

Erm why is it a capitalist affair.

I never forget mother or fathers day but I tend just to give them a quick call to say 'I've just remembered your my lovely father/mother ' not particularly 'capitalist'.

I tend to do what my mum and dad like re mothers' and fathers' day.

They like to get a card and a phone call so I do it.

My friend's mum and dad have always scorned the commercialism of it so they expect nothing. My friend also now expects nothing of her own children.

So, I'd do what your mum and dad would like.

giveitago: my parents are unreconstructed 1970s pinko socialist hippies -turned into baby boomer smugarses - with all the blinkered and polarised viewpoints that that implies. It took me until university to actually take seriously the idea that other people would believe in such laughable things as religion, capitalism, not putting your political/social views before your moral compass/ views on family, etc. I haven't turned into David Cameron myself by any means, but I spend a fair bit of time trying to work out how to behave within a moral code that I believe in... it is probably a lot more conservative than their point of view (if not necessarily than how they actually behave).

Pointydog. I agree with the general principle here of saying thanks for being my parents. But my parents seem to be escalating it so far beyond my means, that I can't do anything they would find acceptable.
And I object to the escalation since it is extremely one-sided and I don't think it's necessary anyway.

Well massive, politicising your parents' parenting is one thing but you say there are other issues.

So don't bother with them then.

My parents are naturally chilled and alternative. But that's got zero to do with them not expecting me to adhere to mums day dads day etc. But I do as I like them and I'm appreciative of what they've done - and they certainly were not perfect.

It's one day - either do something or don't. Perhaps in the southern hemisphere it's a very important day?

i think the entwinedness of their political points of view with their entire lives is actually part of the difficulty. The thread running through all this is them dogmatically, shriekily demanding that everyone else hold the same view as them on everything. It perhaps made sense in the context of political engagement in objecting to Vietnam. But they don't differentiate between that and their point of view on anything else.

In the southern hemisphere it's no more important than it is here.

Chilled and alternative sounds lovely. :) Good for you, and good for your parents.