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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To find people reminiscing about their hard childhoods somehow repellent?

97 replies

NeoMaxiZoomDweebie · 18/08/2013 23:42

I know my thread title makes me seem horrible but bear with me please.

I had a particularly poor childhood but in a very loving, stable home...but sometimes we were extremely poor...fine...that;s how it was and I don't remember minding too much because we all had such fun etc. My Mum also had a very hard childhood and not such a loving one as I did. But again...she's come to terms with it all...she's wonderfully balanced and loving etc.

MIL however LOVES talking about her poor childhood. She's the same age as my Mum and she gives anecdotes about things which happened or things she went through which actually aren't THAT bad...things like her Mum having to hand sew all the kid's knickers because they couldn't afford to buy any....nothing shocking and not half as ingenious as some of the things my parents made through necessity...and I grew up in the 70s when this kind of thing wasn't even that common,

She tells these stories with a sort of tragic expression on her face...and she's expectant of sympathy or shock...and I can't give it...no more than I could tell her some of my experiences as A they're too private and B it would appear that I am competing for "poorness"

Right. That's off my chest. I feel better already. Fire away! AIBU to not respond much at all during these long, self indulgent diatribes about her childhood and NOT to go "Aaaaah...." at the end?

OP posts:
Onesleeptillwembley · 18/08/2013 23:44

When I were a lad.....

Waffling · 18/08/2013 23:45

You need to say "gosh that sounds lovely, do you still have the pattern?".

elQuintoConyo · 18/08/2013 23:47

Yanbu when it's all about oneupmanship - or should that be 'onedownmanship'?
Send her a youtube link of the Monty Python sketch: "we used to get up three hours before we went to bed... cardboard box in't middle of the road... one teabag for the entire street..." etc. (Can't link, I'm on my phone).

OnTheBottomWithAWomensWeekly · 18/08/2013 23:48

Right....so only people with happy, welloff childhoods are allowed to reminisce? Youre right, it does make you sound a bit horrible.

CorrineFoxworth · 18/08/2013 23:49

Is she is fan of misery-lit? She should crack on and write a hand-made-knicker-inspired best-seller. I can't think of a title at the moment but I'm sure someone here could.

Onesleeptillwembley · 18/08/2013 23:51

'Gussets in the gutter' corinne. Gosh, I'm wasted on here...

Original poster
NeoMaxiZoomDweebie · 18/08/2013 23:51

Bottom it's not the reminiscing but the expecting sympathy for a childhood which was pretty idyllic. I tell tales of nice times...I think that's something which came of treasuring the nice times.

OP posts:
Original poster
NeoMaxiZoomDweebie · 18/08/2013 23:52

OneSlept and Corrinne Grin

Broken Dreams and Patched Panties

OP posts:
iklboo · 18/08/2013 23:56

Knickerless Nickleby

OnTheBottomWithAWomensWeekly · 18/08/2013 23:56

Thats your take on it. Its her story to feel differently about.

BOF · 18/08/2013 23:57

Competitive poverty is irritating. I have every sympathy for posters who have suffered abuse though, and I think they should be able to offload here.

timidviper · 18/08/2013 23:58

I thought of that Monty Python sketch too!

I think you have to just rise above this. If you challenge her she will either escalate it or adopt a mortally wounded stance as she probably believes her own tales by now.

My MIL (now in her 80s) comes from a large city in the north and to hear her stories you'd think she was a street urchin yet she grew up in a large 3 bed semi and was able to stay at school to 18 and go to university which was quite privileged in that era (much more so than my family who all had to leave school at 14 to work). I think she has told her tales so often that she believes it herself.

LRDPomogiMnyeSRabotoi · 18/08/2013 23:59

I can see why it gets to you, if she is describing a level of poverty where you think you and your mum both had similar experiences, but I do think you are being unfair.

It sounds as if she didn't feel it was idyllic - presumably it got to her, or she wouldn't be expecting sympathy. You think she's whinging and if only she had your positive attitude, she'd be fine. That might be true - or perhaps it just hit her harder because she's not the same person as you.

I do have a bit of a kneejerk response of annoyance to your thread title and the beginning of your OP (though less when I got to the end of it), because it's the sort of comment people make pretty often when they, like you, remember the good things. You're very lucky to have good things to remember. You sound as if you're judging other people for not having that. I know you probably don't intend it that way, but that's how it comes across.

DuelingFanjo · 19/08/2013 00:00

People remember and handle things differently. I had a poor (but happy) childhood and it has made me quite unmaterialistic and I am not fussy about what my child wears or Jason where it came from. Someone I know had a poor and unhappy childhood and she wouldn't have anything second-hand for her children. I'm sure this kind of stuff really does de
End on how happy you were, rather than being a competition at being poor. Your MIL obviously wasn't/isn't very happy.

givemestrengthorlove · 19/08/2013 00:01

YABAbitU to expect her to have the same reaction as you...you may have no desire to talk about it but she does..
However this has more to do with personality than the amount of poverty or hardship one has experienced surely?
Is the real issue that you feel she is too attention seeking? And that rankles because you also feel like you had a tough time? I agree with you in that oneupmanship of any sort is pretty irritating.

I don't like to think of people like yourself enduring severe poverty in childhood but am heartened to hear you were happy despite this.

ZingWantsCake · 19/08/2013 00:02

oh I imagine my kids will do the same.
" when I was a boy we only had tablets and wii and my mother made us stop playing minecraft an hour before bedtime...but look at you, your life is sooooo easy, you can play and sleep simultaneously! whatever next! "

Grin
thecatfromjapan · 19/08/2013 00:04

I think many people have a. a fear of poverty b. a suppressed feeling of hatred towards the poor - are they scared? feeling guilty? Who knows.

I'm tempted to suspect that you keep quiet about how poor you were from a fear of the anger of others and a deeply conflicted mis-identification with the values of society's "Winners". I wonder if your anger and embarrassment with your mil stem from conflicted feelings you carry. Perhaps you are content to "pass" as someone who had a "normal" socio-economic background as a child.

As I get older, I get angry, extremely angry, at how many people think about and relate to poverty. They mock it, are embarrassed by it, and generally put enormous pressure on people to keep quiet about it. Simultaneously, they love to revel in the distance between themselves and poverty/poor people (hence misery lit./stories about "chavs"/the ridiculous drive to appear "middle-class" - resulting in anger and animosity when that sense of distance is challenged.

I'm glad your childhood was happy.

So what if your mil goes on about her own childhood. It's not child pornography/abuse/serial murder. Save your energy for shit that matters.

givemestrengthorlove · 19/08/2013 00:04

Or , OP, does it make you angry , and if so, why would that be?

CorrineFoxworth · 19/08/2013 00:06

Brilliant titles Grin and, Jason? Gotta love autocorrect.

thecatfromjapan · 19/08/2013 00:08

... and that Monty Python sketch is a fucking great way of getting people who are/were poorer than you to shut up and stop making you uncomfortable, isn't it?

Anyone would have thought it was made up and performed by a load of upper-class men, with astonishing access to élite privilege and power, just at the moment when those echelons of power were opening to more marginal figures (working-class men; women), who might enter these zones of the élite, bearing the stories of their (previous) disenfranchisement.

Who the fuck would want to listen to those stories?

CorrineFoxworth · 19/08/2013 00:10

That is a very good point.

thecatfromjapan · 19/08/2013 00:11

Seriously, I'm a nice person, but when I hear that Monty Python sketch wheeled out, yet again, to shut some poor person up, I want to get a fucking gun, hunt down "national treasures" Michael Palin ("those train journeys: so jolly ." Twat) and John Cleese ("A Fish Called Wanda! Hilarious!" Twat Squared) and shoot them both in the face.

It makes me cross.

thecatfromjapan · 19/08/2013 00:12

Sorry.

I went to Cambridge, my best friend in the first year grew up on a council estate. I lost count of the times the hilarious Monty Python sketch was recited if she mentioned where she grew up.

LRDPomogiMnyeSRabotoi · 19/08/2013 00:13

That is an excellent point.

KellyHopter · 19/08/2013 00:14

Oh god I hate this too. But I'm an intolerant so and so, I also feel like this about birth stories and horrible ex's.
Why would anyone want to sound whiney? It's not at all endearing.