Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

What is the generation gap today?

76 replies

MiddleAgedandConfused · 31/03/2015 16:44

My mum - mid 70s, Yorkshire born and bred - is like many of her generation mildly racist, doesn't think homosexuality is acceptable or that gay couples should be allowed to adopt, IVF is flaunting nature, premarital sex is the only thing that separates us from animals... and so on. She is actually a very lovely and kind person who would never be rude to anybody, but she used to occasionally come out with some of this stuff.
She has now learned not to say anything like this in front of me cause I won't tolerate it.
So - my question is what beliefs do I hold that will make my DD17 frustrated with me? What dinosaur ideas does a woman my age have that will make my DD tell me to shut up and stop being so bloody ignorant?

OP posts:
ClumsyNinja · 31/03/2015 18:18

Snottybiatch totally agree about the lack of tolerance from a few of the younger generation. Thankfully, I think it's only the ill-informed ones who read the Daily Fail/Express shite.

However, my dear departed mum (would have been mid-nineties by now) wasn't remotely homophobic or rascist. I think my dad probably was but he died when I was young so I can't remember.

I can definitely imagine a widening technology gap in the future.

wolf14 · 31/03/2015 18:19

I think future generations will look back and be disgusted we kept animals that are not endangered in cages at zoo's for our entertainment.
Also fossil fuels.
I think in the future it may be classed as incorrect to say a size 8-10 is healthy, as in people will see it that you are underweight.

Original poster
MiddleAgedandConfused · 31/03/2015 18:19

I can see people thinking..
'You thought it was OK to own a fossil fuel powered car?'
'Central heating instead of an eco house?'.
'the sports centre heated huge tubs of water just to go swimming?'
'Air conditioning?!!!'
Anything that shows how we wasteful we are with fuel now.

OP posts:
Snottybiyatch · 31/03/2015 18:21

I think in the future it may be classed as incorrect to say a size 8-10 is healthy, as in people will see it that you are underweight

Wolf I do hope so Grin

IUseAnyName · 31/03/2015 18:26

I genuinelly didn't know it was an offensive term Angels.
I've never really come a croos a situation were I've had to say it or be corrected in order to know :/.... Is there an online resource of offensive terms people should know? If so please point me in the right direction as I'd hate to offend anyone by being ignorant.

BertieBotts · 31/03/2015 18:37

I think it's too hard to call yet. The people in the "parents" generation now are running the show with general control over media, politics etc. That is current popular opinion. It's going to be really hard to tease out from that what is likely to be unpopular in the future.

For me at 26 yes I sometimes get frustrated at my parents about technology. And one which bugs me quite a bit and I hope becomes unpopular - the idea that men and women are somehow fundamentally different and therefore expectations from both are different.

I think that more small health issues will be treatable and we will be baffled that anybody ever just put up with them.

I hope we will be horrified at how the poor were demonized. I would like to see more acceptance of all kinds of non traditional families. Not just same sex relationships but many different set ups including single parent families not being seen as less desirable.

I hope we will have a lot more understanding of special needs and disability. My mum still refers to people with obvious disabilities as "people like that" and feels awkward around the subject. She's not horrible, she's just never met anybody with an obvious disability. It's ignorance rather than disgust or whatever.

AngelsWithSilverWings · 31/03/2015 18:41

I can see that you genuinely didn't know and I also remembered the news story about Benedict Cumberbatch using it and having to apologise.I'd forgotten all about that until just now. So I was probably wrong to be shocked. Maybe it's just that where I live no one would use that term ever ( apart from my DF as mentioned earlier!)

MNHQ
TheOnlyOliviaMumsnet · 31/03/2015 19:04

Good evening Mumsnetters
Just a reminder of our talk guidelines which list as ageism as one of the things we don't allow.
Also a link to the GNHQ
Every day ageism campaign

Thanks ever so

IUseAnyName · 31/03/2015 19:08

Oh yes, I forgot about that too Angels!.... I (and he) now know better :)

HoppityVoosh · 31/03/2015 19:16

I think, as someone mentioned up thread, smoking is a good example. I think my son's generation will be shocked it used to be common to smoke in cars, houses and pubs.

Also, carrier bags! From this year everywhere in the UK people will need to pay for bags so the younger generation will always have known to reuse bags.

I also think CDs/DVDs will become extinct and looked at the same way as kids just now look at video tapes, everything is on Netflix etc now.

CoolCadbury · 31/03/2015 19:31

I think we are in infancy as far as ASD is concerned in terms of attitude, research and understanding.

Most of the older people I know are pretty liberal but most of the younger people are quite conservative.

Theycallmemellowjello · 31/03/2015 20:02

To me the obvious shift in social attitude is with regard to transgender issues. That is currently dividing older (ie 30+) and younger people I think.

geekymommy · 31/03/2015 20:03

I think attitudes toward autistic people and mentally handicapped people are changing. When I was a kid (early 80's), I never heard anyone say it was unacceptable to call someone or something "retarded". Now I know people who take exception to using that word. I saw a post on Facebook a few weeks ago about a cheerleader with Down syndrome, and about her school's basketball team coming to her defense when some people started heckling her. I couldn't have imagined a cheerleader with Down syndrome when I was a kid, nor could I have imagined popular kids coming to the defense of a kid with Down syndrome (or another mental disability) who was being bullied.

SenecaFalls · 31/03/2015 20:14

Thanks, Olivia!

So - my question is what beliefs do I hold that will make my DD17 frustrated with me?

Perhaps the notion that racism and homophobia are a function of age?

babbityann · 31/03/2015 20:19

And geeky, we don't use handicapped either. It's derogatory. Mentally ill is the acceptable term.

geekymommy · 31/03/2015 20:37

Sorry. I'm American, and handicapped usually isn't derogatory here (at least I haven't heard it used that way). "Mentally ill" for most of us means you have a mental disorder like depression or schizophrenia. I don't think it would generally be used to describe someone on the autistic spectrum or with an intellectual disability. Two countries separated by a common language...

Discounted · 31/03/2015 20:47

I think the naughty step might come back to haunt us.

Smacking's obviously not the answer either but I have a suspicion future generations will wonder what we were thinking banishing our children, in a similar way that most people of my age wouldn't insist their Dc clean their plate, as was perfectly normal when I was a child.

drudgetrudy · 31/03/2015 20:51

Language changes all the time and words that were once acceptable become derogatory. Imbecile and idiot were once neutral medical terms.
I think it is a red herring to pull people up when they are out of date with this-and naturally older people are more likely to be out of date.
Its the underlying attitude that matters-do we take people as we find them or do we have underlying prejudices that influence how we treat them?
Still not sure what will frustrate the next generation.

SenecaFalls · 31/03/2015 20:54

A lot of language dealing with disabilities is different in the US. For example, "learning disability" in the US means what "learning difficulty" means in the UK.

geekymommy · 31/03/2015 21:14

What you would call a disabled parking space (that is what you call it, right?), we'd call a handicapped or handicap parking space. (Of course, only terrible people would park in it if they didn't have a proper permit in either case.)

It's not just language changes, though. I think there is a real difference in how most people think of (say) transgender people from how they were thought of thirty years ago. Language changes are part of it, but not all of it. I remember an episode of a TV sitcom in the 80's about the funeral of a man who liked to wear women's clothes. I don't know that the same jokes would be made today about him.

I hope that there will be less stigma around mental illness and autism. But when I think that's happening, along comes some event like the Germanwings crash, which could easily set back acceptance of people with depression Sad We've had a couple of high-profile mass shootings by people who were (or were speculated to have been) on the autism spectrum in recent years. I wonder if that's going to set back further acceptance of people on the autism spectrum Sad (Of course, I know that the vast majority of people who have depression or are on the autism spectrum are not and never will be mass murderers, but this kind of thing does fuel prejudice)

BertieBotts · 31/03/2015 21:18

Oh agreed Discounted. I think we will move away from rewards and punishment based thinking. It's hard to do at the moment because so many things are rooted in it that that's where our instincts tend to go but there's lots of fascinating stuff coming out like Alfie Kohn etc. I think it's good that the current trend has moved discipline away from fear based stuff like it was in the past but I think a lot of parents struggle to find the "right" way, as evidenced by the parenting boards on here anyway. (I include myself in that, I'm not some magical all-figured-out person!)

engeika · 31/03/2015 21:35

This is a good question OP - I wonder too.

I agree in twenty or thirty years people will be horrified/ surprised/baffled at:

  • our waste of resources - fuel, water, land
  • our disregard for the environment
  • witch-hunts, ( much as we see McCarthy-ism now)
-our prudishness around porn -our lengthy, time consuming ways of communicating
engeika · 31/03/2015 21:38

Oh, and a term that will die out and be offensive where now it is acceptable is "Mixed race". It will be meaningless in 30 years. I find it pretty meaningless now tbh but it is still considered "correct" by the language police.

geekymommy · 31/03/2015 21:45

I don't really think there was a language change around smoking. It's still "smoking" and "smokers". But there has been a huge change in how acceptable it is, and where. I remember my parents having ashtrays in our house in what must have been the late 70s or early 80s. Nobody in our house has ever smoked, so they must have been for guests, even though my mom always hated cigarette smoke. I don't remember seeing them in our house in the mid-80's or later, I guess it got more acceptable for non-smokers to tell smokers "not in my house". I remember when there were smoking and non-smoking sections in restaurants, now there aren't (when this happened varied by state in the US). There are some "smoker friendly" restaurants here (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) still, but you can't smoke in most restaurants.

BertieBotts · 31/03/2015 21:49

Yes you hardly ever see ashtrays in people's houses now, do you? We have a Woolworth's here (Germany) and I was really surprised to see them for sale. Not something I'd seen for a really long time.