AIBU to ask about your life *today*?

[AnythingMcAnythingface]

I always hear how the 'future', the here and now, is so bad. I think it's pretty amazing, and practicing gratitude is really helping me appreciate that. (The leaves have started to fall so maybe I'm feeling a bit soppy!)

What is the number one thing in your life, that if your great-grandparents were alive today to see, their jaw would drop?

For me I'm thinking about housework just because I'm quickly sorting that right now, but I suppose I mean in any area.

My great granny's jaw would drop at my steam cleaner... they had an outside loo for all their life, so the idea that the loo is not only inside, but some crazy machine could blast steam and clean it to sparkle in 90 seconds would no doubt blow her mind!

My great pops jaw would drop that I run a business, and that my husband and I run the house and parent as a very joint affair.

I'd love to hear what you are grateful for or are amazed by in your life today!

My nan almost had a heart attack a few years ago when I told her that the student I had to bring into my office and threaten to remove from the university because he was a lazy underachiever was the son of a Duke.

My GGM died not too long ago. My GM is amazed but it's somewhat bittersweet at the reduction in child mortality. She has dementia now and told me every time I saw her when I was pregnant about her stillborn baby. :(

Op, you steam clean your toilet??!

Not the bowl, but everything else...? Is this weird!?

That I have my own money, job, house and life independent of a man.

That I have chosen not to have kids, and there are tablets that let me do that.

My great gran would only have had what she was given so my life would have been baffling to her. As would the fact that I've (politely) challenged a Dr!

The fact that my mother is 93 and still going strong. No-one from earlier generations lived beyond 82, except my gt gt grandfather from Arran, who at 48, emigrated to NZ with his 18 year old Irish bride. He fathered 13 children on her, then lived to be 90. Medical advances would amaze them.
Granny was born in 1889 and lived through all those technological inventions and socio-economic upheavals of the late 19th-early 20th century. She was the first woman in the south-west of England to drive, when her father bought a 1903 Wolseley and she drove him out shooting. I still have her linen dust-coat from that era. She was a real woman before her time.

So many of these, but the thing that makes my own mind boggle and I think my Gran would have loved is having en suite bathrooms instead of an outdoor Sanilav.

Facetime. Not long before my Granda died, we facetimed my sister with him. The look of utter joy and awe on his face was wonderful. He was thrilled to see her, and couldn't get over that he was seeing her right there, in real time, from another country. He very rapidly deteriorated, and within a week of that he was being tube fed and we were sponging water on his lips. I love that memory, that last real joy filled memory, of his face absolutely lighting up as he realised that he we seeing my sister live on the screen. It's a memory that I'll treasure forever, tbh.

Having a holiday / going on holiday abroad. Getting on a plane and travelling a few thousand miles in only a few hours.
Credit cards.

Some of these are truly lovely.

I think mine would be amazed that (1) I grew up in Europe when they and everyone before and around them were all from Asia. Unfathomable that anyone would see the need to leave for somewhere as foreign and strange as England (2) that my primary purpose in life was not to marry and procreate, and that this was positively encouraged by my own parents. Putting both those things together would probably, sadly, make me unrecognisable to them.

They'd be totally baffled by social media though, I'm sure. It'd be "but why? What for?" the whole way!

My grandparents were born pre WW1 and would probably be surprised to have half Bengali great grandchildren especially being bought up with both cultures. I don't think they would be horrified or racist but I guess in their day mixed marriages just didn't happen like they do today. I wonder what heritage my great grandchildren will have?

This thread has madee realise I don't even know a thing about my great grandparents. Not even one thing. I don't even know my own grandparents names one mums side as they died before I was born. I should really find out.

Thinking about what I know of my great-grandparents, I think they would have been stunned by

• vaccinations & antibiotics (they lost DCs in childhood)

• contraception (my granny said she heard her Mum rant desperately to her Dad "I just can't cope with a baby every other year! )

• washing machine and tumble dryer (wash day was such a faff. My mum grew up scared of the rain because every time it started raining everyone would scream and run outside in a panic. This was to get the washing in, because there was no way of getting it dry inside and they couldn't afford it to get any wetter)

My great gran is disgusted at the gender pay gap being so persistent. She is still delighted by readymade freezer cocktails and delighted home delivery for food etc has made a comeback with the internet.
She KNOWS how phones work etc (telecommunications was her career) but is blown away by bluetooth etc.

This thread has made me realise I don't even know a thing about my great grandparents. Not even one thing.

I was going to post the same thing. I knew my grandmothers but both grandfathers died before I was born and I only know one of their names. I don't know a single tiny little bit about my great grandparents.

If my gran was alive today she'd be 115 and utterly disgusted at the dismantling of our NHS and disintegration of manufacturing/steel industry.

She was a feisty woman and lifelong Labour supporter. She'd not be happy about what was happening in the Labour party, though I'd imagine she'd be a Corbyn supporter.

I don't think anything tech wise would amaze her. She just wasn't interested so long as she could watch Corrie.

I think washing machines are the unsung heroes of this sort of question. They are AMAZING. Washing clothes the old way is the most ridiculous ballache. Washing machines and the Pill saved us.

That said, my own great grandmother knew perfectly well about washing machines but point blank refused to get involved and so continued to use her dolly and mangle until she passed away at a grand old age in the early 90s. Which I have to say is one of the most ridiculous things anyone I know ever did/didn't do.

She'd have probably been keen on Netflix though.

Unfortunately all my great grandparents died before I was born. They were born around 1860/70 I expect. One grandfather was born in 1880 and a grandmother 1899. So 1860s Victorian England (two in Ireland then though I think probably driven out by the 1852 Irish famine). My mother talked a lot about her grandmother who had been born in Ireland. I suspect in our family on both sides the ability of women to succeed in careers they were denied back in the 1800s would be the number one thing as it was education, education, education all the way in our family from 1900 onwards.

The idea that women in 2016 rather than men might be posting on mumsnet about domestic applicances as achievements rather than other things, would probably make most great grandmothers turn in their graves as they fought hard for equality in the UK.

As my great grandmother was widowed and then remarried and her daughter, my grandmother was widowed very quickly after having the first baby and then I am divorced I doubt the fact I am single would be surprising to them but I suspect internet communication would probably be the biggest change from 1860s.

In fact it was the change from 1860 to about 1900 which is arguably bigger tha now - the change in life between my great grandparents all on farms I suspect to the industrial age of Victorian England,.

Sadly they did worse ni a way for that. Those on the farm if we look at family graves showing deaths at age 80 etc, were mostly outside in fresh air , working hard, not eating bad foods, keeping slim etc. The 1900 generation were badly houses in cities, working down the mines and dying young. The move from countryside to industrial age was not good for most people in the UK and Ireland I suspect.

I think that GGPs would be pretty much amazed at all the things that we take for granted - televisions, mobile phones, washing machines, steam irons, portable radios and the fact that almost everybody drives a car instead of walking or taking a horse and carriage.

Education is free and we can call on the NHS if we are ill. Many of the illnesses that were killers in their day can be cured with antibiotics or surgery/chemotherapy, etc if found in time. Yeah, we've got it pretty good and we don't have to send urchins up chimneys to clean them.

My GGM would've been astounded that my DH had an equal share in the child care. Nappies. Feeds. Night feeds ect. Her husband never even touched their children till they were school age.
Technology is a given but not to even cuddle your babies.blows my mind.

Another 'thing' in general is the amount of stuff we all have - the consumer boom was unheard of. Go into a shop like 'Tiger' and the choice on offer is overwhelming.

My MIL who is 92 often got a telling off by teacher for not doing her homework - her excuse - in the hovel they lived in - she couldn't find a pencil. I can't imagine that happening in the average household today.

My nan died in 1990 aged 54.
If she was still alive she would be shocked at:
Immigration
Its socially acceptable to be a single parent. Hell, they can even go to work and socialise if they wish to. In her day, single parenthood was unheard of and you would be a pariah. When her daughter, my mum, became a sp, she was supportive. In the face of extreme disapproval from her husband, my grandad.
How much stuff everyone has.
The technology. But secretly, I reckon she would have loved a mobile phone. She did love a gadget!
How pretentious cuisine has become.
How lazy people have become. Cash rich, time poor. Outsourcing all the housework and childcare. She was unusual, in that she worked ft as a book keeper in the day whilst gdad did night shifts. She used my mum (the eldest) as the childminder. She had 4 daughters and kept an immaculate (too immaculate) house.
The utter shite on tv. The sheer number of channels.
The work shy feckless element of society.
Women can play golf and go to the pub on their own!
Enjoy being pampered!
Men can do housework, go to work and do child stuff! Yay!
Women do not have to pump out loads of kids and neither do they have to defer to their spouse.
Women can marry women.
Men can marry men.
They can even have babies!
Women can initiate sex and shockingly, they can enjoy it without being viewed as slags. Well, in some quarters!
Women can live alone and support themselves.
She probably wouldn't mind some tasty pre prepped food from marks.
She would be horrified at my foul language. She hated swearing in any form.
She'd be shocked at how we pander to our kids. She was a seen not heard kind of nanna.
There's loads. So much has changed since she lived and since she died.

I know my grandparents so my children's grear grandparents would be stunned we were all still here.

Living through 2 world wars and the rise of nuclear weapons they truly believed we would have all been annihilated by now.

Washer and dryer.
The fact that I was allowed to marry a Catholic
The fact that I live abroad in a non English speaking country.

I remember my grandad asking how I could check my English email abroad
Mind-blowing really.