Would you look down on your adult child if they weren't successful in life?

[MistressNotALot]

That's not a normal thing to do is it?

Back story is : DH and I used to have a reasonable life style - own house (mortgaged), decent car, holidays etc then we lost it all due really shit luck (which my parents put down to us making a bad choice), my mental health suffering due to a traumatic incident and having a DC with SN that meant I couldn't work.

We ended up in a flat in a council block.

Since then there has been a noticeable change in the way I gave been perceived by my family. My parents were horrified about where we lived, made jokes about it, lost interest a bit, and made comments about us taking 'their' money that they'd paid in taxes.

My siblings have been the same as although I tried to hide the true extent of our downfall, I discovered my mother has been gossiping to them behind my back including describing where we lived.

My other siblings are well off and have done pretty well for themselves. All I hear from my mother is about how well they're doing and what their DC have.

It seems I'm now the family joke.

I can't imagine being that to my own DC. I would do all I could to offer help so they didn't end up in the situation we found ourselves in.

god i would try and avoid seeing them if i were you op.
what an awful attitude.

i would hope i would want my dc to be happy and healthy.

I feel a bit like this, especially from in laws.

Husband is very successful, I had to make some real sacrifices to allow him to further his career. I feel he is no more capable than me (both masters educated, intelligent people etc) but he's just had more opportunity.

It's affected me very badly over the years as his career has progressed and I've been left trailing behind. I think his parents view that as lazy or that he could have done better for himself that he should have married a doctor or a lawyer.

I think my own family also expected more. I was always a high achiever but due to jobs in my chosen field just really not working out, I ended up having a baby with no career to go back to.

It affected my confidence and self esteem hugely and I always felt that people were looking at me and thinking what a waste. To be honest even if I'd had a high flying career, I just really wanted to stay with my baby full time, so I think it was a blessing in disguise that I didn't have to make the choice between that and work.

Two years ago I set up my own business which to my amazement has done spectacularly well! It's not a 'status' job by any means, but I found a huge gap in the market, it's very niche, but very popular and I now make a very decent salary whilst still being able to stay at home with my child.

I still don't think my family or husbands family particularly respect it. I still feel like I have to justify myself all the time......old habits die hard.

But, I'm working on that because it's my issue. I have to learn to respect myself and stop looking to them for approval and if possible, this is what you just do too.

I think too often people measure success by how much you earn and what you have. I measure success based on how happy I am, and how I treat others. I have often been at my happiest when I've been at my poorest, or not even been in a relationship. Looking at me now, people would assume I'm happy as we have plenty of money and a beautiful child. But I am not at my happiest now as we rarely have time to chill, and my partner has mental health issues that he refuses to deal with.

I am truly sorry for how your parents are treating you. I would like to think I would not treat my son like that

Is it all negative? Could you be focusing on the negative and ignoring any positives or supportive things they may say? Could they not be gossiping but maybe it came up in conversation and they didn't think it was confidential?

I just wonder if you have a sensitivity here that may be skewing your view?

I'm very intelligent, went to university, and was assumed by most that I'd be very successful, but bipolar disorder, traumatic life events, and grief over the loss of loved ones destroyed all of that. My family's never looked down on me because of that nor would I look down on my own children if they were less successful with their careers and finances for whatever reason.

My husband is the most intelligent, educated, and ambitious of his siblings, and the most successful yet we can both feel some disapproval from his parents that he's not as successful as they expected him to be. I ignore it mostly because otherwise I just find it infuriating.

He put some of his career ambitions to the side in order to be able to bring me to this country because having the woman he was in love with, with him every day was more important to him. It's not something that either of his parents are able to comprehend as neither ever made a huge sacrifice for love nor would they.

His father also openly looks down on the career of my husband's younger brother, which I feel is just so wrong.

I have had some bad luck over the last few years OP. Your story has some similarities to mine.

We also lost our house.

Through this nightmare, I have managed to raise 3 children and ensure their lives remained happy, loving and as stress free as possible, work full-time, get promoted, support my dh who became depressed, pay back debt and be the breadwinner.

Reading this thread has brought tears to my eyes as it’s made me realise I’m not really getting much support from my parents. They seem very ashamed about what’s happened to me and talk about how embarrassing it is if their friends ask about me. They are constantly asking when I am going to buy a house and why we haven’t got more money.

They have also been criticising choices I made a long time ago like why I didn’t marry someone with more money or become a doctor. They compare me to my sisters and their friends’ children a lot, and talk about their big houses, and wealthy husbands and pity me for not being like them or having the things they do.

We both deserve better support OP. And based on the responses in this thread, it’s not normal for parents to behave like this. My dc will always be supported and not judged- as adults as well as children.

I think I will challenge them the very next time they say something hurtful and unsupportive.

I wouldn't.

I would much prefer they had good morals. Success is not measured by status really.