To feel disgusted over my own mother’s opinion on free lunches in the holidays?

[j101112]

I totally understand we all have different opinions on this. I don’t want to this a debate on whether children should get free meals in the holidays. But I feel like I need to rant.

My mum had me when she was quite young. She was a single mum and went onto have my brother but that relationship didn’t last long. She was a single mum to both of us until she met our stepdad when we were a little older.

She didn’t have much money. We got free school meals at school, not in the holidays because obviously it wasn’t a thing then but I can guarantee you if she was given vouchers to spend she would have taken them. As well as not having much money she was always terrible with money too. She would go out 3 nights a week and smoke straight cigarettes also which didn’t help.

Now, here’s the thing. We didn’t go without. We were fed and clothed because of my wonderful grandparents!! They stepped up. We were always there, they always gave my mums money for food and clothes for us. My mum never give us breakfast and we’d be given a biscuit in the car.

Without my grandparents we would pretty much be starving and in poverty. It was a mix of a single parent not having much money and also being terrible with money.

Sorry if this is long but my mum is now older, wiser and re married with children much younger than me. They don’t struggle. She is considerably better off.

Yet she’s been very nasty about how the whole free school meal things ‘why should tax payers pay’ - bearing in mind she doesn’t work but her husband does, ‘people shouldn’t have kids if they can’t feed them’ etc etc. She is entitled to this opinion but she’s forgotten what things were lien when her older children were little. Like I said we would have gone hungry if it wasn’t for my grandma and grandpa.

Aibu to be annoyed that she’s forgotten what things were like for us?? We didn’t starve but without our grandparents providing us we would have!

Your situation sounds like my mum.

She had my two sister young then me and my sister in her 30s. I don't think she had it easy with the first two. We were a little more comfortable. We certainly different have loads of clothes. We had pack ups and always had meals. So we were fed well.

But my mum's very closed minded about things like this too.

I think things have changed now massively. Life is so different and it's easy for the older generation to rant about how things are. But they didn't have to pay out for childcare and technology. We live in an expensive world now. Phones, tablets, gadgets etc. The amount of toys kids get now. The schools always want money for this and that. Overall we do more activities and things now. There's a huge amount of fresh opportunity which makes life expensive.

I'm 31 and we had sandwich and penguins for dinner. Now lunch boxes are expected to be a better standard. Fruits and things. Which is quite right! A child should eat well. But it's expensive. I buy apples,bananas, grapes and berries each week for my children. It soon racks up. So I really feel for parents who can't afford £2 plumets of strawberries and things. Because it isn't in everyone's budget.

My partner earns good money. Usually he will do 60 hours a week at least and we have about 40-45 grand a year to live from. We are very sensible. But this year he's loosing £300 a month due to lockdown. So we are trying to be so careful. Keep the shopping down and buy less for Christmas etc. We are not in poverty but we've had to tighten our belts. So I can only imagine what it's like for people on half of that.

We live in a semi detached ex council house (buying it) we are not in a really poor or really wealthy area. There's a mixture of people.

I would buy a load of bread and some fillings for anyone who's struggling. It really upsets me to think of People not being able to just have some toast at least.

I think this sort of selective memory is quite typical of people who want to distance themselves from their past. My mum was a single parent. Though she had a good job, we received benefits due to my dad being disabled (they were divorced at this point, but there was a child portion of the benefit paid to support minor children of someone who is disabled - we didn't live in the UK at the time, so I don't know if a similar thing exists here). I have a friend who has a child with a disability. She gets a monthly benefit paid to her to support her child. My mum is forever ranting about her 'taking money from the government.' Never mind that she did the same damn thing! But she is older now and considerably well off due to re-marrying a wealthy man and a massive private pension of her own. I think it's very easy to mis-remember that your life wasn't always like this and to point the finger at other people who you wish were a bit more different than you.

That said, my mum also points out that early on when our first dc was young, she would sometimes help us out with nursery when money was tight. She has a tendency to bring it up like 'look at all the help I gave you when you couldn't support yourself' (it was on occasion - often it's what I'd ask for as a christmas or birthday gift just to make life a bit easier for that month). She has a convenient way of forgetting that her own parents (my grandparents) provided full-time childcare from when I was 3 months old until school age, and then they did the school run every day, fed me dinner and had me until about 6pm. She got an awful lot of free round the clock childcare until I was 12. But somehow the memory of that is a bit selective.

You're definitely not being unreasonable, your mother is though. Like many people with selective memory and the ability to re-write history, they can get puffed up with their own self-righteousness and be hugely judgemental of others.

My mum also has this ability to a degree and never wants any 'negative' comment about the past, validation is fine, anything else is not.

Thank goodness for your lovely grandparents, OP.

I also know of a mother who is terrible with money - to be fair she is ill and now her children have been taken into care . but as soon as she got her benefits on that day the money would be gone and there was no food for the week . In fact her mother the grandmother was also feeding the children and the food banks told her that they were supporting her too much as they knew her benefits should cover more .

What worries me more is that she also is blaming everyone more than herself and now we are all just waiting for her to get pregnant again .

i dont know how you can get someone like that to manage money . its very sad for the children

I am not sure vouchers would have worked ? Its almost like she needed someone to take charge of her money , pay the bills and deliver the food and then give her an allowance .

She may be feeling guilty, but you should remind her every time she said it. It's her kind of rewriting history that is currently leaving many single parents, young workers and disabled people struggling. People like her have benefited from the system but since becoming financially comfortable have felt perfectly happy to rip the safety net away from others. Hypocrites.

@Noplans2020

I agree with your post . My parents were very very low earners - but we did not have out of school activities , phones , gadgets etc .

Also ALL our clothes were from jumble sales or passed on through family . And yes packed lunches were rubbish . But we did have veg from the garden etc and my parents were very good at managing money ( they had to be) and we never had a new car or new tv or anything like that .
There definitely were not the same pressures that you get through social media now .

"thank goodness goodness Grandma and Grandpa were there for us hey Mum' would be my reply in your situation.

The meanness in spirit is something I see a lot in people that have really struggled, it is odd, almost like they don't want anyone to have it easier than them. They had suffer, so everyone should sort of thing. I would say the above on repeat and ignore

(and make lots of time to visit the Grandparents that helped me so much)

This sounds really annoying. Maybe she is entitled to her opinion but you don't have to hear about it and should say so, directly. 'Mum, I don't want to listen to you talking about whether children should be fed in the holidays. Maybe you have forgotten all the financial help you got from gran when bro and I were little.'

If she persists I would lose your temper with her (in a controlled way) to make your point. You shouldn't have to listen to that shite even if she's entitled to think it.

Funny my mother is slightly similar. She was a single mum and I an only child. She worked full time doing shifts and it’s only thanks to my grandparents who practically raised me that it was possible but money was always tight.

She goes on about not having kids if you can’t feed them, I agree to a certain point. I don’t believe in living of benefits and having lots of kids just because you can but peoples situations can change rapidly and people who were once comfortable can be desperate.

Regardless of their personal situation I don’t believe anyone should be hungry 🙁

Wow, your mum is a shit, isn't she?

Mil has some unpleasant views about migrants - notwithstanding that she herself is a migrant 🙄.

Some people simply aren’t very bright I’m afraid

I would be reminding her about the biscuit thing, that's for sure and giving her some home truths and say that I find her opinion extremely mean-spirited, selfish, bigoted and uncaring. Then agree to disagree and move on.

I have a relative with similar opinions, she has worked for maybe 2 years out of the last 40. Still claiming benefits now. All of her children had fsm. In fact 2 of her children even went to live with relatives in poorer times as she couldn't afford them, one of her daughters claims benefit now and gets fsm etc, that's fine apparently but she doesn't get enough help (in her opinion) her daughter (and her) should be entitled to more! Etc etc. But the lovely lady over the road who lost her husband suddenly, got made redundant and has 3 small children is a "scrounging bitch" because she accepted a food parcel or 2 over lockdown!
Really can't educate some people!

I thought I when you have come from adversity, or managed to pull yourself out of difficult situations you go down one of two roads- you either sympathise and remember how hard it had been and try and support others who are going through the same, or you try to distance yourself from the situation, the attitude of I survived and am now doing better, therefore others should be able to as well. Clearly your mother falls into the latter.

My mum is the same. Worked sporadically through her life and the money she earned was her spending money rather than being needed to help with household bills. She has no idea of how tough it is being the sole breadwinner and making it last or surviving on benefits.

Some are just ignorant.

Saw a clip from that Jeremy Vine show where a woman was waxing lyrical about how down on her luck she was but she fed her kids. She then said a friend had once brought some bread and cheese on the school run to give her some food for her daughter’s lunch. She went on to say she worked part time but still managed to feed her kids. People just needed to manage their money better.

So, entirely ok for her to rely on taxpayers to plug a gap for her, and for friends to stump up where she fell short, but others just needed to manage their money better and prioritise feeding their children.

Your mum sounds like she’s projecting.

Her opinion. Opinion on the matter of free school meals is split, and your dm just happens to be in the camp that disagrees with them. Gosh, my mum often has entirely different perceptions on things to me, but that’s upto her. She doesn’t have to agree with everything I say.

Livelove the point is that the OP's mum had help when she needed it, but now thinks that others shouldn't have that same help when they need it. It's hypocritical. She's conveniently forgotten that she was once in the same situation.

Well I should qualify that by saying, it's hypocritical unless she also thinks that in her own situation she should have turned down the help she received.

Shes kind of proving her point though.

Th vouchers would have dow nothing but fund more nights out and cigarettes

YANBU My mum is the same. Really judgmental of people who find themselves on benefits, even though she's on benefits herself. But she's different as she's 'paid in' all her life so deserves it. Except she's never worked, my dad did, but she's always been in receipt of some type of benefit. But you can't reason with her, the Daily Mail runs too deep inside her.

@Livelovebehappy- I don't think the OP's issue is a difference of opinion. Did you actually read the OP?
The issue is the mother's total hypocrisy, selfishness and lack of empathy considering that she herself claimed benefits as a single mother and was a frankly neglectful mother whose children were fortunate to have the benefit of incredible grandparents and would have suffered greatly if not for them.

I've seen that sort of comment from older women too that they have 'paid in' exempt they haven't worked or have worked for a very small number of years only. Their husbands have worked and they seem to think they have paid in because they were married. It's bizarre.

@j101112- I would be disgusted too but perhaps you are not surpsied, she doesn't sound like an easy or admirable woman from what you have written.

I don't deal with hypocrisy well, I would just blurt out incredulously - wait a minute, benefits are there for families, children, that need some help, are you forgetting using that safety net when we were young and you needed it? It was also there for me when I needed some support while I got back on my feet after John buggered off. What type of person would want to live in a society where the vulnerable are not helped, one day that could be you or me again.