To feel upset by my mum going on about how much better things were in the past

[Sneeeeze]

I'm 27 and have a daughter who's just turned 5. My mum is nearby us so we spend a lot of time with her. I also have a sister who is 42. Whenever my mum is with us and whenever me or my daughter tell her about something she's always going on about how the things were better either when my sister was that age or when she was that age. For example I paid for a local lady with a cake business to make a simple birthday cake for my daughter (was a chocolate sponge with white icing and a little dog ecoration on top). My mum went on about how cakes were more simple and elegant back when my sister was young. She goes on about how much better kids tv was in the 80s. My daughter goes to swimming classes and my mum goes on about how swimming classes aren't today what they were when she was a child and they were so much more fun back then. She also says toys are awful compared to what they were in the 80s. I found on eBay a toy that I used to have around the early 2000s that I thought my daughter would like and when my mum saw her with it she recognized it and said, see toys are terrible nowadays as you're buying ones from when you were young. I might be being too sensitive but it really upsets me because I feel like when I try and make things nice for my daughter its just like it's not good enough. She says these things in front of her too so whilst she might be too young to realise now as she gets older she might think things aren't good nowadays and feel that she's missed out. When I talk to my mum about this she just says she just thinks it's sad that things aren't as good as they used to be. I was just wondering if people think I'm being unreasonable in being upset and also if anyone else has had this with their parents?

My mum does this and it drives me crackers. Even if things were better in the past, how does it help to keep saying it? This is where we are and these are the years we are raising our children and trying to enjoy our lives so what help to us is it to be told constantly that our parents lived in a better time and had things better??
Plus i take it all with a massive pinch of salt, mum always says how much safer England was when she was younger and how kids aged 5 could play out... talking to her you'd imagine some kind of utopia....its all rubbish, there have always been murders and crime

And really bad road safety, seat belts being compulsory wasn't until the 80s. Also from a child's health point of view my memory is people smoking everywhere. Horrible.

@1000yellowdaisies you've completely hit the nail on the head, thank you! She doesn't seem to understand that I can't parent my child like it's the 80s because it's not the 80s anymore!

@Hardbackwriter thank you, that was exactly my point. Nothing I do lives up to what she's lived through or done with my sister. Even something as simple as a birthday cake

"Where things really that much better then Mum, or do you think you were just happier then than you are now?"

"You are right Mum. Get the time machine out and let's go".

Some things were definitely better but it's pointless just to go on about it.

I am a very nostalgic person but I bloody love kids TV now and will be as nostalgic for it as I am for my own kids' TV. Toys are great too. I am saving DS's Octonauts, PJ masks, Happyland etc collection for my grandkids. I also have toys from my childhood but this doesn't mean they were better. As for swimming lessons, I have extensive experience of this in your sister's era and now and I am not sure what she is on about TBH. I have had this a bit, being the youngest, by only four years. Somehow I always got the the impression that by the time I came along it was all a bit newfangled. Just ignore it. Your memories will be the ones you treasure not hers.

I think you're spending far too much time with your mum! Cut it down, get some friends in the same situation as you and socialise more with them. Then your Mum will just be a one a week whinge - because honestly whatever you say to her she won't change.

Its so much better now though! Mobile phones .laptops, all the tech .(I am in my 50s BTW)! I also like paying by card ,no worrying about the "right" money .Children computer literate . She is probably clinging on to her time as a young mum ,and a teeny bit envious of you ! Try not to worry about it ,Just say "Yes Mum ,No Mum sort of thing

Also struggling to see how Swimming lessons could be so much better? You go to the pool with other DC to learn how to swim! Not have a party!

It really wasn't.... people are absolutely deluded about this

The late 70s was a time of severe economic hardship due to the oil crisis, union activism driving the country to a standstill, high unemployment. Granted things were better on that front by the mid 80s but there were years of pain.

Life was considerably worse for women too. It was legal to demand sex with your wife until 1991 FFS. Far fewer women had the opportunity to work and those that did were paid less and treated worse. Far fewer women went to university then than now. Most men would have no concept whatsoever that they had a responsibility to play a part with childcare and on the domestic front.

There's always a group of people in every generation that looks at the past with rose-tinted spectacles. It's because they are overly nostalgic about their youth because for whatever reason they feel they haven't made a success of their adulthood.

It's understandable that people romanticise their youth but by God and I tired of people banging on about how great the 80s were.

It's tiresome and lacking in imagination.

Tell her if she has nothing constructive or positive to say about the way you run your life and parent your child to just keep it to herself.

@DorritLittle I think you might be right about it being because we're the youngest. She was a bit like this when I was a child (nowhere near as bad as now though). She didn't like 2000s music and she hated McDonald's (there wasn't one locally to them in the 80s) so I suppose it may be because she'd done all the kids stuff before and 2nd time round it maybe didn't seem so good

@dottiedodah she says they're too comcercial now and it's all about getting a certificate nowadays and not about learning the real life skill

It's very easy to look back on the past with rose tinted glasses. This reminds me of my late Mum, she insisted that things were so much better when she was young. She was a child and young teen during the war. I pointed out to her that a time when many young men were being killed in battle, families were being bombed out of their homes and a genocide was taking place in Europe couldn't be a better time. Apparently I was wrong because you knew who your neighbours were back then. Funny thing was she knew all her nice helpful neighbours when she said it.

YANBU OP and your mum is wrong. Things were not any better in the olden days and I say that having grown up in the 70's.

I can't abide that nonsense rose tinted nostalgia

You're mums being a bore. I would have loved an iPad in the eighties rather than have to go to an arcade and play space invaders.

The eighties music was the best though

totally agree with all of this. Well said!

I think this is the best way to deal with it - treat it with a bit of humour and don’t let it get to you. Overthinking it will eat away at you and make it a much bigger issue than it is. Life’s too short for that much angst.

I agree with this. I too think some things were better in my youth, not all things but some. I don't constantly draw attention to my views in a way that disparages what is going on around me .

And yet there is post after post, article after article talking about how life in the 70s to 90s was so much better, easier, no hardships unlike people now, older people had it much better and easier and they dont know it......

Which is it then?

I LOVED the 70's.. if I could step back into a photo from then, I would!
But, as has been pointed out, we're not there any more, we deal with what we have now. If I was you, @Sneeeeze the next time you mention something & your mum takes a breath, ready to say it's not like it was in her day, I'd say 'I've heard it before, Mum, I'd rather talk about NOW instead of keep harping back to the past, it means nothing to DD & you're sucking the pleasure out of everything I do for her.' It might just shock her into realising that she does it all the damn time..

You are not being unreasonable - this attitude can also effectDC, who wants to spend time with granny who thinks everything you do/ play with is sub standard?!

on the other hand….I don’t like buying anything that was produced after the 80s!

Tbh she is right . However I totally get how grinding it is . My mother is the same and quite negative with it . I just shut her down and get her told . It’s not the 1980s mother get over it

Both I suppose depending on who you talk to. No doubt there is objective data to compare how 'well off' people were in the different decades, but if you're looking at anecdotal evidence its going to be very subjective depending on your own personal circumstances and happiness at the time. Living in a mining community, the 80s were pretty bleak for me, but I dare say people with big jobs in emerging industries see the period very differently.

I'm 55 and a grandmother and I guess I'm guilty of looking back nostalgically to the 80s childhoods of my three children. I can of course appreciate the present day with the fantastic soft play centres, trampoline parks, Go Ape centres that I would have loved to have available to me as a parent. I'm sorry you are feeling your mum's attitude is throwing so much shade on your parenting. Honestly your child will not be worrying about missing out. You have so much to show and give your child that wasn't available last century.