To think the people have a romanticised view of the last few generations?

[safari111]

Whenever I bring up my mental health with my dad or husband, especially since having kids, instead of support or understanding I receive a speech on how my grandma or my husband's grandma "coped with so much, had so little, and were SO HAPPY. Everyone was happy, blah blah blah" that's all I get. That no one had the mental health issues and neurological problems that people have today and all of that. It enrages me that 1. My mental health is invalidated. 2. Everyone else's mental health problems are invalidated and 3. Everyone romanticises the fact that people were absolutely happier a generation or 2 ago, despite poverty, war, poor health etc.

What are your thoughts on this? Have you experienced similar?

I think the media push is for people to expect to be happy all the time and be constantly analysing why they might not be happy rather than just accepting that life can be boring and hard work at times and have traumatic phases. When bad things happen they analyse rather than move on, keeping them stuck going over and over it.

As a society we are exposed to a lot more information though the internet and see much more other other people’s lives meaning we compare ourselves against unrealistic benchmarks. The likely hood of me ever owning a home and earning over £30k is low and yet I’m wanting home makeovers and villas abroad because that’s what others have. Therefore I couldn’t possibly be happy (for example).

What, 150 years ago?

I think you are grossly misunderstanding the era if you think these sorts of life were stress free or less stressful.

“There was no pressure to look like a supermodel. You weren’t expected to be a ‘better’ version of yourself like young girls are now. You accepted yourself and your flaws. You weren’t expected to have a bigger house or car or holidays. Now there’s so much pressure to achieve more.”

Not exactly true. “Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller in 1949 is basically about ‘The American Dream’ and having the best things.

Anybody who has read Jane Austen knows how much pressure there was on girls to maximise their looks and catch a husband so as not to be left "on the shelf" - which was actually a grim prospect for a woman unless she was independently wealthy.

It’s possible that there are similar levels of stress generation to generation and actually culture to culture. The Japanese language has a word for working yourself to death, for example. We find different ways of sorting it out and some are more sustainable than others. For every stiff-upper-lipped Blitz baby there was someone locked up in an asylum for thirty years or having their brain bisected with an ice pick.

Lack of resilience, social media pressures, ‘being triggered’, extreme reactions to ‘normal’ day to day inconveniences, the rush to medicalise ‘normal’ emotions and behaviours,significant lack of family and social support when raising children, people having multiple children with multiple partners leading to children with attachment issues.
These are ‘modern’ issues. If stating that they didn’t have the same impact on society 20 or 30 years ago means I have a ‘romanticised view’ then guilty as charged.

Spot on.

People having multiple children with multiple partners is as old as time. Today we have divorce, previously parents died. This was not less stressful.

I’d argue that it’s MUCH more of an issue now than it was 30 years ago. Even within my own extended family, there are multiple children with multiple half siblings from both parents. Complex, acrimonious relationships with damaged, insecure kids caught in the middle.

They finished school at 10/11 did they? Funny because compulsory leaving age in 1947 was 15.

Or just walked away to marry somebody else without bothering with that tricky divorce part. Paper records weren't easily linked up, so if a man decided to walk out on wife and children, move a few miles away and marry somebody else, not even bothering to have a false name, there was no way of finding them unless a relative actually spotted them, found out where they were living and who they were with and reported a bigamous marriage.

My half siblings were contacted by their father's 'first' (ie, only legal) wife a couple of years ago. Their mother not only has no idea that she was never legally married, she had been receiving pension/benefits based upon his contributions as a widow since the 70s - so even the State didn't have a clue.

Depends upon that PP's parents' age. It was 12 (and not exactly enforced) until 1918.

Yes FiL and his sister were actually illegitimate for the first few years of their lives as their father was already married - not that they or the neighbours knew, their parents just presented as a married couple. Luckily the first wife did eventually seek a divorce so their parents could then marry.

The 80s were very different if you grew up in a mining town (or Scotland or a northern city) than if you were in the south east making 'loadsamoney'.

The 80s were extremely grim for large parts of the UK. They're grim now but long term Tory rule will do that. We love our Tories in this country.

This. I grew up,in Scotland and it was a different world to London and the South East. The damage that fucking woman caused will last for generations in many of our mining communities.

Not all,of us have parents who bought a house for tuppance that is now worth millions. Many people in the 80's never managed to buy a house at all and many who did, who took advantage of the right to buy council houses, ended up losing them less than a decade later when the interest rates went up to 15% overnight. These were working class, low earners so no parents or savings to bail them out.

The 80's were fucking grim for a lot of us who lived it. My dad had to work three jobs just to pay the rent and my mother refused to work (she just kept having children as an avoidance technique). We were mostly fed on chips and fried egg. Occasionally we'd have a Chinese takeaway as a treat on dads payday. Or if our paternal grandmother decided she wanted mother to cook her a roast, she'd provide the meat and the veg.

School was our way out of the shithole in which we lived, so bunking off was never an option for a lot of us bright kids, even though every lesson was disrupted by the kids who weren't bright and didn't want to learn. We had some good teachers though who offered extra lessons for some of us who wanted to get to college and university.

It was a shit childhood. We had no holidays, no trips out, no nice clothes and a diet that would bring horror to the mummy's on here who only feed their kids unicorn dust. The only point to childhood in those times and where I grew up was to get through it and get the hell away. I look at my nieces and nephews now - all late teens and young adults - still in the place where we grew up, and they seem so passive and accepting of the crap hand that they have been dealt. Their parents had no ambition and the kids are the same. My nephew can't work because of anxiety...bollocks he has anxiety. He's just a lazy shit who can't be arsed to get out of bed in the morning and get himself out to work. No SEN, no depression or mental health problems, no neurodiversity....just self diagnosed anxiety. He lives at home and mum and dad provide everything he needs so he just doesn't see the need to work himself - at the age of 22. And there are many, many like him where I grew up. At least in my generation the young people had no choice but to get out and work or go to college.

And the thing I hate most is that it brings out a latent Norman Tebbit in me that makes a lifelong labour supporter like me all.....anxious 🤣🤣🤣

They finished school at 10/11 did they? Funny because compulsory leaving age in 1947 was 15

My Irish grandfather left school at 12, worked on the family farm for a year, hated it and then left home on his 14th birthday, came to England joined the army by lying about his age. By the time he was "legal" to leave school he had transferred to the RAF and was shipped out to fight the Germans.

That’s Ireland which I expect had different rules. I’m just pointing out the majority of children did not leave school by 10 or 11 a few generations ago in the U.K.

Unless they are or would be 105 by now it’s unlikely they and everyone they knew left school at 10 or 11. Bit of convenient fiction going on there I think.

In fact older than 105 - more like 115 if they left school at 10 by 1918 at the latest. So Pp would likely be 90 plus. Odds of that?

Eh? I never once said life then was stress free back then??? Of course it was stressful, monotonous, hard work, miserable, depressing; not to mention more risky to health! But there wasn’t the added pressure to do anything more than just exist. There was less to stimulate then, and less to overwhelm even though life would have been more difficult overall. My point was that while people accuse today’s youngsters of being snowflakes and lacking resilience, I can understand why so many suffer with MH problems. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I agree. I think our efforts to mitigate every risk in life for young people and convince them they’re owed a life full of excitement and fulfilment has massively backfired. I’m continually astonished at the level of involvement posters have in the lives of their older children. Benign neglect was fantastic - it gave older children and young people a chance to push boundaries, learn lessons, and gain independence. Continually micromanaging children, entertaining their childish tantrums and telling them there is danger round every corner has given them all anxiety complexes. Let them be.

That’s Ireland which I expect had different rules. I’m just pointing out the majority of children did not leave school by 10 or 11 a few generations ago in the U.K.

I think they did/do. I wasn't arguing, just throwing in an anecdote about my Irish grandfather. My Italian grandfather probably left school at a similar age, but I never really knew him as he died when I was young.

The compulsory leaving age in the U.K. in 1947 was 15. Therefore most children at this time, did not leave school at 10 or 11, in the U.K.

This thread reminds me of that comedy sketch...who was it? Harry Enfield?

" stale bread for breakfast?! You were lucky ....In my day we only ate once a year on Christmas day and then it was a lump of coal. "

Monty Python?