AIBU for parents to know what roughly what job I do?

[myjob]

I probably am being unreasonable, but hear me out. Just having a brat really.

I work in the city of London in a finance role, supporting fund managers. My mum has asked what I do and I have told her many times what my role is and how it supports the wider business. She just doesn't understand it and when I try to explain, she says "it's all so complicated!" And won't even try to listen. She is in her 60's and was a SAHM her whole life. My brother works in digital media sales and it's the same with him. She thinks he works with computers and I'm a secretary. She doesn't seem to understand that I'm not in a typing pool.

It's a stressful, serious job. I have tried to explain, she doesn't seem to understand that women can have important roles in an office environment.

Do your parents understand your job if it's not something like teacher or nurse? Maybe IABU! I give up with trying to explain it now!

Also for what it's worth, my mom was an office manager. It was a serious and stressful job. She considered herself and the rest of her colleagues the backbone of the office and wondered if the place would have run at all with out them. So your opinion of support roles is quite frankly condescending and insulting to anyone in those roles working their asses off. So you're as bad as your mother in many ways. Just not sexist but still not very nice.

My mum has zero idea. I don't mind that bit so much - it's a tech role and nothing she'd ever understand the context of as it's not something she has any experience of.

However I was mightily peeved when she was telling me how proud she was of my brother for getting a director level role. When I pointed out I'd been working a director level role for years (I swear blind she thinks I work in our call centre), she went very quiet. And then said, "Oh. Well I suppose girls can do things like that nowadays".

This "girl" was mid 40s at the time. I don't talk to her about work anymore

My mum knows I work in an office. She hasn’t got a clue about what my actual role is and I wouldn't bore her to death with the details. I know she is very proud of me whatever my job so for me it’s a non issue. She is of the mind though that working from home is not really working, not properly working. I kind of get it, it wasn’t a thing when she was at work.

Sounds like my late MIL, when I told her of my promotion to Head of a major department in a High School she asked if there had been married men with children up for the job, jobs should always go to married men with children first! She was once talking to her friends about my 'little job' so I made the point of telling her, and them, that not only was my job senior to her son's but I also earned quite a bit more.

My dad has been telling everyone for years that I have been doing a certain job, he met my old teachers and was telling them.
I wasn’t doing that job at all.

But last year I went back to train and now I actually am doing that job! He was right in the end 😂

I don’t think my parents have known what I do in any job I’ve had apart from when I worked in shops and they could physically see me at work. They know who employs me but they wouldn’t know my job title or even what building I work and we are very close 😂

I worked for a large retailer in IT for a while and people would constantly moan about produce that was out of stock and other such gripes which were absolutely not my job!
My mum used to get the name wrong of the company I worked for

Sorry OP a lifetime of being misunderstood awaits

I'm in my 60s. I know my ds' job title and I know it has to do with developing software for self-driving cars, but that's about all I understand, despite him explaining at length more than once. I'm an intelligent woman with an advanced degree who held down an extremely complex job for many years. I just don't know how software development works. YABU.

My dad always seems surprised when I mention work, or have to book a day off to do xyz etc. He won’t acknowledge anything I do, even when I was in the local press for a work related achievement. It follows years of a lack of interest since I reached 13. My mum was the same and got annoyed when I tried to show her my GCSE results. My dad will always ask my DH how his work is going, how is his commute etc. I can’t win really - I quit my old job after having DD and my dad wanted to know how we were going to manage on one income. Then I got a new job a few months later and he was disappointed I needed to find a childminder for DD. I don’t mention work now or anything I do to my dad. He never asks either.

Gosh. Not just me then. My parents always asked 'How's your little job?'

YANBU

I'm a chartered company secretary, my mum thinks I'm a receptionist.

Absolutely get the frustration. Mum sometimes sends me links to perfectly nice but completely irrelevant jobs e.g. receptionist at the local leisure centre, school secretary. I've given up explaining that that isn't what I do.

she doesn't seem to understand that women can have important roles in an office environment. She may simply not understand that anyone can have an important role "in the city of London in a finance role"

My DH does a vague Chandler-type role and works away every other week. I have tried and failed to properly get my head round it (despite being educated to degree level) so I've decided it is far more likely that he's a spy. 😂😂😂

He's quite a secretive, conservative person any way and I'm half expecting to find a "Only open in the event of my death" letter, a bundle of documents and gun in the attic one day.

I don't really understand what my DH does to be honest. And I'm not sure he knows in any great detail what I do.

I'm a chartered company secretary, my mum thinks I'm a receptionist.

DS has a degree in the same subject as me. I don't understand what he does - at least I do understand, but I'm not sure why it takes 40hrs a week.

TBH if you genuinely don't understand any jobs in IT and finance it's because you've convinced yourself you don't understand so you don't bother trying or because people have not even tried to explain.

I work in IT. My job is to design how different computer systems can be used to met a user need.

My husband works in finance. His job is to keep track of all the spending across his area of the business and see how it compares to the budgeted costs.

My parents have no idea what I do (academic). I would find this less annoying if my mother didn’t continually bang on about an elderly prof emeritus she sees on the street: ‘Oh, he’s a very intelligent man, you know, very highly-educated, a big noise above in the university!’ Yes, mum, the same university I work at, the same number of degrees I have. (I’ve long ago given up trying to explain to my father than I’m not ‘on holiday’ when termtime ends.)

I suspect my mother thinks the same of my siblings, though — she thinks my brother ‘fixes computers’ (he’s a data analyst at a bank), and that my other sister ‘reshelves books’ (university librarian).

Annoyingly, both parents grasp perfectly well what DH does.

I overheard someone ask my PIL, in whose lives I have been for 30 years, what I did for a living recently, and they said they didn’t know!

As others have said, one image says it all.

Modern job roles are difficult to understand, and will probably only get harder!

Yes! I have a vague idea of roles where you’ve encountered the other side of it or it’s well-covered on TV: teacher because I’ve been taught, paramedic because I’ve been on the receiving end, copper because I’ve watched The Bill; stuff like tattoo artist or binman or actor is manual and obvious. But nebulous “I support fund managers in their roles” is very ????? Everyone from the office cleaner to the receptionist to the tea trolley lady could say that, plus I have no idea what a fund manager does all day and what support they might need. Most office jobs are opaque to people not doing them, and mostly amount to the same thing: I sit at a computer thinking “this meeting could have been an email, and this email could have been a Teams note, and this Teams note could have been non-existent, life is meaningless”.

In my 20s houseshare my best friend was a museum curator and I was a fashion magazine writer. As far as I was concerned she spent Mon-Fri wandering the V&A dusting stuff and chasing international jewel thieves; as far as she was concerned I was Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada. Our other housemate was a solicitor, which we filed under “????”

I think most people could understand others’ job roles if they really tried. But most people jobs are really really boring and not worth the effort!

I have relatives with senior roles that I can't get my head around. When people ask me what they're up to I just say, they work in It or Finance. I don't fucking know or care what they do. I love them not their jobs!

My parents understood my job - teacher. But just didn't get my OH's job. Educational consultant - not hard. I think my late DF didn't want to get it as it was something he 'disagreed' with/was a bit further up the ladder than he got.

My Mum really doesn't get what my DD's partner does. Photography/creative content/artistic director for fast fashion.

She struggled with Tesco being on line.

YABU.

(a) it doesn't really matter
(b) I am sure you can find some form of words to use that roughly explains what you do/area you are in and leave it at that.

it is only in very recent years, with my job becoming more mainstream and actually getting a name that my family and friends have begun to understand why I do. Before that they just sort of glazed over and said it was math related and hard.