AIBU to think we simply don’t socialize like our parents did?

[Enchanted82]

I have been thinking lately about how much more insular and less social people are now compared to my parents era. I’m early forties, young family, lived in different places and always put friendships and making new friends/acquaintances a priority and I love hosting but I do feel lots of other families don’t seem to want/enjoy having people round or meeting up much at all!
in the 80’s my parents and friends parents were round each others houses, enjoying their company regularly but I don’t feel my husband and I have this despite being sociable people.
what’s changed?

I think it was a problem then but it wasn't recognised. People expected to come home and find that their pets had chewed things or pooed and peed. The dogs were often shut in the kitchen or outside in a kennel to limit the damage. The advice was to let a puppy or a dog who hated to be alone to leave them to "cry it out" and if you came home and found that the dog had messed they advice was to rub their noses in it. When you know better, you do better. Most dogs can learn to settle happily when left alone for a [eriod of time, but if they are left alone because the owner works, they can't then be left alone for the owner to go out and socialise, AND the dog needs to be taught how to do it.

A generation ago one member of a couple was more likely to not work / work part time. That person probably had the energy to arrange stuff, prepare house for guests and get food ready etc. With more people working full-time, to pay for a smaller house, they probably have less energy to sort all this stuff out. Laying on a load of food would not be cheap these days either.

I guess i am a generation ago. Most of the couples i knew had one fulltime worker and one part time worker or one was a SAHM who would probably go back to work once the last child had started pre school or they went to nursery at toddler age.

This has probably been mentioned earlier in the thread, but the fact that both parents work is a big factor. There were always neighbours popping in and out of my parents house when we were younger, and lived on a housing estate.

I think there are many reasons for the demise of the dinner party/popping in and out for coffee. My mum was a stay-at-home mum, as were most of the mums on our street and our classmates parents. Those women cultivated close friendships because raising kids was bloody hard work and you needed that network to rely on. That led to the husbands becoming friends and the dinner party invite.

When I was in my twenties, we never really socialised at each others houses. We were always in a pub or restaurant. So that habit never really started. Back when my parents were young, they didn't have the money to go out that much. Dinner parties were much more reasonable. Crucially, again, my mum was at home so could shop and cook for guests. Not many women coming home on a Friday have shopped and prepped for a dinner for six. Its just easier to go to a restaurant. But because that's expensive - and prohibitively so when you have young children, with the cost of a babysitter thrown in - you'd end up meeting friends only twice or three times a year instead of once a month.

I grew up on an estate and my mum and neighbours always socialised together. Drinks at each others houses, street parties etc. Then when we first got married, we lived in a terrace in a small close, with 4 other young couples with small children. We spent half of our lives in each others house, bbq’s all year round etc. it was a fun time. We moved when my eldest was 6 and I realised not everyone had fun neighbours! It was a few years before I even recognised some of my neighbours in the street. I remember our first new year there and we went out into the street expecting a few others to come out and doors and curtains remained firmly shut 😂. None of my neighbours have ever been in for a coffee or anything.

Being able to host people without a lot of fuss or expense is a skill and it took me a long time to learn. Now I have a few really quick yummy meals (that use mainly cupboard ingredients) that I can crack out and cook while chatting to people. I always have a few bottles of wine and a box of beers in the house. You get good at giving people easy jobs (like opening and pouring wine or laying the table) so that it's not a load of work for you.

Unless you can do this it is a massive effort and quite anxiety inducing which is maybe why people would rather go out for dinner or just not bother. I sympathise as I used to feel exactly the same.

I've also stopped caring about my house being really clean. If people are going to judge me then they can bugger off.

We never had relatives over to our house. The only time I can remember my mother's sister being in the house was to tell us her son had been in a bad car crash. My dad had 3 sisters and I can't remember any of them coming to our house.

I think their lack of socialising has rubbed off on me. I like to go out with one friend at a time but don't feel comfortable in bigger groups. Yet my sister loves nothing better than mingling and pointless chit chat at social events.

Not sure if these have already been said but I think it’s because:

a) jobs have much longer hours now than ‘standard office/other jobs’ of my parents (mid 70s) generation - most people I know are performing roles that 2/3 people would have done 30 years ago.

b) more couples who both need to work full-time who don’t have the energy to entertain at the weekend (as opposed to the greater number of families in latter days who had one parent at home, even when the kids were old enough to be attending school)

c) a reduction in the drinking culture - always surprised at how much those 10/20/30 years older than me drink! I think it’s just not such a ‘thing’ anymore

i know with us we work long hours and just don’t have the energy to have people over more than once or twice a month even for a casual supper/takeaway - I love our friends and we are very lucky to have wonderful people in our lives but we really, really need our relaxing time, feel burnt out if I have 2 sociable weekends in a row 😂

YANBU. I think social media is one of the worst things to ever happen to society and is partly to blame.

Social norms have changed. My parents' generation used to 'pop in' to each other unannounced all the time. I'd find that an imposition now.

I think we all have much less time now, our days are overscheduled and fewer SAHMs.

Social media means there's other ways to keep in contact with people.

We had people over for my daughter’s birthday the last two years. Most of the prep of cleaning the house beforehand fell to me. Even things I asked my husband to do weren’t done. I’m point blank refusing a party at home this year because I am not going through that again when I really don’t have time.

Personally, it’s lack of time. We both work full time and the children have sports and activities most weekends. We used to entertain a lot pre children, but we simply don’t have the time or energy to do it now. On the rare occasion we do, we always enjoy it and say we should to it more often!

@MrsSunshine2b

ah I’m sure your dog would be less bothered than you think! Get yourself out and enjoy!

i dunno. I talk daily to my family online. My late mum would have loved to be able to facetime her grandchildren and GG"s when they were abroad for work.

wrong!!

I don't have a dog, but I have quite a few friends who I see rarely to never because their dogs have various psychological disorders which mean they can't be left alone, and I'm allergic to dogs so I can't go to them. Also family members who live too far away for a day trip but cannot leave the cats overnight, so we only see them if we visit them. However, the cats do not like children and so they spend the whole time on edge because our presence is upsetting the cats. They suggest that it would be better if we just made the 5 hour trip in one day, because the wellbeing of the cats is more important than the wellbeing of a toddler with car sickness...

My Mum recently had a falling out with a friend because the friend insisted on bringing her dogs with her everywhere and wouldn't go anywhere the dogs couldn't come. The dogs were not house trained. Quite embarrassing to have your friend join you for a pub lunch with dogs in tow and then have the dogs foul the carpet.

I doubt it's actually down to the pets tbh, I think it's more to do with the fact that at some point (maybe during COVID, maybe before) people started building little bubbles at home in which they have everything they need and never wanted to leave, and couldn't leave even even they wanted to. Pets, along with gardens and sourdough starters, are a part of that bubble.

Definitely doesn't apply to me as my dad has no friends and didn't ever go anywhere socially. He still doesn't! We weren't allowed friends in the house as kids really. The same went for my mum! They very rarely socialized as a couple.

In comparison, I'm much more laid-back and happy to have friends, partners friends and DDs friends round . I love going out aswell.

This is so lovely. What amazing neighbours. Made me happy to read

I completely agree on the dog thing. We had a dog when we were young, and often went out without her until 10/11pm. She'd be happy to see us when we came home but wouldn't be clingy or anxious. She was used to it. I think all the families who got dogs during the pandemic never left them for more than an hour, so when the world opened up, the dogs were conditioned to having someone at home all the time.

This happened with my brother's dog. If he was going to be at a family get together, he left the dog with a neighbour (and he reciprocated when they went out) but always had to leave around 7 to get back to the dog.

I'd agree, both parents working and possibly commuting, more after school activities, modern houses are bigger and we have more stuff so more time cleaning as well as keeping up with the day to day stuff like cooking and laundry. Lives are much busier now.

I speak as someone who has had dogs that couldn't be left and its really not easy. I suspect it was because some nasty neighbours (not my next doors) were shouting through the windows and banging on them while I was out. they also made allegations to the council about me and came to shout at me and bang on my door when I was home. Anyway my point is that it really does make things difficult but you take on a responsibility and that's that. I would never have taken them to other people's houses etcetera so I just did the things that I could do with them. They were both housetrained and fine with people. I think you kind of have a point with covid. Loads of people (many of whom should not have done) got puppies or older dogs, didn't have much idea (or bother to learn) about how to bring them up and they couldn't go to classes or take the dogs out to get them used to being in peoply areas, they just expected the poor dogs to get on with it....then they could go out again and go back to work and the poor dogs had to lump it...rescues overflowed. I am not sure what you want the cat family members to do?

Meeting up for a coffee for eg is an hour or so out of my day, I have no issue with that however people coming over sometimes they get to settled and can't take a hint. I genuinely don't know how people have the time or energy to socialise all the time.

Dogs can be a good excuse to head off home early, particularly when the babysitter years have passed ....

Socialising with wider family like cousins and aunts / uncles fell off a cliff around the same time everyone joined Facebook. I don't know if that was a coincidence. We had a baby but when they past newborn stage and we offered to drive up it was rebuffed. The can seewhats going on without having any real relationship. But now I don't really engage on FB as I'm thinking I'm never going to ever see over 50% of extended family again.

Went to see a uncle we hadn't seen in nine years last year and when he asked what we had been up too mil, talked over him and he didn't pick that topic back up when she stopped talking. I guess family think they know what's going via FB but it's very curated. It's what you want people too see and there's no connection it's like reading a paper.

After covid I found so much has changed. I have never been out in the evening once with my very social friend since.we meet up but everything is very informal.

After covid and not seeing extended family I don't think that will ever recover for me. There was an excuse and since then everyone is too busy for us to drive the hours. That's what we hear, oh sorry just been soo busy. Then after a while that in turn makes me feel uncomfortable as its been so long.

Covid was the perfect cover for some already antisocial or can't really be arsed types to break ties. It's also for my mate been the excuse to re evulate spending priorities as coffee and lunch is cheaper than dinner and drinking.

I know from my own friends group that the ones with grandchildren to look after have a lot less time to socialise these days. If they haven’t got them they’re then too tired to make the effort to go out.

I have no grandchildren and won’t be getting any and have lots of free time but majority of my friends have a lot more commitments than me so I don’t socialise half as much as I’d like to.

I am going to join another walking group and book club to socialise a bit more.