Husband says he is embarrassed by our adult kids

[TudorMary]

This is my first post and it’s long and has a few strands and don’t know where to start I keep rewriting.

I thought we were happy and husband was a good father. Kids no longer go on holiday with us etc and this upsets my husband.

Three kids. Elder 2 definitely took scenic route. Dropped out of uni, now happily working, 2 initially took science, failed 1st year exams, took year out now finishing 2nd year of Humanities degree at local university. Both live at home along with number 3 who last week came home to say she was convinced she had failed one of her papers, I think this is correct having done big of research which means she won’t get first choice and she now wants year off.

My husband has gone fucking ballistic and has gone from blaming me to blaming himself for not standing up to me. He has called all the kids losers but thankfully not to their faces but has said to daughter she will have to go to whatever uni will have her.

Now if you are with me! Husband close to brother and I actually like him and his wife but only when we meet them alone. When the kids were younger I used to have anxiety every time we saw them with kids. They had tons of them. It was chaotic. Litter on the floor. Debris everywhere. Rotting food the lot. Kids were sworn in front of, occasionally sworn at, if a risqué anecdote had to be told it was told no matter if the kids were around. and spoken at like they were 30. No concessions were ever made for their age.

First time we went out a four year old actually summoned a waiter to order another fizzy drink. Two year old given a knife to cut their birthday cake. I was on tenterhooks and no exaggeration sometimes took to my bed after seeing them.

Well every single one of their older children are either at medical school, are studying or graduated from an Oxbridge College.

My husband is now suggesting sister-in-law is parent of the year and he should have stood up to my prissy ways. A bone of contention is that they all still holiday together whereas our kids don’t want to know. He is embarrassed by our beautiful kids.

I am so sorry this is a novel. I am heartbroken thinking I must have done something wrong.

Did you push them to attend uni though? It may have been that none actually wanted to go hence the poor performance. Tbh if they all get jobs then I don't see what the drama is, uni isn't the be all and end all.

TBF it's okay to expect your adult children to actually move out and begin their adult life. I would be quite embarrassed too if all three of my adult kids were living with me with no concrete plans to move out and fly the nest. It does point a little towards 'failure to launch' and I'd be worried about their prospects and futures. It does kids no good to be coddled long term and never have to make their own way in the world.

I wouldn’t be with any man who described my kids as an embarrassment. Ta-ta

This. He’s disrespected his whole family, of which he probably feels he is head of. The wife he chose, the sons he raised. I wouldn’t be impressed. He might as well wave a flag that says “I’m an idiot”.

All that really matters is that they're happy and healthy.

And yes they will be picking up on their dads disappointment in them, doesn't sound like a happy family so no wonder they don't want to go away

I was with you u til your horrible judgemental nonsense

We grew up poor, my youngest aunts kids grew up well off

They clearly judged us.

All of us have careers and and bought our own homes and are successful by any measure.

Aunt's children, not 1 has completed a degree and gone on to get a job.

Examine your own judgements, your husband sounds like an a hole but you don't come off much better to me.

We would have given our mum the earth or the moon had she asked for it because of the personal efforts she put into raising us and remained incredibly close but she died very young

My aunts kids definitely aren't holidaying with my aunt but we'd have holidayed with my mum AND paid her share. My aunts remain bitter. Unconditional love and acceptance Incase your wondering, is what I put my mums parenting down to

That's my point really though - the dad in this scenario is supporting one kid through five years of university, and is about to support another one who wants a gap year and sounds pretty flaky about their future. (I'm only saying the dad because the mum doesn't seem bothered about this). Which isn't abnormal at 18. But it's expensive for parents - and even at that age, you can't expect your parents to just endlessly hand over the funds for whatever you want to do with your life. If that's what the kids think - that Mum and Dad will keep on paying for everything until such a day as they finally think it's time to leave home, possibly in their 30s or 40s - I can see why the dad is pissed off!

It's conjecture though as obviously we're only getting half the picture of what's happening here.

I would imagine the dc find dh disappointing too. Since they are all adults those feelings are fairly irrelevant though and extremely bad manners to share.
Tell him to suck it up.

But surely you can see that there is a middle ground between your in-laws' approach and your own? I'm sure your husband isn't suggesting you should have filled your house with cat shit or let your kids call each other cunts, but equally perhaps he's suggesting that you could have been a bit more relaxed and fretted less about certain things.

FWIW, I think your DH sounds like a prick, and I suspect the reason your kids and his brother's kids have taken different paths is simply because his brother's kids are simply more academic than yours, not because of your approach to parenting. So it's kind of a moot point anyway.

I do not think it’s appropriate for preschoolers or anyone for that matter to have a to have a ton of fizzy drinks

OK. But as you can see, the preschoolers in question here have apparently turned out very well, so it hasn't actually done them any harm.

Just because you happen to believe something is 'inappropriate' that doesn't mean it's intrinsically wrong. It's your judgement and your opinion. Some people fuss a lot over things like a fizzy drink in a restaurant or swearing or a child cutting their own birthday cake. Others don't. That's all. You don't have to let your kids do those things, but you do need to take the stick out of your arse about other people doing them.

Would I give a four year old Coke to drink every time they were thirsty? No. Would I care if they drank a load of Coke at a restaurant once in a blue moon at a family meal out? Also no, because it's really not the end of the world.

That's a very low bar...

When my eldest DS was 3 yrs old he was a page boy at a family wedding. He went round all the wee cousins asking what they wanted to drink then strolled up to the bar and ordered a round! 😂

Why do people judge themselves/ others by how well their children are doing? I find it bizarre! Your husband is comparing you all. Your children to theirs, his wife to his SIL. It’s kind of hilarious to an outsider that you both judged them, their kids & their parenting and thought you were better than them and their kids have gone on to do better academically than yours. It wouldn’t matter what you did or didn’t do tbf humans are INDIVIDUALS lots of factors such as genetics, intelligence, determination, as well as upbringing contributes. A lot of the time those who have had to struggle, use that to get on in life. I think you and your husband need to learn to separate your achievements or self of worth from your children and learn to love them and be proud of them no matter what.

Depends on your definition of normal though and how far you stretch it. In my circles most things on your list are not normal.

I think resilience and independence are vital life skills that children should be brought up to have.

Most students live away from home. Most don't fail courses or leave university.
If you're an intelligent family then it's normal to want or even expect your children to go to a respected university and have good well paid careers with excellent progression.

In my extended family everyone in 3 generations all went to university, have got excellent careers, very successful lives, even the ones who haven't long graduated.It would be extremely unusual if any hadn't gone to university or had dropped out.

If OP's husband comes from that kind of family I can understand why he is upset and disappointed, especially as it's happened with all 3 of their children, plus there's an obvious contrast with his nieces and nephews. I expect he's lashing out because he's upset but of course he's totally wrong to blame OP.

Wow, there are so many different ways of parenting and no single way is 100% guaranteed to turn out successful kids in the 'conventional' sense. All kids, just like all adults, are different. Some are naturally academic and will go down that path regardless of their upbringing and some can study so hard and still never quite get there. There's is no single route to success, and in any case success looks different to everyone.

More importantly, your husband sounds rather like my father and I've never wanted to spend any time with him. I object to a meal, never mind a holiday.

Honestly I think I grew up in a house more like yours than your SIL's. It didn't work for me, it was never happy and relaxed. Despite that I managed to do very well for myself but in truth the parts of my life which made my parents proud such as the high powered career were not the times I was happiest. Far from it.

By contrast my own kids (younger than yours) are thriving on what people would call benign neglect - and my parents simply can't understand it. They completely disapprove of what they see as my lax, hippy parenting and can't understand at all how my kids are more polite and happy than we were, why our household is full of laughter and we actually enjoy spending time together instead of having to force it and endure miserable results. While I am very strict in certain areas (mostly to make my own life easier) such as manners and behaviour, we do swear around (not at) them and have adult conversations in their company. They are certainly encouraged to order their own drinks while out. However we also all sit down together and talk a lot. There is no 'seen not heard' attitude and I shut that down hard when my father ever demonstrates that when we're all together. They are encouraged to ask questions and we explain adult concepts to them (hopefully) in a way they can understand. They definitely understand that swearing is not appropriate in certain company but that we use it at home to demonstrate feeling a certain way about something. We encourage learning and independence but we also make very sure to accept them as they are and help them learn from mistakes. One of ours is much more academic than the other but we make sure they understand that all sorts of different skills should be valued and that we love and are proud of them for whatever they are good at. So different to our house growing up - my husband and I use our own parents as a kind of guide to how NOT to do parenting.

@TudorMary I'm afraid you do sound like a reverse intellectual snob and that's part of what always made uncomfortable around your more academic SIL, which you are trying to blame on her cleaning regime. In our house I am the academic snob, university educated, literary and definitely not good enough at housework. My husband left school at 15, followed his father into a trade and really loves his job, and the truth is that at this point in our lives he earns at least as much as I once did in a very impressive career (I long ago left behind). It's his money now that allows us to have a big house and a lovely life, not my education. Our success is absolute in the sense that we are very happy but it wasn't achieved in the way the very conventional would approve of.

There's no point at this stage in us telling you that you've both done parenting all wrong. However you should encourage your husband to get over his ugly little tantrum and start looking at your children as the individuals they are instead of idealised reflections of himself. Pushing your youngest to go to 'whichever university will take her' is likely to result in a repeat of history. Try talking to her and find out what she would really like to do, then maybe help her towards it. The older two don't sound like failures unless you use your husband's very narrow parameters. He sounds very out of touch with the realities of life for young people in 2025.

Presumably when he calms down he'll apologise for being such a twat. If not you might really have to start questioning some of your own life choices.

I would just assume their kids are more academic. I have no idea why anyone is talking about cleanliness of the home as a marker for university studies.

Agree. There is more than one measure of success and happiness.

What exactly does your H mean by your 'prissy' ways?

Not quite sure where to start, but perhaps let's go with your husband is being an arsehole.

First of all, you seem to be very fixated on your BIL and SIL and how they raised their children. All families are different and just because you have a clean house and firm rules and boundaries doesn't mean you are necessarily better or your children will do better than other families who - from your perspective - appear to live in chaos. From what little insight we have into their family based on what you have said, your nieces and nephews appear to be happy, successful adults who have not been held back by their relaxed and chaotic upbringing.

If you and your husband were very judgemental of your BIL and SIL and genuinely believed that your way of bringing up children was the right way and their way was the wrong way, I can understand why it may have come as a shock to you that their children have on the face of it done better than yours. You should probably have been less fixated on them and cared less about what they were doing.

As for your own children, it is breathtakingly unfair of your husband to blame you for the fact that they haven't done as well as he had hoped. They are his children. What was he doing all that time they were growing up under your roof? Did he organise activities for them? Did he make any effort to look for a new flute teacher? When you were spending time trying to stay on top of housework so that you and your children could live in a clean, comfortable and hygienic environment, what was he doing? Why wasn't he doing the Guardian cryptic crossword with them or quizzing them on their times tables or making them practise their musical instruments or getting them to recite Shakespeare or teaching them to play chess?

It's too late now to say that YOU should have been doing all these things when they were small. They're not small anymore, and if these things were important to him, he should have done them at the time.

Lots of people want their children to be exceptional, but the reality is that most people are ordinary children who grow into ordinary adults. Millions of children are growing up in deprived circumstances and if your children were properly fed, clothed, cleaned and loved, their childhood was a pretty decent one by many people's standards.

It sounds like your children, although adults, are still quite young adults. They have time to figure out what they want to do with their lives and make it happen. They haven't failed at life just because they didn't go to Oxbridge. And if they really want to learn the flute, there's no reason why they can't pick it up now.

Your husband is being a dick, and if he displays this attitude towards your children all the time it is completely unsurprising that they don't want to go on holiday with him.

Nope if you had done any research at all before commenting this you would know there are going to be thousands of UK doctors unemployed come August. The NHS has hired too many international doctors who are more experienced than those in the UK and are not training UK graduated doctors. It is a huge and ongoing issue between the BMA and the Government.

I feel very glad I don’t work there and the country I work in at least prioritises local graduates for jobs and training positions

If your DH is unhappy with the kids living at home and not studying at high-flying unis he needs to set a date for them to move out. What would improve his enjoyment of his life and family? Work towards that - but it can’t be his kids being different people, as they are now adults and the ship has sailed.

The comparisons with in-laws, from both of you, are pathetic. So what if their kids are academically gifted? What difference does that make to your life? Equally, your judgement about you niece and nephew’s upbringing is nasty. Obviously the parents didn’t do a terrible job as the kids are happy and successful now - not everybody prioritises ‘standards’ of cleanliness and compliance over embracing mess, chaos and creativity in a loving way. You are now seeing that your very rigid parenting style has its limitations in terms of producing confident capable young adults. But whatever, life is long and most people find their way. Don’t compare and work with your husband to focus on enjoying what you have.

And to add ‘taking to your bed’ because someone else’s child ordered a fizzy drink in a restaurant and their cat pooped on the floor is amazingly melodramatic.

The belief appears to be the more academic and talented children are the more filthy & untidy their home is 😂

Would you only be happy if your children went to Oxford and then became a surgeon ?

YES! 🤣🤣

All 3 of my children wanted to go to university.
DS1 went and was disappointed and he definitely chose the wrong course. Both DH and I agreed that we should have done more research and advised him that the course he chose was very theoretical.

DS2 chose Science and we did advise him not to do this course which involved Coding which he found difficult. He could have actually stayed on he wasn’t thrown out or anything. He has now finished 2nd year and is happy.

Many, many of my friends have kids still at home or have come home. Come to think of it two of BL and SiL’s have been back at some point and one is back now.

My daughter screwed up on one paper and we both said to her not to worry she still might get into first choice.

Husband lost it when she suggested she would have year off but his anger is directed at me it them.

My house rules. There are 5 loos in our house. I have a rule that the one in the hall is only used by guests. So everyone who needs loo has to either go upstairs or walk 10 paces to the loo in the utility.
No food and drink in front room,
Meals at table and we divvy jobs at end of meal. Dishwasher, sides and floor . This takes less than 5 minutes.

I genuinely am not a neat freak.
I have no anxiety whatsoever.

I found kids drinking unlimited fizzy drinks, eating family bags of crisps,watching Sleepy Hollow at Halloween with a cat shitting under book cases and and in corners with literally litter on the floors migraine inducing. nappies changed, rolled up and left on floor. Seriously would you think this is normal?

Kitchen from the 80s collapsed with doors hanging off. A bucket put under sink as no pipes existed. This went on for two years before new kitchen was considered and that only happened after the hob went and they barbecued for three months.

No issue with kids ordering food but another bottle of coke at the age of 4. No! None of my family or friends would allow this.

The two year old with a sharp knife is now married with a baby himself and living with his parents before retraining as a vicar so the person who thought their kids would favour the in-laws wasn’t right,

I have no idea how they parented because I didn’t see them on school days. I know my daughter was told to put her little DS away at in-laws as husband’s niece showed an interest in it. It was my husband who bought our boys a PlayStation which he plays himself.

She is a character my sister-in-law and both of them once compered a fundraiser and qui at a cricket club my friend was at. She said it was like watching professional comedians.

I am not a judgmental person but draw the line at a cat spraying on my 9 year old as she sat down and people finding it funny!

OP mentions they’re happy, or to quote her “a happy sweary family”.