Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Does anyone actually like their parents, as people?

127 replies

Slowdownyouredoingfine · 01/09/2025 18:47

If your parent wasn’t your parent, would they be your friend? I find it really difficult to be around both my mum and dad (separated.) They annoy me. I can’t work out if this is universal amongst adult children or if some people genuinely like their parents.

My history with my parents is complicated so I won’t go into it, but I do worry one day my kids won’t like me too. Or is this just characteristic of a complicated childhood? Do you like your parents?!

YABU - I like who my parent/s are as people (whilst maybe finding them annoying sometimes)

YANBU - I do not like who my parents are as people and wouldn’t choose them as a friend.

OP posts:
opencecilgee · 01/09/2025 19:17

brunettemic · 01/09/2025 18:59

I have very little in common with my parents. It probably is affected by the fact that I’ve moved away and lead a very different life to them. I love them but often find speaking to them hard, my mum in particular has no ability to engage if you don’t agree with her and often steers the conversation to herself.

That sounds a bit brutal when I think about it.

Could have written this myself

Catsandcannedbeans · 01/09/2025 19:18

Yes. Me and my mum have a lot in common interest wise and I enjoy hanging out with her and her friends socially. My mum has a lot of younger friends as well from work, at her 60th birthday there were people there from ages 19-78 who were her friends (not including family). She is social and has lots of hobbies to be honest and most people like her - she can be difficult and does have a bit of a temper, but I really like her.

My dad I also get on with. While we have less in common he’s always fun to hang out with but that’s because he’s a bit immature and irresponsible. He is sober now, and before he was sober he was a bitter, unlikable, miserable man - who no one but the bar tender liked. I never thought I’d like him to be honest, but he is actually pretty cool and fun. He is also really really funny which makes it hard to stay mad at him.

tarheelbaby · 01/09/2025 19:19

They're weird and crazy but I still have long FaceTimes with both of my parents (I live in a different country; they have been divorced for decades and remarried others). I go home (yes, that's really home) to visit, taking my DDs, regularly and have a good time. If I lived closer, I'd definitely visit more often and they wouldn't mind.

They have their minuses and can be tricky but they are good, decent people, great for conversation because they are intelligent and educated and read widely and I care about them; we share plenty of interests. They contact (call/text/email) me and I send them messages as and when too. They are both early 80s, so have about 10yrs still, and I will miss them terribly when they are not around anymore.

Port1aCastis · 01/09/2025 19:20

Yes I'm good friends with my Mum, she's early sixties but favours a younger outlook and is very funny, she has a blonde updo and staggers around on her stilettos but she wouldn't be Mum without them. She's been very generous and I appreciate what she's done for me . My Dad died suddenly when I was 20 but I did like him and I remember how he used to play motown music all the time and he taught me to drive when I was a teen so I miss him.

WilfredsPies · 01/09/2025 19:23

Yeah, I really like her. She’s got a very dark sense of humour and we can make each other laugh. Also, she’s a very good judge of character, even if she does drive me mad sometimes.

My dad is dead, but we were nc beforehand. He was not a nice man. If we weren’t related, I wouldn’t have wanted to live in the same street as him, let alone be his friend.

TheresGoingToBeAMoidur · 01/09/2025 19:23

I do have friends of my parent's generation, but I don't like either of my parents. I love them, but they're both very difficult people and they were violent and abusive towards each other and to their children when we were young.

ItsnotnearlyChristmas · 01/09/2025 19:24

Yes! Both my parents are great. Both popular in their own right in their own right.

DS is not keen on me sadly.

MYOB12 · 01/09/2025 19:27

My DM was (been NC for a number of years now) abusive, aggressive, racist and a bully. I didn’t particularly like her when I was growing up. Was more scared of her than anything. Last I heard she’d only got worse. My DF…. I loved him. He was a gentle soul but a wet blanket. I doubt I’d have been friends with either of them tbh, but for very very different reasons.

Bananaandmangosmoothie · 01/09/2025 19:27

God, yeah. My Dad is one of the best people I’ve ever met. He’d give you the shirt off his back.

polkadothorse · 01/09/2025 19:30

ResusciAnnie · 01/09/2025 19:11

My parents are 65 & 67 and I have friends who are 60 & 62 so not wildly off. The friends’ views and approaches to life are very different to my parents’. Both friends are parents themselves, so it’s not like they’ve lived fresh free lives and their outlooks are unscathed by parenting.

My mum is quite opinionated and ‘says it like it is’ and not very loving. I’m sure you know the type. My dad is very demonstrative but can be very arrogant and condescending.

A very superficial example - both friends have tattoos, both parents are scathing of tattoos and would say ‘why on earth have they doodled on themselves? So cheap. What a slut’ 😱

Edited

I understand the tattoo thing. My DM looked at me with such disappointment when I got my first tattoo in my fifties. It was like nothing else about me mattered to her, and it really opened my eyes to how judgemental she is, a trait which I don’t like in a person.

Bushmillsbabe · 01/09/2025 19:31

I went with YABU, as my parents are wonderful people - kind, fun, smart, hard working and absolutely devoted to my DD's. But I actually don't think you are unreasonable, everyone is different. Some may have rubbish parents, some may have perfectly decent parents but they are just very different personality wise and don't really get along through no ones fault.

HeavensWhatASnappyCharriot · 01/09/2025 19:34

I absolutely adored my dad, both as a parent and a person. I love my mum of course but my dad was my favourite person-so sad he’s gone.

LaughingCat · 01/09/2025 19:36

I would be friends with my dad but my mum drives me bananas. She makes it difficult to love her, never mind like her. Rude, self-absorbed, drama-fuelled, belittling, hugely dysregulated and emotionally manipulative. She doesn’t actually have any friends herself, either and I’m pretty much the only family still talking to her. So no, I wouldn’t be friends with her. My dad is a quiet sort, into astronomy, Bob Dylan, science fiction and whisky. And he’s the other side of the political spectrum but not judgemental about people with differing views. We’d have great chats as friends.

ChrisMartinsKisskam · 01/09/2025 19:37

I loved and got on ok with my parents ( rows and all😳
I still see and pop in on their old neighbor as I’ve known her since I was a kid and I know they would like me to do that for them

harriethoyle · 01/09/2025 19:39

Yes - both of mine could make me laugh until I cried. And frequently did! It’s one of the things I love looking back on, genuinely gives me warmth inside. They were both very interesting people too. Don’t get me wrong, they both had irritating traits but there’s no one in my life that doesn’t (and I’m sure DH would say the same about me). It’s a nice position to be in particularly now DM is dead and DF has advanced dementia.

Popfan · 01/09/2025 19:40

I hugely like and love my parents and love spending time with them. I'm lucky I know. I play golf with my dad most Sundays and he's my favourite playing partner!

TheeNotoriousPIG · 01/09/2025 19:40

I would be friends with my mother. We are interested in quite a few of the same things (or perhaps she is just very good at pretending!), and I've been close to her from childhood, so we obviously get on!

I would never in a million years have been friends with my (abusive and then, thankfully, deceased) father. I was very clear, as a child, telling my mother that when I grew up, I would change my surname (so I didn't have his), he would not come to my wedding and he would not be allowed to see my children. I have changed my surname, their marriage put me off the idea altogether, and I don't have children yet, so I've stuck to the plan that 7/8 year old me concocted...!

purpleme12 · 01/09/2025 19:40

God this thread made me cry

KindnessIsKey123 · 01/09/2025 19:42

No, I would not be friends with my mother or my mother-in-law, but I do think they grew up in a very different time. Both of them had young families in a time where they had very ‘expecting’ mothers i.e. the daughters were expected to very much look after their mother…. Ring them all the time, host them all the time, go round with the children, entertain them, my dad was expected to go round and fix things all the time. Both my mother and mother-in-law lost their father when they were their 30s, so there was even more pressure to be the perfect daughter, and also to run their own families.

This made both my mother and mother-in-law tense controlling people. I think it’s just how they held it all together. And I think this is a difficult trait to leave behind. They didn’t have access to the things we do like chat forums or psychology podcasts. I think if they’ve had some psychological support in their 30s they both would be very different. I myself had some psychological support at age 25, because of this influence, and now I am so happy relaxed and can see how difficult their lives must’ve been.

Neither of them have been able to change- so I do find both of them difficult. But they struggled in a time when unless you had an en Encyclopedia or it was on one of the four TV channels, you just didn’t have much insight into things.

I do not think these days Mother’s place such huge expectations on their daughters as they did 40 years ago.

I do see how they both were, and think I must definitely will not be that mother to my son. I won’t expect him to entertain me at birthdays, or Christmas. But they will put under a lot of pressure. They had the sort of Mother who ‘I brought you up in therefore you owe me’ vibe.

My father is relaxed and amazing, and I have a great friendship with him. My husband‘s father is very similar. But I don’t think it is by chance that both of our mothers turned out controlling and the dads friendly & relaxed.

Bonjamin · 01/09/2025 19:42

I was lucky - I really liked my parents and actually admired them more as I got older and gained some perspective on what they’d achieved, not in monetary or awards terms, but in quietly resetting their horizons beyond what was expected of ‘people like them’. I wish I’d had longer with both of them: they were kind, decent, interesting human beings, and they made me feel completely loved.

ACertainSlantOfLight · 01/09/2025 19:44

My mum yes, my dad no.

hoohaal · 01/09/2025 19:44

I don’t think I’d be friends with either of them.

My Mum is great but she’s absolutely batty and makes no sense. Her energy is wild. She’s 100mph and I am absolutely exhausted after spending an hour with her.

My Dad was always pretty aggressive and is mega into conspiracy theories. It’s literally all he talks about. You can’t have a conversation about anything without it turning into a conspiracy theory chat.

So no, I don’t think I would be friends with either of them.

Mrscharlieeeee · 01/09/2025 19:45

I love my parents to bits. Love spending time with my mum and doing things just the 2 of us, really respect her and the career she achieved and she’s such a caring and loving person. I know how lucky I am to have her. My parents are divorced and my dad was seriously ill several years ago and now struggles with mobility and he’s a bit harder work (the illness affected his brain) but I still love him and cherish the brilliant dad he was growing up and the amazing childhood memories. Again, appreciate I’m very lucky.

DungareesTrombonesDinos · 01/09/2025 19:46

I wouldnt be friends with them and I dont like them a lot of the time. They are horribly small minded and racist and love Farage and my step Dad once said he would "push the boats back off the beach himself." I spend as little time with them as possible and luckily they've put 0% effort into seeing their grandchildren so none of them want to see them either.

Thepossibility · 01/09/2025 19:47

No I wouldn't like them at all. My Dad is such a bad man that he has that “run away" vibe, he drips with hatred for the world. DM is a victim of her own making. The type to fill her house with animals and have no money to feed them, to spend every last cent of her money on absolute needless shite and then be evicted for not paying rent. Not people I would ever want to know.