To think manners were always a 'thing'

[Hidingupatree]

I remember being a little girl and noticing that my mother never said 'please' or 'thank you' to anyone in the family. I remember resenting being told to 'pass me the butter' or 'go and get my purse' etc and as I approached the end of primary school, noticed other children's parents saying please and thank you to them and thinking it was so weird.

So then I decided to enforce 'please' and 'thank you' with my sister who is 6 years my junior. I remember being on this big mission to make sure she had lovely manners and I actually became obsessed with saying please and thank you to people.

Then when I had kids, my mum told me I was being bossy when I made my own children say please and thank you and that it was OTT. Everyone comments on what lovely manners my children have so I don't care if my mum thought i was being OTT.

Anyway, recently I was talking to mum and she said that when she was a child, nobody used manners (born in the 50s). I said what about at home? What if someone gave you something? She said that nobody ever handed her anything (!) and so there was never any need to say please or thank you. She said 'all this please and thank you stuff' is a modern thing and nobody taught their children to say it in her day.

Am I right in thinking that this is just rubbish and maybe her mum didn't bother with manners but the rest of her generation did?

Do you feel this is helpful? It is not polite.

That's why I was asking, I don't see what's funny in suggesting a parent would hit a child with a shoe but I accept we all have different senses of humour and I might have misunderstood

I'm not sure anyone is really that obtuse, but if your comment made you feel better that is the main thing.

What she was saying are absolutely no sense but she was trying to imply that nobody in her generation was raised with manners and that it's a modern day phenomenon.

Next Christmas, give her an etiquette book written in the 1950s. The book “Etiquette” by Emily Post was published in 1922! Here’s a version printed in 1950, so you can buy it now for her birthday or next Christmas:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254516235200?chn=ps&_ul=GB&mkevt=1&mkcid=28&google_free_listing_action=view_item

I don’t think it was a matter of not “wasting”, more that it would be odd. You’re family, you don’t need thanking, it’s a given because you’re so close. “Outsiders” on the other hand, who knows what they think?

For my grandparents it went, perhaps, a little further. A lot of manners like please and thank you weren’t really seen as genuine. You used them on non-family because you can’t rely on them, so you have to keep them sweet.

I find it odd too and say please and thank you to my DH and kids. But I think I grew up at a time when we didn’t feel quite as us v. the world.

Of course we did. My husband was born in 1950. I was born in 1961. We were both brought up to say please and thank you (both in the house and outside).

Its so weird isnt it. When my eldest was a toddler she would roll her eyes when I would insist they said please!

My mother was born in 1929 and she absolutely enforced manners when I was a child in the 1960s including holding knives and forks properly (not like we were holding a pencil), spooning the soup away from us etc. I remember children of my generation if they visited or went to a birthday party always saying, "Thank you for having me." In fact, manners are far less strict these days than they once were. These weren't affluent prople either.

I think it was Peter Drucker (author and management consultant) who stated that, 'Manners are the lubricating oil of any organisation'. Although, as a child, growing up in the sixties, I found it tedious to say 'please'. 'thank you', 'excuse me' and to say 'sorry' so many times, I felt like I was apologising for my own existence, I now realise that manners really do help society to run smoothly.

This is particularly so when we live on a rather overcrowded island, where we are likely to (literally) bump into other people, or we need someone to pass something at some time.

That said, I do not think polite words are always a sign of good manners. I used to know someone who would regularly use 'please' and 'sorry' when she was swearing. Arguments would end with her barking, 'Peter! Will you please F off!' or, 'I am really sorry, Sally, but you are full of s!'