Worried about future generations lack of personal history

[Allonthesametrain]

Just had a big family get together and sharing experiences of growing up. GPs stories of WW2, growing up on rations, real history dialogue, which we as DC know, also our DC were enthralled.

Us as parents, growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in our youths, we tell them how we lived before major technology, they listen to our music and love some if it.

I do wonder, our DC will share their experiences of growing up and, not all I know, but had a gender reveal, had princess outfits every birthday, told how beautiful I was every day on SM by parents and everyone.

Just such a vast contrast when as kids we were expected to be not seen and heard to being the centre of attention.

So going forward, being the centre of attention within the sphere of adoring parents and all attached, is this realistic for expecting everyone else in the real world our DC has to go in to?

Of course not. Our DC and are indeed the centre of our world but posting on SM every birthday, how amazing he/she looks, does set a predecent to expectations.

Our DC know first hand about the struggles of the past, but go forward a few generations, no matter what has been passed on, it's irrelevant.

Am I being a bit concerned that several generations from now, not for all but many people, will only know the newest false eyelashes, plastic surgery, pumped up lips, following a sheep fashion of long straightened hair or whatever is in vogue for model perfection.

I know this is beyond my time on earth but it's natural to worry about what the future holds for our future world 🌎

If it helps, my grandparents worried that we were hopelessly cosseted and spoiled in the 90s. Now people keep bringing that up as some nostalgic era where kids ran free!

Feeling like you do is just because you're getting older, I'm afraid. You are feeling how ageing generations have felt for time immemorial.

You think every child now goes on enriching experiences and trips abroad? The current figure is that 4.5 million children in the UK live in poverty.

3.4 million children in the UK live in abject poverty. It’s not a badge of honour, it’s a horrible indictment. How much more suffering do you want to see?

Why do you think young people today don't speak about the relevant big ticket items like you did e.g., climate change, the resurgence of right wing ideologies, inequality, war, etc?

Either way, you and your DC only know about the struggles of the recent past first hand, like pretty much everyone. Expecting children a few generations forward to care of know about living in post ww2 Britain or what it was like to listen to music in the 70s would be like expecting you to understand what it was like to live during The Seven Years' War or to be listening to Bach live.

So, to put it in my mother's terms, you worry that they're 'not finding out what life is all about'? Yeah, I think they are. Pandemic, global recession, mine have lived through a couple of natural disasters, shifting countries, the ever increasing threat of global warfare while right wing nationalism is a nearly universal growing threat, - every generation has their crosses to bear, and too often the generation before minimises the latter generations' while maximising their own, viewed through increasingly rose tinted glasses!

If someone was an adult in WW2, they would be over 100 now. We have one relative that fits into that category and tells stories of catching a train to London to join in the V.E. day celebrations, amongst over stories.

The worry for me now is the disappearance of physical items and documents to record history.

At my workplace we have archives of documents nearly 150 years old. What we don't have are documents from 15 years ago as they are all digitised, and in the era of GDPR and Data Protection , deleted if we don't have any practical use for them.

Obviously there will be general world events archives, and as people have said, our children have lived through a pandemic and a near global shut down.

At the moment we have a rise of far right and populist politicians..our children will be able to talk about the bizarreness of Donald Trump for 8 years as President of a world power for example, and how dangerous that has been.

They will talk about the huge advances in technology , A.I. etc.

Every generation will have its own history, it's great achievements and huge disasters.

Us as parents, growing up in the 1970s and 1980s in our youths, we tell them how we lived before major technology, they listen to our music and love some if it.

Your own memories are hardly full of struggle and hardship, anyway, it seems? Music and not having things that weren't yet invented?

Life happens to everyone eventually and I wouldn't worry about them not having enough experience to talk about. The world itself isn't exactly headed for calm waters... If you think about the challenges and upheavals our time right now is on the brink of bringing about, it makes me feel dizzy. Our kids are experiencing the AI revolution and will be faced with the fundamental challenge of sustaining life on this planet, of redefining old economic models and political models whilst experiencing unprecedented technological and medical advances. I seriously wouldn't worry about them not experiencing enough 'history'! It's more about how you open their eyes to what's going on in the world around them. That's the challenge for you as a parent.

@Crocsarentslippers

The worry for me now is the disappearance of physical items and documents to record history.

Nail on the head. Like family photos. I've got photos passed down from my parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Yes, over the years, they've been "weeded" down by each generation, so relatively few now, but I keep them in a box and they'll be there for my son and hopefully his children etc. Various notes have been written on the back and also other paperwork to explain who was who etc.

If all that was digitised, heaven knows where it would end up, it's easy to lose a flashdrive or for it to become damaged, or if it's online, it's easy to forget a login or to renew a subscription, especially if my son didn't think about family history for several decades to come.

Yes, I know physical records can be lost, forgotten and destroyed too, but to my mind, having a physical box of stuff is more likely to survive house moves and deaths than something tiny like a flashdrive or something intangible like an online directory.

It's a bit like "real" history of the country. Some battles are well known simply because the historic records survived whereas others are barely known at all because the records were lost, often in Henry VIII's reign due to his destruction of monasteries, abbeys and friaries where records were typically kept. It is very dependent on the area, with some such places surviving in tact and all such places in other areas being destroyed. If those hadn't survived, we'd have virtually no knowledge of the battles and local history of those areas too.

I'm a paramedic my 8yo DD always asks me for a rundown of my shift. Not all our lives are boring and uneventful and some of us talk to our kids and don't plaster them on social media.

It sounds like you are concerned about your own lifestyle and parenting style but trying to justify it as a societal problem rather than do something about it.

I was about to say that my mum is pushing 80 and has only very vague recollections of post-war rationing which stopped when she was 5 (9 year after WWII had ended).

Surely most grandparents of young children are from the post-war generation? Feels a bit like that strange Farage-fueled phenomenon of baby boomers acting like they fought in the war & nostalgia for tough times.

Anyway if you go on social media you see loads of memes arguing Gen Z and Millennial’s have lived through unprecedented hardships so I guess they aren’t worried about having it to easy 🤷‍♀️

As for stuff like WW2 that’s not going to be in living memory for much longer but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be forgotten.

If your parents were small children in WW2 that would likely put you in the "boomer" generation (original meaning not the perjorative). Fun fact, that is the first generation in Western Europe to live an entire lifetime and never experience war directly in 2000 years. So if "living through war" is the experience in question then you would be the first generation not to have that, not todays children. But that's a good thing. I sincerely hope it's something my child also experiences though I fear it won't be.
That doesn't mean children born post WW2 had no bad experiences. Stuff happened every decade (miners strike, oil crisis, cold war, nuclear worries, terrorism). But today's children have already lived through big historical events (COVID, deep fake porn, social media madness, fears of AI job losses, Trump). And that's just the last few years. They really haven't had it easier. And I think being slightly wistful/concerned about the fact they haven't experienced things like the blitz is something that comes from a place of not directly experiencing war yourself.