All parents are toxic narcissists apparently and all adult children have experienced trauma …

[ElspethBulgeworthythethird]

Is anyone else a bit cheesed off with the on-line rhetoric that teens and young adults seem to be plugged in to nowadays…? That somehow everyone is a victim?

That every parent is toxic or a narcissist and every woman over fifty is a “Karen”?

That everyone is suffering from trauma or needs to “heal their inner child”

Oh and then there are all the “special” on-line morning routines that involve, er, getting up, washing, eating your breakfast and maybe exercising; all of which I thought were just standard things that most people did every day without much fuss.

I don’t mean to sound horrible or unsympathetic. Of course there are some young men and women who have suffered truly awful upbringings and serious abuse which has traumatised them terribly. I am not addressing them in this post as of course they need proper support.

This post is about the comfortable young adults I know (my adult children and teens and their friends) who seem to buy in to the rhetoric of victimhood when I happen to know that they have loving parents and come from good homes where their parents willingly made lots of sacrifices for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I happen to think that the period of life between leaving university and getting your first job is one of the most challenging you experience as a young adult; when the struggle finding a job and a flat and new friends and standing on your own feet financially is suddenly very real all at once.

It’s just the culture of this generation that seems to make everyone in to a victim that I object to? Somehow everyone is “special” and “in need of healing” and I get labelled toxic if I say to my young adults that although you are special to me, we are just a very ordinary family, and life is about getting on with things and working hard and not blaming everyone else when you don’t put in enough effort and commitment yourself.

I have a problem with the concept that all feelings should be validated.

Why should they? You can feel whatever you feel but I don't understand why everyone has to pat you on the back and say the feelings are valid when very often they are not!

it’s the inability to recognise that life is hard for everyone, not just themselves This has a hint of bitterness - it was shit for me, what gives you the right to expect anything better?

The 'life is shit for everyone' message is not one of hope. It also doesn't make people want to talk to you.

Of course life is difficult for everyone. Good friends take it in turns to give each other a kind ear, not a lecture.

It does annoy me too op, I mean I do kind of get it because lots of us do have issues which originate from our early childhood experiences and perhaps how our parents were with us.

I had good parents who loved me and tried to do their best for me but they had their own issues and made a ton of mistakes with me and failed me in lots of ways, they were really young when they had me and I think they thought having a child would be all magic and rainbows and it isn't. As soon as I was no longer a baby my mum just wanted a new baby and when she got one she couldn't really be bothered with me much after that and because my personality rubbed her up the wrong way I ended up the family scapegoat and my younger sibling was the golden child a dynamic which has damaged us both. I could go on.

However I don't resent my parents and I don't feel like anymore of a victim than anyone else, this is just normal life stuff, nobody has it perfect and if you are fed, clothed, warm, dry, loved then I think your parents did a decent job and you will be ok. Perhaps not amazing or super successful but you'll be ok.

I think while it is fine to acknowledge where your parents made mistakes with you it is immature to stay stuck blaming them. I do see that the idea that you ask your parents to be accountable for your issues is getting more common online, often it is stated that you should ask your parents to pay for therapy as a way to make up for what they did and to show they understand and are accountable (I'm sure therapists came up with that one).

I do think their is a trend now to want to have labels and diagnoses in order to get validation and that these for young and even older people become an integral part of their identity. I think the information you get from a diagnosis should be integrated and used usefully to better your life but I don't think letting it become a big part of your identity is a good idea at all because again you get stuck there, you become a victim.

I can understand that these days when people especially young people all feel like they should be amazing, and smashing it, and being digital nomads or whatever. There is huge pressure to be exceptional and special, to have something that makes you stand out. The thing is that most people don't stand out, most people are ordinary, kind of boring, normal people who will never do anything that special or important, who will look average, get average qualifications and do average jobs, who will perhaps fail more then they succeed. Who will waste hours social media rather than working out or doing said morning routine and then they will think what is wrong with me? Why am I like this. Possible honest answer is that they just aren't that motivated or interested in doing what they think they should be doing but they will prefer to cling to the idea that they were made like this, that something is wrong that they have a diagnosable issue.

Having these issues a diagnosis or being a victim gives them both an excuse for their perceived failure and also something that the can slap on as an identity and therefore it is very validating for them and they hate to have it questioned because it is a massive comfort blanket for them.

Fads swing backwards and forwards and this is just a cultural fad in reaction to the very laid back parenting of the 80s and 90s, which didn't focus too much on mental health and family stability at its core. Now the dad has swung the other way and this generation is hyper-aware of those things and see it every where they go. Neither is right IMO or accurate, its just these fads have to be extreme to survive or gain traction.

I sort of agree but I think the 20/30 year olds now are more referring to the fact that growing up, mostly everyone was not given the right tools to deal with their emotions. Everything was “you’ll be fine” “stop crying” “stop being silly” teaching those children to internalise any negative feeling because those negative feelings made parents uncomfortable - that’s why you have a large portion of that generation with some deep rooted mental health problems. Whereby on the outside, they look fine, they were taught to present a positive/serene image, but on the inside they’re just pushing every negative feeling down until it comes forth in uglier ways. Mental health services on its knees because nobody was taught how to communicate how they felt and deal with it effectively.

So yes whilst the younger generations aren’t (largely) receiving physical abuse, there was definitely some form of emotional neglect that wasn’t even done on purpose. People actually thought they were helping by hushing away their problems, but obviously now it’s starting to show that itcpresents a bigger problem down the line

You don’t agree that life is about “getting on with things? Surely all the most important things we do - such as love each other - are verbs?

Talk without action is meaningless surely? It’s not what we try to do or think about doing that is significant but what we actually do?

In many ways I agree with you of course about there being good and bad in every generation. Of course that objectively must be true.

And you have more experience of these matters if you work with young adults Midnightoncemore.

The only thing I will say is that in my experience, and that of my friends, a teen can be absolutely delightful to their teachers and out in public and then come home and dump all of their emotional hot potatoes on their parents and treat them pretty horribly. Because you as a parent act to a certain extent as their emotional shock absorber. It’s only later when they are in their mid-twenties that they learn to treat you as a fellow human being.

I’m not saying that happens in every family but in many. My friends and I used to smile at the school’s description of our children as delightful, helpful, etc when we couldn’t persuade them to put away their own washing at home!

I think people of parenting age who had little emotional education/support themselves will struggle to deal with their children's more visible and verbalised emotions in general. It is very hard to see people struggle and an easy solution is to tell them to get on with it.

Younger people do express their emotions in a way that is unfamiliar to many people who grew up in the 70s and 80s. In my school if a young male was having a bad day they had a fight. A young female might have a nasty row. Deflect deflect deflect. Cover cover cover.

I agree with this.

Parents make choices that impact their DC. The parents may not have acted with the intention of harming their DC, but it's still has an impact and can cause trauma in childhood. That trauma has an impact on the DC as they become an adult.

My parents were very young when I was born. Some traumatic things happened. My DM became mentally very unwell. I wasn't parented very much for much of my childhood. I became a very anxious and unhappy adult due to the lack of parenting and living with an unwell parent.

What happened during my childhood was not necessarily the fault of my parents, they did not intentionally harm me, and I have compassion for the difficulties they faced in my childhood.

But that doesn't mean I wasn't damaged by it, and I don't think they were good parents. It wasn't my DMs fault, but she wasn't a good mother, and that hugely impacted me.

You don’t agree that life is about “getting on with things? Surely all the most important things we do - such as love each other - are verbs?

I think life is about working out who you are and what things you want to do. We can all 'do' anything but doing the wrong thing for us is not good.

Surely we want our children to choose carefully who they bestow their love upon? That bit of working things out takes time. Kids now have more thinking to do. Every generation brings more options. They may live to 100, and with good health - dementia, cancer may be curable in 50-60 years time. We know the brain is not fully mature until mid 20s.

People my generation were rushed. Jobs and marriage and babies by 16/17 was once normal, but not right for these times.

I say judge them once they are 40-50 and running things. Do the current generation in control of the world look like they have all the answers? Not to me.

Reetnice I have mixed feelings and a degree of confusion about your post because while I agree that it’s far better now that our parenting is kinder and more sensitive and in tune with a child’s emotions and not dismissive of them … but on the other hand … why do our teens and young adults seem more and more depressed and unhappy when our parenting has been more involved and kinder than ever before?

And why do the older generation who lived through the trauma of a Second World War appear to be the most resilient of all?

Doesn’t every generation like to disparage the one after them? People have shared research about ACEs. Modern parenting is great in some ways and bad in others. Bad things still happen and it isn’t fair as it always has been. I think more people now are happy to question it.

Like not bringing children into situations they think are rubbish whereas in the past some people just thought well having kids is what you do. I think the rise of child free adults is proof of people just thinking more and having choices.

Another example is people being less willing to stay silent in the face of unfairness. I feel like as a black woman on the UK I can share and hear more from others who give names to the things I’ve experienced which make me feel less alone and validated.

But I don’t know OP is there a prize for bringing children into a rigged game and saying just accept it and get on?

I’d say our young adults have worse MH because if other factors too.
Its not just about the lathers but about society as a whole, our environment (I know my own adult dc will say they are really worried both about climate change and about the state of politics/economy in the U.K.). They are struggling to establish relationships too.
Basically it’s multifaceted. And we do have a responsibility into that too (and our own parents too)

Not being hugged once isn’t emotional neglect.

But you were just a causal observer of that situation. You would have no idea what is going on. My 19 year old Ds is autistic with significant mental health difficulties. I talk on his behalf most of the time, as it's too difficult for him to do it.
Nice to know that we are probably being judged without anyone knowing the background to what they are seeing.

Tbh I do think I’ve messed up.
Looking back I’ve made many unwise decisions.

Did I abuse them? Nope. But I know first hand that trauma doesn’t have to mean being hit.

Yes it’s ‘if you can’t handle me at my worst you don’t deserve me at my best, but someone else’s worst is abusive’

Who knows. A trainee of mine aged 25 said she was fending for herself now her parents were abroad and took herself to a&e with a slight fever.

That woman could have asked daddy to take her to hospital. Who knows

I think this is a known issue, as kids born prior to the 90's we played out for hours on our own with very little supervision getting into all kinds of trouble at ages 6-10 say. This is an apparently vital stage of development where we learn to deal with conflict amongst ourselves as opposed to having an adult always sort it out for you which is what tends to happen now. Once you miss that stage of development at that time in your life it is very difficult to gain those skills and so as you enter adulthood and should be launching into the world you can't cope with things, you get anxiety and lose yourself in potentially bad habits that you use for emotional regulation. These young people on some level believe that other people (parents) should be sorting things out for them even in adulthood because that is what has been happening all their lives, they don't have the resources or resilience to do it themselves

But it’s not this generation of 20-30 years olds who might have been told that, is it? Surely every generation of the 20th century will have been told similar, and let’s not get into the Victorian era of either children should be seen &not heard, or working from the age of 5…

what is so unique about this generation of 20-30 years olds that might be driving this specific behaviour? (Again, none of this is about those who have suffered genuine trauma). The only real societal change has been the explosion of social media

Yes I agree that planned intentional parenthood is a great improvement on the past. Although in some ways, many of the most important things we do, like meeting our husbands and partners, very often happen by chance. But having a child when you feel ready and without pressure is a great improvement on having one because it’s the done thing.

And of course, I think we all need to be taught more about racism and it’s only a good thing that there is increased awareness and that you feel comfortable calling it out.

I don’t know where I said “life’s unfair just accept it and get on with it” I hope my parenting is a bit more subtle and nuanced than that. Even though, action is probably the answer in so many contexts.

I acknowledge life is a struggle and so much harder for some than others but , as stated further down , this thread is really referring to the dc who have had it easier and who have had a good start in life and yet still consider themselves victims.

And why do the older generation who lived through the trauma of a Second World War appear to be the most resilient of all?

Is there actual evidence those who went through ww2 were more resilient? Many were deeply scarred. There would have been more wife beating, marital rape, child beatings in that generation for example. The number of women extremely unhappy and putting up with it was very high.

I want more for my kids than an emotionally cold life. Is 'being able to put up with marital rape without moaning to your mother' the model we want going forwards?

Many had long term PTSD after the war. They just hid it, as they had to.

I do think most people have things to heal from about their childhood’s, but that’s not the same as saying most parents are abusers. I have no doubt there will be less than ideal stuff I have done with my kids (still little) because I’m human and mess up. I’m still learning. I think the key thing is can your parents hear the things that hurt, acknowledge and apologise/ explain without denying or being defensive? I hope I will.

Gen Z are immature in part because what is societally acceptable for tweens and teens to do has been so much more restricted. Just look at all the posts where people are jumping on posters asking if a 12 year old can be left at home without an adult.

I work with Gen Z and I think they also had very high stress in school (more than I did as a millennial & I did well). They also have to navigate cancel culture themselves and doing or saying the wrong thing. There was more room to try our opinions and ideas without it being deemed unacceptable or being recorded online forever. Everything feels more high stakes, I think.

So they are both more protected but also less protected.

As a teen/young adult, lots of people think their parents are terrible. Few in the past told anyone beyond their small friendship circle. Now many can express the view to the world. Totally abnormal audience to a totally normal phenomenon.

@ElspethBulgeworthythethird Thank you for starting this thread, so many of the posts resonate with me. My daughter is also doing a psychological degree which seems to give her the green light to pathologise every negative emotion!

The father should have said no then.

The father was the actor, not the young woman.