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.

Social media and the explosion of mollycoddling as a way of parenting. I think the point above about the lack of independent play at age 6-10 was also good. Combined I think the 2 factors are utterly toxic.
I have never know so many young adults who have failed to launch. Yes part of that is financial but even down to improving their job prospects or even going and getting a job seems beyond some and extends to all aspects of their life. I also see a lot of enmeshment with adult parents. I’m all for close family relationships but not when it is stifling the potential of the dc.

Maybe it's not the whole generation, just a vocal few. Or maybe, as every generation says this about the next, as a species our parenting abilities are getting worse and worse so each generation we raise is worse than the last. Or maybe you're just getting old and grumpy so you're starting to sound like a Daily Mail reader!

It’s very hard Feduperika when you have done everything you can as a parent to ensure that your child is happy, healthy and has had a good education and home life. And then they reject you.

I’m sorry this is happening to you. It’s not talked about enough for obvious reasons. And it’s not fair.

People are so quick to automatically side with the youngsters and of course that’s right, we should listen and believe what they are saying.

But the picture can be so much more nuanced and complicated. Young people for example can be inexperienced about life and not understand the bigger picture and they can well… be young … and emotionally quite labile.

And of course we parents make mistakes and although we pour love in to our children it’s all for nothing if they personally do not feel that love.

It’s all so difficult. And heart-breaking. But my point here is that sm has a huge part to play in fracturing relationships as it seems to comstantly look to divide rather than unite. .

I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I think that it is generally a good thing that we take account of children's feelings and their / our mental health these days. My parents were generally fine, though they were hands off in a way I have never been with my kids. And my siblings and I had plenty of discussions of their faults - probably most people can and do criticise their parents though to be fair.

I was brought up to be independent and resilient which was fine by me and sonething I was proud of. My parents were there for me in a crisis but as the eldest I always held back from revealing my crises as my younger siblings seemed to have more struggles. I think now though it's made me too resilient- I'll put up with things maybe I shouldn't and find it very hard to ever be vulnerable.

I think now we have access to so much information about parenting, mental health, personality disorders etc, that we are much more aware of what things are like for other people outside our social circles than we ever were in the past. And that certainly applies to young people, who get most of their information online and have access to a far wider set of people their age than I did, via online apps. (Jackie magazine was my main source of info as a teen!) So they kind of know too much and it's a lot to handle. Plus they interpret it from their own limited point of view. So any parental failing might be termed abuse as they don't have a real sense of what abuse actually is (though some do, obviously).

Yes they seem to grow up more slowly and need more support, but I can think back to times when I was young and would have valued support I never thought to ask for. I sometimes feel the sense of entitlement is too much but I felt that for previous generations of work colleagues too (who would now be in their 30s or 40s) so maybe each generation feels like that about those below them?

Excellent post “Offyoupoplove” 👏

Yea so much of what you say resonates with me Onelifeonly including getting life advice from Jackie Magazine 😀

I have the same feelings about entitlement sometimes but I very much agree with your point about us being more aware of issues outside of our social circle than we ever were before and I think that can both be a very good thing and the cause of huge pressure.

💐

@Onelifeonly

Yes, yes and yes, especially the worldly advice from Jackie!
I was brought up to be resilient and independent and never asked for help and advice even when there were times I should have. My Dad's favourite saying to me "You're the one that I don't need to worry about" although on reflection maybe he was saying it to all 3 of us!

I mean, my parents are raging arseholes so I tend to belive other people who say theirs are too.

I never understood or saw the hard, relentless, emotionally draining and self sacrificial side of motherhood until I became one.

It's a job for a community, not two, or even one person.

We are parenting out of sync with our biology, and we believe that one or two parents can and should give us every thing. It's just not true.

Then the child criticises the parent because they didn't get everything they needed. And they are overprotected as they grow up and have few life skills.

I also think part of it is the lack of "dream".

America has the American dream - immigrate, have no money, set up a small business, work hard, get rich.

Whether it actually happens is a different story but people believe in it.

My kids are just finishing university.

What does the country have to offer them?

Life is shit, you are ordinary, you will never earn enough to own a house, you should get a job and work unpaid overtime and eat shit from your boss but you'll never make enough money to have any freedom?

That's what the message of "just get on with it" means to me, and if I was hearing that from my parents I'd be thinking about how I could opt out of working myself to death for no reward as well.

This is a big part of it I think. Isn’t social mobility so low yet we always use the exception as the norm. But most of us are not exceptional.

Somehow parents nowadays are meant to put up with their teen and young adult dc speaking to them disrespectfully, but the parent in turn has to be perfect in every way and respond calmly and promptly and help with any emergency but not discuss the cause of why said thing went wrong.

I've seen this with DD just 18 and was desperately hoping it was a phase though worry it's more searching for identity zeitgeist stuff.

We went to bank last week to help her and during conversation with staff member she started complaining I'd snapped at her when she first tired to use the card that was at least 4 years ago and she had ample time and offers to help sort it since - the older staff member was well yes parents do get frustated and snap that's life.

What vaguely remember is her going into melt down DH - also there -getting snappy with both of us - and me trying to work out what was wrong and getting snappy when I was being shouted at. Her tantrum and DH also being there and unhelpful is never mentioned.

There are other examples she comes up with many of which we - DH or I don't remember at all or really don't sound like me.

She is also the one who gets angry/annoyed if I get excited by something or am busy with own things.

My IL are very misogynistic which is frequently directed at me - so I wonder if some of that has crossed over despite my best efforts but then her younger siblings also complain that she can be entitled and ungrateful to them.

On other hand I've been bitterly disappointed by my own parents ( and IL) with lack of any help with our kids - even in emergencies. Our own parents weren't perfect and were sometime bloody difficult - and their parents were the same - you can see the troubling patterns being past down.

On plus side she is able and willing to sort many things herself I just think perhaps when she hits problems she expects me to sort them and often immediately - hopefully it's just expectation adjusting.

I know exactly what you mean OP. I saw a TikTok recently of a parent making her toddler a sandwich in the middle of the night because she's teaching her to 'listen to her body'. All the comments telling her what a great job she's doing and how the next generation of parents are going to be so much better than previous ones etc.

As if it's now traumatic for children to be told they can't have something to eat because it's bedtime. Absolutely baffles me.

But why do you interpret ' just get on with it' as that?

Why not interpret it as ' make the best of every situation and don't mope about feeling sorry for yourself'?

As if it's now traumatic for children to be told they can't have something to eat because it's bedtime. Absolutely baffles me.

I saw a child refuse to get off a train at correct stop - parent and another mother with young child in pushchair she was with had to get off three stops down after much pleading - and she let him have his music on so loud it was hurting other's ears - she explained everything has to be his idea - he was sort of toddler/reception age.

I did think she could have done a lot more with the first stop - counted down the stops got him ready at door waiting - her friend was left worried about tickets.

I haven't parented like that at all yet still get this everything is your fault thing at least from DD1.

There wasn't even a firm voice used.

'As if it's now traumatic for children to be told they can't have something to eat because it's bedtime. Absolutely baffles me.

I saw a child refuse to get off a train at correct stop '

It's just pathetic. Far too many young children are allowed to rule the whole family, and given responsibility for decisions that they cannot possibly cope with, because of wet ridiculous parents who seem to expect life to be a version of Disneyland all the time.

I'm absolutely fully in favour of giving children age appropriate choices, and naming their feelings, and generally treating them gently and kindly, but children NEED adults to be in charge and enforce boundaries. That's not always a pleasant experience for everyone but there we are, that's the gig

But make the best of every situation and don't mope about feeling sorry for yourself is a really dismissive approach, I wouldn't want to hold this attitude and wouldn't want friends like this.

I respect people's feelings, and my own. I don't understand why some people consider that undesirable. It's not about moping, it's just recognising then regrouping.

Because ‘respecting them’ often means listening to them going on and on, very few people seem to merely acknowledge and move on

Could this perhaps be a bias that you see because it when you were born and the age of possible children?
So the generation who were whipped must think what the hell have the ones who got a smacked bottom got to complain about? And those who got smacked bottoms find those who whine about being put on the naughty step a bit ridiculous? What is the next step?

I too wonder how it's going to pan out in the future and how anyone is ever going to function. But probably that's my age showing. I do find it helpful to look outside western culture, I myself am mixed race. Where there is no "true hardship" a different kind of difficulty breeds, because it really seems that as a species we fill voids.

Maybe it's that we have always known life is suffering, but keep it to ourselves or leave it to philosophical discussions.

This generation are vocalising it, but we can't always make it better for them. We can't feel the feelings and solve them for them.

I hear older people moaning a lot about young people, they go on and on about it. I have to listen to them all the time, they never acknowledge and move on.

Maybe older people should model this acceptance and resilience they're always wanging on about, and stop moaning about young people ?

(half joking)

@piercedears I think you have a point, if everything is going well we usually find something that didn't bother us much before to worry about. I think there is a statement I read somewhere that says "hard times make strong men who make good times and good times make weak men who make bad times" or something to that effect. Obviously men is meant in the mankind so applies to women too.