Is emotional intelligence to our generation, what "bohemian" lifestyles were to our parents' ?

[Anna1976]

Many of us have parents who would have shocked their own parents by doing shocking stuff like using the pill, sex before marriage, divorce, etc. Shocking your parents by adopting new (and entirely sensible) behaviours is no new thing, but each generation seems to find a different way to do it.

I was wondering if being calmly assertive, and trying to be emotionally intelligent, is perhaps our way of shocking our parents.

Obviously there have been families down the ages where calm, polite assertiveness, and emotional intelligence, have been the norm. I wish I belonged to one.

But a lot of the parental generation gap that I'm experiencing, and seeing in other families, seems to revolve around parents being demanding, aggressive and unempathetic, and unintelligent when it comes to examining others' motivations; and parents not being able to stand it when their adult children call them on unacceptable behaviour. Particularly - fathers seeing calmly assertive daughters as aggressive humourless bitches, and mothers who have always excused father's aggression seeing the assertive daughter as somehow a traitor to womanhood simply because the daughter has - and applies- standards of what is acceptable behaviour.

I've moaned on here many times about my parents' lack of emotional intelligence and empathy. I've moaned about being called a careerist bitch and a politically-correct do-gooder. My parents think I'm an aggressive dysfunctional slapper (I'm not married but live with my partner) who hides behind work and good works to mask my total inadequacy and stupidity. While in my parents' case it's based in ASD, it is also a very strong lack of modern socialization - i.e. being brought up by people with no empathy or self-control, no emotional intelligence, no feeling of how to be constructive - the "scream first and seethe with resentment later" school of dealing with life. Some other posts on here would suggest my parents aren't the only ones like this - whether or not ASD is involved (it's a tangential issue - it magnifies the lack of emotional intelligence and inarticulate rage, but isn't responsible for it).

Any thoughts? I'll probably get flamed for saying something that I haven't yet interpreted as unacceptable. Apologies in advance if that happens.

Before I get flamed I should say I have ASD too, and have had ample opportunity to observe the vicious social circle involved in people with AS/ASD being outspoken, thus being ostracized, thus becoming resentful and even less socialized, being further ostracized, etc. - it's that combination of outspokenness and resentment and ostracizing that magnifies my parents' behaviour.

But I think that it's just a more extreme version of normal social processes.

Emotional intelligence and empathy allow you to break the circle - or never get into it in the first place.

I feel that way with my inlaws a fair bit. It's like DH and I are as alien as Scientologists to them with how we conduct ourselves. Especially the fact I tell him what I want and am never passive aggressive. MIL thinks I'm a demanding, high maintenance woman. DH thinks all women are quite demanding but likes me for the fact I articulate my needs and wants clearly. I feel a bit sorry for her as she's bewildered by how open we are with each other, feels it undermines her and gets even more passive aggressive in her efforts not to lose him (thus driving him further away).

We will NEVER do things her way and I don't think she will ever change either. It does have a lot of similarities with my paternal grandparents who though my parents were weird bohemian yuppies for taking us kids to dinner parties and dumping us on spare beds (my Granny was horrified my mum drank after becoming a mother )

I don't think it's possible to generalise. All generations have their differences in opinions, conventions and attitudes & find it difficult to understand each other on occasions, but that some things remain the same and carry on through.... even though those involved may not always see it that way. I've seen 'strict' parents end up with rebels and conformists for kids just as much as 'lax' parents. I've heard people complain just as bitterly that their parents are too intrusive as they do that their parents are too remote.

"The generations" are also not defined by any single moment in time. We are all on a continuum and all influenced by various things beyond our immediate family. Becoming a parent in 2000 I could easily believe by reading MN that me experience makes me a maternal dinosaur. But I got a lot of my techniques from my mum... last baby 1966... and find I have a lot in common with my neighbour whose baby only arrived last year.

FWIW I take my family on face value, warts and all. I don't insist on them changing personality to suit modern fashions and they respect my lifestyle choices in turn .... :)

interesting thread!

Interesting theory, Anna. Our culture is more individualistic now, certainly, and there is an emphasis on boundaries, assertiveness etc rather than gritting one's teeth and going along with things while seething inside (which I notice quite a bit in older women).

I think that people always hate it when you call them on unacceptable behaviour, though - I don't think our generation (I'm a similar age to you) are any better at taking this than our parents are!

my parents have never really intruded into my life to the extent that I felt the need to call them on their behaviour, same for my kids, they're adults I leave them to get on with their own lives

Waitingforme: yes yes yes re being called high maintenance for being clear and concise rather than passive aggressive!

Good point Cogito re generations merging. I am comparing those in mid 30s-40s now, with their mothers who are 60s-70s. The change from 1950s strictly conventional narrow-horizons and conforming to expectations, to 1970s academia-style broader horizons, was an issue my parents faced. The issue I now face, compared to my parents, is tackling those broader horizons with a very different set of behaviours and beliefs about how to conduct oneself among others.

Cogito and Mercury7: I'd have more respect for not intruding on my family's beliefs if they weren't so relentlessly nasty, unhappy and unconstructive and yet smothering and full of expectations that I will one day return to the fold and "be nice" and adopt their hideously MadMen-like way of only being able to have a conversation by tearing something or someone to shreds.

I think what might have changed somehow is the idea of "owning" your life - it could be described as being more individualistic (my parents often describe it as selfishness) - but the emphasis is on having the intellectual and emotional resources for making the decision yourself to do what you feel is right; rather than the emphasis a generation ago of being forced into it by someone else on the assumption that authority figures would make the decision for you.

Women being financially dependent and (to a first approximation) less educated, in the 1950s, probably has a lot to do with it.

gender identity and challenge of roles....then media and the evolution of bringing everything into the home and into our lives.....

Before these things...boundaries, roles, who did what, how it was done, who did it, etc and a blanket CONTENTMENT or silent acceptance without question within our communities/societies....there was never a question of emotional discord and being able to share it or even mention it.....people just accepted those roles, didn't generally question things much....and the people who did either were on the fringes of their community and called weird and avoided or locked up!!!

A wife not doing her housework...needed shock therapy and locking up...an unmarried woman getting pregnant was locked up (no matter in what way it happened), disabilities were rarely seen...they were locked up and everything was a big secret...nobody mentioned emotional pain and just got on with it, never complained, stiff upper lip and all that...one must maintain a balance of 'all is well'

Then TV and Ad's...what we need, what we should be doing, what we can do, how we should do thing's, aspiration's, dreams, the country was poor so it made sense to bring in a medicine to stop pregnancy and make it free and encourage it's use (afterall, our country couldn't have coped with that boom!!) Then the 'boom' year's financially and people starting to feel they needed to have 'things' and wanted to be equal in the race, what to wear/fashion's, healthy eating....suddenly these things were daily food for thought...like waking up from a dream....full of choice and change...we started to think more as individual's...not as the worker's rebuilding a war torn land and we were merely the worker ant's...we found ourselves and began to think about ourselves and realised we could do, have, aspire, etc.....

with all this seemingly wonderful choice came the winner's and the loser's as with every generational or century shifts...gaps were more noticeable than before and in lots of different ways too....we were starting to SEE beyond our garden gate and beyond our street we lived...there was more for us and we wanted it all....

it goes on and on...our children have more, expect more, aspire to more and we all have developed into taking care of all these things...the expectancy grows and with the positive's always comes the negative's....

we recognise and have developed awareness beyond our gate, street, town and city...we are global and seeing all things...we are moved, impressed, saddened, inspired, thinking about so much more than we ever had to...it's all in our faces and we have to navigate in so many area's where our mother, father, GP's, etc never gave a tiny thought to....so much simply washed over and barely rippled the surface or was ignored and kept secret...now it is almost the opposite for us...we want to ALL be individual's and find our selves, we don't want to conform, agree, accept, deny and put up and shut up...people don't accept this anymore and we are actively teaching our children to enhance all of this and become more than we did....

I'm trying to say an awful lot here and I hope it makes sense....tis late but I find this very interesting and had to try and comment towards it

I think women of my generation not putting up and shutting up is a big factor in the sheer number of MIL and GP issues you read here. My own MIL was semi subservient to her parents and did as she was told. Reading between the lines she threw DHs dad (cheating alcoholic waste of space) because her father had finally had had enough. Her father then helped her buy a bungalow.

My attitude is I don't need her and will never need her in my life. I choose to have her in my life and care for her but a relationship with ones MIL is not essential. I see this as incredibly positive and her involvement in my life demonstrates the regard I have for her (though you may not think it given my rants on here!). But I can see how to her it's challenging to know I would stop seeing her if she behaved badly. She knows I cut of my fathers family and don't see them and worries about this. DH explained I didn't do it lightly and that they were awful to me but for her it demonstrates an act of independence and self respect that undermines her role in our family.

I see her point but cannot imagine cutting her put of my life the way I did my toxic aunt. My MIL is nice (despite our difficulties).

"I think what might have changed somehow is the idea of "owning" your life"

There have always been some people who believe their children should be obedient/dependent and there will always be others who send them out into the world with their blessing. It is not a new phenomenon. Women may have acheived independence a little later in the day and social expectations may be powerful but, again, it comes down to personalities whether parents choose to perpetuate those expectations

My late grandmother, born 1907, was a classic example. From a very poor, working-class family, despite being very intelligent, she missed out on opportunities because illness in the family meant she had to cut short her schooling to go out and earn money. She was therefore 100% behind everything I ever did in terms of education, career, travel & independence - even though it was totally outside her experience

It's a mean-spirited parent that wants to suffocate and dominate their children. It's not a generational thing at all.

I think you are over-generalising here from your own (horrid) experience, Anna. Most of the 60/70-somethings I know are just not like this - yes, a couple of my friends have over-controlling parents, but then there are plenty of over-controlling people in my generation too. As I said above, I do notice some differences in assertiveness v. stifled resentment between the generations, but nothing as dramatic as you suggest.

I would love to think that our generation are more emotionally intelligent than our parents, but to be honest I have seen no signs of this at all! In fact, I would say the opposite, but that's because most (though obviously not all) people develop more emotional intelligence as they age.

Actually on that very point about being more emotionally intelligent than parents, I would say a bigger feature at the moment is delayed maturity - the 'kidult' phenomenon. Conscious of the perils of generalisation I worry a little that the average age at which young people move out of the family home seems to be getting later and later and that there's an increasing tendency for parents (especially middle-class ones) to maintain children well into their twenties paying for further education, first homes, cars etc. I just wonder how that kind of extended dependency will knock on to emotional intelligence in future.