The weird shift that seems to happen with your parental relationship at a certain age

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Sorry for long title I didn’t know how to word this.

DH and I and all of our respective siblings have noticed that more and more, our parents seem to become people we don’t recognise anymore. They are so far from our parents as children they are like strangers. None of them seem to have dementia or a cognitive issue, but as they got into their 60’s something changed about their personality we can’t put our fingers on.

Both sets of our parents have become quite over opinionated and suffocating in their own ways. Their worlds get smaller and smaller (not through lack of opportunities) and they repeat themselves and get obsessed by small things.

My mum is obsessed by American politics so this is usually something she will talk at you about for hours (we live in the UK). She decided to retire and become housebound age 65 so she just watches TV all day and also just talks to you about what she saw on TV as if it’s ’real world’.

But DH’s parents are on another level, they seem to be obsessed with their phones and send 1000’s of photos, links, memes, news articles to all of us all day long via every single platform they can access (WhatsApp, instagram, facebook, personal email, work email, text, phone call and in person). They also have no filter and say weird shit to us, constantly talking about people we don’t know (and over sharing other people’s private info).

DH and I in our 40’s now and just sit there sometimes and think who are these people 😂. We thinking of having an honesty pact with each other if we get like this but is it inevitable? What happens to parents in their 60’s?

I find this a really useful thread so thank you OP for starting it.

For those who think it’s too harsh I do get that. I really don’t want to unfairly judge my parents but they are healthy, fit, financially stable and have so much going for them. I don’t expect them to be endlessly fascinated with my life and don’t mind listening to them chat about random neighbours but I just want a little something back.

Some parents think that because they raised you that you owe them everything and they don’t see you as fully developed person with needs.

I have friends with retired parents who are capable of showing an interest in others and genuinely want to know about their children and grandchildren’s lives.

I agree about the grandchildren, watching a grandparent glued to their phone or monologing about Donald Trump to the adults in the room whilst the children just sit there ignored is particularly depressing. My DM doesn’t drive and when smaller often my DC would enjoy a fun ride collecting or dropping her off when we all chatted but she doesn’t even speak to them in the car anymore and the Dc ask why granny doesn’t like them. What am I mean to say? I think she doesn’t know how to connect with them and I try to be the bridge to keep conversations going.

PIL tend to show the DC things on phones and have the TV always blaring rather than just interacting in person I get there and the kids are glued to a device of some kind of brain rot.

I’m going to take a bit more control and direction of interactions from now on as I have been a bit passive in this situation

My mum launched into conversations about people I have no idea about then realise it’s a Coronation Street or Emmerdale character! I’m sure she thinks they’re real.

My mum likes to do this, or a book she’s read, If I have a problem she’ll relate it to something she’s read about some distant member of the royal family in Denmark or Spain and just start talking about that until I just say ‘mum, you know I’m not interested in anything to do with the royal family and then she’ll still carry on for a bit longer!

I had family members who got a lot better after they started a new group hobby. Is there something like that they might do?

I think isolation in retirement is a under recognised problem. My Dad keeps active, so is more or less himself. My Mum has retreated from the world and won't engage on anything but mean gossip and her tv shows. She goes out once a week for coffee with her ladies.

I was worried my MiL was going the same way but after FiL died shes embraced life again.

My mum put in quite a bit of effort after my oldest child (her first grandchild) was born, but it tailed off over the years, and it's noticeably less since she met a new partner

Same as this. Also I want so much more from her than she will give. She is just not interested at all. Yes she too has been radicalised, but I would love a relationship still. Sadly we are no longer in contact as her behaviour became more neglectful and upsetting. I think she's got the distance she wanted. I just hope I stay loving towards my dc.

If you want to really understand the changes you see, I'd put on one side the idea that this is about being older per se. Yes there are some valid points on this thread about the combined impacts of social media and reduced RL due to retirement, which could affect a lot of retired people. But things you've said about your Mum sound worrying. As a useful thought experiment, imagine what you would think if a friend your own age were to give up work, stop going out, stop interacting with your children and start talking the way your Mum is talking.

In her 60s, your Mum will feel very much the same person she did at your age. How does she now see her life and place in the world?

The irony of this thread is that, whilst some pp are complaining about the lack of critical thinking skills in older relatives, they are making sweeping generalisations about older people, even equating totally different generations in their 60s and 80s.

@Ramblethroughthebrambles we did all question her on this before retirement happened and asked her how she was going to fill her time and if she wanted suggestions we came up with some. We all have no choice but to work full time so she knows that is being a source of time filling for her is not feasible right now, and we could not fill this role for her due to our own commitments. She said all she wanted was to sit and watch TV.

However, when she was still working her behaviour and attitude became concerning. On reflection this was at the time brexit happened and she became quite polarising. So 10 years ago I started to notice this. I think it was social media.

She was getting very het up and judgmental at her colleagues and would spend hours dissecting their behaviours and speaking very unpleasantly about them in terms of their race/sexuality/life choices. Plus at family gatherings she would just be going on about Brexit. She also got a trump obsession now (Elon too for a while) and falls out with all her neighbours

Im early 40’s. As a child my mum worked out of the home around us, so was around as a parent too, and I don’t recall her having all of these difficult relationships with people or being right wing. Her and my dad had a crap marriage and he did leave her eventually. My siblings and I spent most of our teenage and early 20’s helping her navigate divorced life. Then we had our children and although initially very excited as the GDC get older, she loses interest in them.

My original OP is asking questions and it’s clear it’s not simply age related thing and people have said that, but far more nuanced than that and they do appear to be vulnerable to propaganda and poor retirement planning and not keeping their interests broad

It’s an interesting conversation to be had because clearly a lot of people are experiencing the same thing. It’s not helpful to contribute by putting down the people being curious and making us feel ashamed of highlighting this issue perhaps you could come up with some helpful suggestions instead. I am literally starting a thread as a thought experiment and have learnt a lot from it.

Agree. Mine are the same as they’ve always been but perhaps I didn’t see it so they’ve always been really racist (very much a product of their environment) and not interested in me but my mum will fire questions like an interrogation to my child which switches her off but then I think she’s always done that.

mine started to say something about a story she’d read in the paper and when I asked for more detail and didn’t just agree with her she just said I dint know. But you started the conversation, she’s always talked in cliches though. Perhaps as we age we are getting less tolerant of the glaring disinterest, I know I am.

my fil by contrast seems to actually like me and be pleased to see me. It wrong foots me as I’m not used to it!

OP ... That is exactly when my mother started displaying these same traits. Brexit and maybe a little before then with the first Trump presidency.. Oh and then add in Covid! She adds in some pretty extreme Christian views just for some spice.

If I had the time to research it I would probably put money on the fact that this is when social media became a political media tool rather than what it was presented to be initially ie a social platform.

There is a time and a place to discuss your right wing views and a family birthday party isn’t one of them 😂 I don’t oppose people having other views but I don’t like them being foisted on me. Thing is none of the stuff my mum is het up about actually affects her. She doesn’t go abroad so a digital ID card won’t affect her. She lives in nice sheltered housing so doesn’t have to live next door to asylum seekers or HMO’s. She gets all her shopping online so she doesn’t have to worry about getting mugged outside co-op however she lives in a very white middle class area and is not at risk of these things. I understand her concerns but they are not even impacting her life in the main

👏I absolutely agree with this. People in their later years have seen a ton of shit, that people in their 30's are so naive about. My Mum was saying 15 years ago, that the people coming in on boats would be a problem. I thought she was terrible, and non PC and without empathy. NOW look what's happened! My Mum was right. She's dead now, and I regret not believing her.

@TheCaribbeanIsCallingMe oh give over. My mum is nearly 70 lived her whole life in a white middle class area. She hasn’t seen a load of shit anymore than I have in fact a very sheltered life. She didn’t even know anyone gay until her 50’s and she didn’t do well with that. None of our parents have been in any wars. PIL’s benefitted from buying their own council house and been mortgage free for 10 years. They have no had hidden lives we don’t know about. FIL probably out of all of them had it harder.

This is not a place to talk about boat people. My own DM brought this up at my birthday party where it wasn’t welcome or appropriate. You can keep your opinions on it to yourself thanks I am not interested

@TheCaribbeanIsCallingMe she isn’t worried about me or her grandchildren, you can’t speak for her on this matter and I do not accept this to be correct. Thanks for contributing though

Keep your horse blinkers on then. Maybe put your fingers in your ears too and sing La La La La.

I didn’t mean you, sorry. I meant the replies that were either huffy or trying to be scathing and not quite hitting it.

I didn’t have the repeating things on the internet from my dad but oh god the reading our street signs, the obsession over when the bins would be taken out, what colour, what time, what if we miss them, the inane boing monologues about people I didn’t know.

The sad thing was that occasionally you’d see glimmers of who had once been there and then it was back to ‘but the bins!’

Didn't mean to shame you for asking the question. You sound genuinely saddened and frustrated by your lack of connection with your parents. What I was suggesting was reframing the question to gain a broader perspective. You asked 'What happens to parents in their 60’s?'. Instead, I was suggesting to try ignoring age and asking 'what's happened to my mum/dad?' By focusing on age and patterns you've seen across others of their age group you've gained some interesting and valid insights but also might be being a bit blinkered by generalisations, even though you've acknowledged that older people vary. If this were someone in your age group you might be concerned they were depressed or had an undiagnosed health problem. You might gently probe about what's happened, reflect on what you've noticed and disclose that you find some of their behaviour difficult.

I'm a parent of adult children in my early 60s, but also a daughter of very elderly parents. This thread has made me think about the way adults don't often probe how their parents really feel, like they would a friend. My daughter doesn't ask me other than a cheery 'how are you doing?' and I skirt around this with my parents. Perhaps it feels a bit presumptuous when they are our parents and we don't want to put them on the spot by focusing on their vulnerabilities. Instead we tend to feel the need to solve problems for them. I wasn't suggesting you should do any of what you mention in the first paragraph.

You've had some prickly comments on this thread but, come on. If you paint a negative picture of people in their 60s and ask 'What happens to parents in their 60’s?', how do you think parents in their 60s are going to respond to the thread? 😅 I appreciate you said this out of frustration, but also appreciate that some of us felt a bit insulted and as if we were suddenly 'them' not 'us'.

How educated are they? Assume from their age they are unlikely to have had the opportunity to go to University. And if your Mum divorced and living alone it can mean there's nobody to knock off the rough edges and you do get less patient with other people.

I think as we all get older we get a bit detached from life, your DPs and PIL are at the younger end of the age range for that but my DM (79) and MIL (88) are both getting more opinionated in old age despite both being educated women who have always had active work lives and mix with people of all ages. MIL is nearly 90 so we ignore her less characteristic pronouncements and teach the teens to be polite and not engage with her offensive comments and to celebrate the things she can still do. DM is still capable enough that my siblings and I tease her when she becomes too reactionary, it helps remind her what is acceptable to say in public.

The thing is even if you agree with the views it doesn’t mean you want to hear a one sided monologue about them. I have quite conservative views when it comes to migration but it doesn’t mean I want to listen a non stop lecture about it over a fun family dinner. I don’t want a monologue about anything! It’s hard when people can’t compromise and try include others in appropriate ways.

It sounds like lot of the weirdness mentioned on this thread is driven by fear - being lonely, feeling ill, losing mobility, relevance, worrying about money etc. can lead into a general anxiety about the world - then Trump, immigration, small boats.... all these topics flood in and replace the real issues. Which are: not seeing people enough and not feeling seen.

It's not inevitable. My mum's 83, and she is not giving in. She does spend way too much time alone and online (as do I - clearly, as hello, here we all are!), but she also has her own active real world hobbies and bombs up and down motorways listening to radio 4 and thinking her thoughts about the world.

We gave up talking about politics in 2016 after the Brexit debacle, so conversations can be about all sorts!

I hope I can be like her when I'm that age.

My PIL started voting EDL, having been lifetime Labour supporters. My own parents have become more left wing although not a.major shift. TBH I suspect the EDL thing may have been an indicator my FIL's dementia was starting, it was so out of character.

When my parents got into their late 60s/early 70s they were as you describe them. My father still took an interest in the world and each year travelled with a charity to see the war graves. However he was more and more judgemental of my lifestyle. My mother would witter on about nothing, things on TV, people I did not know, and so on. If I reminded her she already told me that story she would continue as though I had never spoken. Both are dead now and it was before the era of smart phones. Neither used a computer and my mother considered them to be evil.

Im now in my early 80s. Mobility problems limit me physically and as a non driver its a door to door taxi if I have to go out. Mostly I live online but NOT on social media. I have one side hustle selling antiques and another doing online tutoring at postgrad level. Im also well aware of whats going on in the world although I do tend to treat it something like another Netflix drama. I do use a smart phone but it gets checked maybe once a day. No more.