Anyone else's parents becoming increasingly insular in retirement?

[nickytwoooohtimes]

Because my ILs are.
I love them dearly and they used to be such liberal thinkers, btu jeezo, spending the mornign with them is like hearing the Daily Mail being read aloud.
They honestly can't see anything outside their little world.
It is driving me insane.
DH says just to ignore them, but I CAN'T.

Am I normal or over-sensitive?

Yes, same here.

My parents always were very insular and old for their age, and have become more so.

MIL was very liberal (ironically before she became a Liberal), and cynical about politicians, but has become very set in her ways and her views. She went into local politics when she retired and her intolerance of other points of view astounds me now (if you do not vote for her party you are wrong and evil and should not be allowed to vote, apparently).

No, mine seemed very busy taking up new hobbies, joining classes etc. All their kids live some distance away though so they had to get a few hobbies or they'd have been bored. They also both had challenging jobs before retiring which maybe makes a difference.
I have to fit in visits between their activities and holidays, which I think is great.

yes, my ILs have, but my parents have gone the opposite way, I can never find them in, with art classes, cooking courses, mountain biking etc and they're off to Ethiopia for 3 weeks this weekend - wish my life was that good!

Normal

ILs have a v small life nowadays

My MIL, since getting ill and not being able to travel. She's not getting insular in the Daily Mail sense, it was just this depressing sense that her world now extends as far as the nice teashop in town and if said teashop should change its menu it would be a major tragedy.

She used to work as a translator, worked abroad, went to stay with a family in Belgium aged 12 in the early 1950s....

Oh and she can't work out why I'm not as interested as she is in the many twists and turns of the lives of the characters on Heartbeat

My parents are like Duckyfuzz's - they keep telling me they'd be happy to come up and look after dcs to give us a break but when we try to pin them down to actually do it they're clearly far too busy

Thanks for the replies.
My MIL sounds like yours, ohdear.
It is so infuriating but I need to stop it getting to me.
rebecca and ducky, the ils also are very busy, but it is more that that their political/social outlook has got smaller. They were going on today about how they can't understand why some pensioners are on the news saying they can't afford to keep warm and mil and fil were saying"I don't see why they can't, because all pensioners get the same money".. I tried to say that not everyone lives in a well insulated house and has no mortgage/rent and a car to go shopping to LIdl, but have to rely on the over-priced corner shop, etc, etc, but it was pointless. They just can't imagine anyone having a life different to theirs. They live in a lovely detached house in a cul-de-sac and have a comfortable, middle class existence and can't see past this.

Kathy, my own mum's a bi tlike that. It is a bit sad , isn't it?
Boys - if it's normal, will that be us in a few years? and and worried!

MIL and dh used to talk for hours about history, politics, economics etc in a very intelligent way (I felt totally out of my depth), and that never happens now. Dh feels so glum about it, wishing he could get his old mother back.

Now we have to have bland and forced conversation about the weather, the dcs, holidays, etc instead.

my mother is set in some of her ways- she does not go out in the evenings, will not answer phone in the evening, hates travelling away from home and as for staying in someone elses house, no way. Her cat is the centre of her world, she hates new technologies and when I tried to tell her about a great recipe I had found it was brushed aside "I cant abide chickpeas" However she reads widely and watches lots of different TV programmes and has a lively interested in politics. She says that now shes older she can just do what she wants. I think it is dodgy because she shuts herself away from lots of things- she hasnt seen much of her grandchildren because we live miles away.

oh God this makes me feel so much better about my Mum.

She used to be the young-looking, energetic, slightly madcap Mum. I always felt my friends envied me. And boyfriends maybe even fancied her (a little bit).

Now she is an old lady. She won't look after the children for half an hour: "what if I have a fall?" WTF?

And she is starting to collect cats . . .

Yes, I feel a bit better knowing it is not just my lot like this!

Oh and she:

Has a microwave that is conspicuously unplugged with a piece of paper reading: NO METAL sellotaped to the front.

Phones at 2pm: "oh I won't keep you, you'll be collecting the children soon." Errrm, yeah, at 3 o'clock, Mum. How are you? "Oh I won't keep you . . ."

Asks when she is going home within minutes of arriving.

Was into the internet before I was (!) but in the last six months has given up on email due to repeated spam and "messages taking too long to load". She would rather get crystal meth than broadband. She left a message with me tonight asking me to send a "one line email" to my sister in Australia to pass on a message - it's as if she thinks emails are telegrams, charged by the word.

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mine moved into a bungalow in their mid 40s!

Dad retired mid 50s and they didn't go away on overseas holiday for ages until this year - they went to Norway. I was so pleased.

They still eat their lunch every day at one pm.

TBH they have always been insular.

My mother loves to say 'at your age' - whatever age I've been eg from mid 20s up!

I sometimes wonder if I am really part of that family as I am so different.

My db is a bit more set in his ways.

We will all be just the same. It's developmental.

I mean - we were all tantruming toddlers and stroppy adolescents. So we will all be more narrow-minded and reactionary when we're older.

It's normal. Just look at your awkward dcs and smirk - we'll get them back....

Mine are so insular, they disowned me and the kids now.
Mind you, dad did the same thing to his mum.

Mum has no hobbies except sit on her arse watching motor racing / speedway all day whilst smoking. She doesn't read or write letters. Heck she doesn't even have her own bank account or passport.My dad loved gardening but mum hates all the potato pots and runner bean runs all over the garden and she ripped them up. Thus my dad took early retirement. They sold their house for a substantial sum and now live by the beach in Norfolk. Yet they never walk on it. Thye never cycle on it. Norwich is 30 mins train ride away, they never go. Cromer is 45 min train ride...they never go.
They never offered to take the kids.

Got fed up with my mums incessant disrespect and criticism, so it's prob a good thing we don't talk anymore.

Actually I don't think we will be the same.

I think I have seen lots of reports where people in middle age now don't want to 'grow up' or be old in the way that our parents are.

Plus we may have to work until we are 65/70.

My parents had 'retired' mentally when they were 40 ish - they had their children young, started looking forward to retirement then didn't do much in between whereas I had mine lateish. Not saying either one is right but just that I intend to be nothing like them.

My step dad has reduced his world to his front room and immediate circle of family and a few friends. Everyone and thing else is an annoyance. He is a real Victor Meldrew.
Mu mum just gets on with it, though. She is out and about, seeing different friends and living life to the full, reads loads and is really interested in the world around her. She would still only use the Daily Mail to wipe her backside, perhaps (stepdad has turned from a Guardian reader to a Torygraph reader - FGS!).

My parents have always been like this. It is very depressing.

My mum is like this too (not all the time though)

I think it's exacerbated in her case because she was widowed at 46 (a year older than I am now) and was made redundant/enforced early retirement 10 years later.

She's basically lived alone for about 17 years. It's no wonder she's become more insular tbh even if she does have a reasonable social life.

I know what you mean about Daily Mail readers - I had a friend move in with her retired parents and it very clearly rubbed off on her as she began moulding her thinking according to what the Daily Mail states as if it were gospel and generally talking like an old lady, it must have rubbed off living with her retired parents and living in a village with no amenities!

It got so bad with all the backward opinions I had to stop the contact! Amazing how some people can change eh.

My parents turned very 'in' on themselves.

They would never drive to see me, or my Bro, it was too 'far' for them to travel, but they fully expected us to travel the same distance in our limited holiday time, with small children. For some reason they never saw the problems that we had doing this.

And when we visited them we were expected to just sit in the house with them all day, every day, and their house was a death trap for small children.

They never made any attempt to change anything....they ate their evening meal at 5.30. At that time dd was a baby and went to sleep at 6, but they wouldn't delay it for 30 minutes so that I could have a hot meal in peace, I had to battle with dd at her most cranky and upset, while treating to eat

Welcome to Retired Parent World.

They can be, like mine were, active and lively people seeking new hobbies but also insular politically and socially. Mine went on long walks, cruises, European travel, bike rides etc., well into their 70s and were very involved in their village, but my mother has now become very insular and likely to spout Daily Mail opinions.

She will no longer fly because she is frightened of "sitting next to some Arab with a bomb." Her exact words. Leicester (where she has been once) has "turned into Pakistan" and people in public sector jobs are either "brainwashed by all these immigrants" or "frightened of speaking out" in case they lose their jobs. The NHS is under-resourced "because of all the immigration." And our country, which they fought so hard for in the war (NB: they didn't fight, they were evacuated), is now "being invaded."

I also recognise the sellotaped notes and the "at your age" type comments. How old do you have to be before you are allowed to have opinions which are respected and not just those of a silly young person who doesn't know any better?!

It's very difficult to get your parents and ILs to realise that, sometimes, despite their greater lifespan, your experience of current life is greater.

And mine had challenging jobs before retirement too... Doesn't seem to have made any difference.

Oh and dear God the fact that everything* has to be done their way.

MIL is getting like this, and she is very outgoing. But if she gets a bee in her bonnet, you have to do what she wants or she drives you round the bloody bend.

I once spent a whole morning *when dd was in creche, so precious time) looking in every pharmacist in town for 'Udsel' a treatment for cracked udders that she used on her hands. No other emollient would do, it had to be 'Udsel'. Which wasn't for sale, anywhere. In the end we were trawling round builders merchants and industrial estates.

how I didn't throttle her, I'll never know!

whaa what a depressing thread

the only upside apparently being i dont have any parents or ils to complain about