Gen X with dysfunctional boomer parents
Posted by Hungry-University609@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 55 comments
Hello All,
How many of you have a bit of disdain for the Boomer generation?
Did thhose with dysfunctional boomer parents feel they were co parenting them with the grandparents?
I've seen several dynamics where the Boomer parents were a toxic black hole in the family. All the resources went to them
The gen Xers were not given much help for college, house ,etc. Grandparents left money to entitled boomer kids only for them to squander it away.
I do feel we are a very pragmatic generation in part due to this dynamic.
How did boomers get so messed up? Vietnam?
We had gulf war. True, no draft.
Your thoughts please
Thanks
ciaran668@reddit
The core problem is, the Boomers have always been a self-centered, selfish generation. A lot of them aren't, but the majority are, because the world has catered to them from the minute they were born. They are an affluent generation, and after the deprivation their parents faced with the Depression and World War 2, their parents showered them with things. Advertisers catered to them from the moment they became old enough to buy things, and to this day, huge amounts of advertising is targeted to them
They generally protested Vietnam, not because of their stated reasons of injustice, but because THEY didn't want to go. This is pretty evident from the fact that the protests mostly stopped the second the draft ended, even though the war kept going for a few years.
They got their college for free, or at low cost, but the second they were established, they voted for a man who would slash the taxes that made it affordable.
They bought houses for reasonable prices, but wanted huge returns on that, so they drove up the price of housing through policies, NIMBYism, HOAs and a bunch of other stuff.
They refused to take responsibility, wanted to focus on "me-time" and careers, so they let their kids run feral in the streets when we weren't cooking, cleaning, and raising our younger siblings.
They invested in stocks, and wanted huge dividends, even though that meant gutting unions, outsourcing jobs, and stagnant wages.
Now they want designer drugs and lifelong erections that are draining Medicare's coffers.
They are putting reverse mortgages on their homes to enjoy lavish cruises, and bragging about spending every penny of their children's inheritances, despite the fact the wealth they inherited from THEIR parents was how they paid off their house, bought their stocks, and made them the richest generation in history. They've had fun all their lives, and left it to the rest of us to suck it up and make it possible.
GhostofTinky@reddit
I remember graduating from college and being told my generation would be the first not to do as well as our parents.
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
This is over the top painfully true.
MathematicianEven149@reddit
I dig your question. The comments here that are -you can’t put a whole generation under the same ideals is the best. I just came here to say that GenX is still fighting labels and a whole race of people or a whole generation of people are “xyz”- we are not about that. Fuck your blanketing ideals. It doesn’t work for us. It doesn’t work for anyone only against all of us. Glad to see it in all the comments!
RedditSkippy@reddit
I think they were raised by a generation of people who survived years of severe economic hardship and then were thrown into a major global conflict.
For a lot of people, the “Depression” started well before 1929, so by the time 1945 emerged, people had dealt with about two decades of uncertainty.
That was also a generation that didn’t believe in mental health. Combine that with all the trauma they experienced, and…there you are.
Kudos to those Boomers who broke the cycle. I know that responsibility fell on a lot of us instead. Kudos to those of us who had to manage that.
MathematicianEven149@reddit
This needs to be top comment. Well explained. I heard you! ❤️
dangnabbet@reddit
A lot of y’all don’t have narcissistic boomer parents (don’t get me wrong - good for you!) and it shows.
xczechr@reddit
Most of Gen X's parents will be from the Silent Generation, and thus not Boomers.
dangnabbet@reddit
Bless each of you with functional parents. And I mean that. Maybe you’re commenting in the wrong thread.
bonesofborrow@reddit
I had a left over hippie mom who couldn’t sustain healthy relationships and our life’s circumstances constantly changed. Youth culture has always moved society forward by breaking rules set by the previous generation, but the boomers were truly the first to smash them all to bits. The problem with that is that they smashed things that are healthy. Like traditional family. We were the first generation to have mass single parents and raising ourselves. I had almost no supervision as a kid and struggled with self discipline as I got older. I surely have ptsd from my mom blowing up our life every few years and to this day I always have this lingering feeling that at any moment everything can blow up in my face. Even though I’m now healthy and successful.
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
Smash everything that is healthy.
I feel like I'm talking to siblings here.
There was no public shame either in getting divorced, losing contact with a child ,etc
bonesofborrow@reddit
Totally. Looking back in my suburb of friends growing up in the 80s everyone’s parents were divorced. We only had a few friends whose parents were together and of course they had the older parents. I didn’t realize it at the time but we were all connected in ways we didn’t understand.
Ima-Derpi@reddit
Sooner or later we all have to carry our own weight. All 3 of these generations, here in the US especially have been through huge cultural and economic shifts. Sometimes I feel a burn towards my boomer parents for their choices in my life, but ultimately, they're old now and in my dads case-long buried. Whatever they did or didn't do doesn't really matter anymore, I am the one who is in the spotlight now with my kids being adults and looking at me to be the problem solver and teacher. I have made my own mistakes-I don't have the luxury of feeling animosity towards these old people or young people.
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
Very true. This conversation is helping me be more introspective and in turn, a better parent/ person.
Thanks
InternationalSun197@reddit
I've been thinking about this a lot. I have boomer parents. My dad is great, my mom is the stereotypical boomer in most of r/Boomersbeingfools. I've done some deep introspection about how my mom and I compare as parents etc and how my life has been different from my mom's. I really want to do better by my kids and I want to just be a happier human than I see my mom being. It was really normal for my parents and their friends to have babies and get married at 17-18 years old. My mom was an emotionally immature parent and that caused a lot of conflict (it still does.) How many GenXers here with dysfunctional parents have really young parents? I'm curious, do the support programs we have created over the last 30 years for young parents create better outcomes?
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
21 & 17 parents age
No concept of maturity.
Grandmothers on both sides saw me as the problem. Their child couldn't possibly be this much of an f-up.
It's as if many from this generation never faced consequences for their actions.
Maleficent508@reddit
My dad was can alcoholic and passed away so he gets a pass because his life was harder than it should have been despite years of rehab. My mom is amazing. She graduated from high school, left home the next day for the big city with no job or housing, boot strapped herself into a pink collar job that allowed her to build a middle class life despite a divorce, and built a nest egg for retirement just by teaching herself the basics of investing. She’s the most emotionally and financially stable of her siblings, who never managed to leave home and raised kids who are constantly running some kind scam with taxes or state aid or drug sales or whatever. She was the classic Boomer parent who had no idea where her kids were day to day, but I’m incredibly grateful she knew she had to get out and she modeled for us how to be successful. She didn’t help me financially because I didn’t need it. When my sister needed help for college, my mom moonlighted in a part time job. She wasn’t wealthy and didn’t have the means to buy us houses or cars or whatever but she gave us the skills to claw our way through anything. My in-laws are similarly great. They are more educated, wealthier and more progressive than my mom. Still totally disengaged parents back in the day but they are fun to hang out with now and have at times offered financial or physical support in a crisis. We overlook their failures in parenting, knowing we have made our own and we enjoy our adult relationships with them, but none of them are too divergent from our personal values and world views. We feel very fortunate. I’m sure we’d feel differently if our parents had been radicalized by a media personality or a preacher.
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
Very true.
To clarify, my question is to those with boomer parents.
What societal influences were there to cause dysfunctional.
Thanks
FYIgfhjhgfggh@reddit
WW2 is still being felt.
SuchMatter1884@reddit
I have a lot of thoughts on this that I’m currently sifting through, probably because I just sold my mother’s gargantuan townhome. I’m nearly 50 and am still renting because I grew up poor, took out loans for college and grad school, and never got any help from any family. I’m still paying off my student loan debt. My mother was physically, verbally and emotionally abusive. Her parents never wanted a relationship with me or my sibling. My father was an Irish immigrant born several generations before my mom and his parents were long gone by the time I was born, and he had no generational wealth. He died during the subprime mortgage crisis when I was only 30 (my mom divorced him) and his house sold at a loss. He left zero assets.
My maternal grandparents left my mother a fuckton of investments when they died and my mother enjoyed a very comfortable retirement as a result, in a 4000sq foot townhome in a 55+ community,all by herself, with zero intention of having the house be passed down to her kids.
Master-Dimension-452@reddit
My parents are silent generation. But similar. Very selfish, everything always has to be about and revolve around them. They always have to control everything in every situation. Always have to be the main characters. Zero empathy, understanding, and compassion towards others. Only want to criticize without asking questions. Rule with an iron fist, and verbally abuse when their children don’t do what they command, even in our 50’s. My friends from college have called my mom “Put Down Patty” for over 30 years, if that tells you anything about how I’m treated.
Hubs and I built a house at the end of the pandemic in a new 55+ one level living community in the state we live in once the nest was empty (my parents live in Florida) and we were chastised, told we were only building a house for our retirement because we had money burning a hole in our pockets. They never asked if we had retirement or financial goals, or if we wanted to stay in the community we’ve lived and built relationships. My parents built a home in a retirement community in Florida when they were our age.
Only one child still speaks to them, their golden child.
RaspberryVespa@reddit
Maybe chalk my experience up to being being in the lower middle class as a kid, but pretty much everyone that I know that grew up in a major metro area who are also in my age bracket (born late 70s to early 80s) with younger Boomer parents (born very late 50s to very early 60s) had seriously fucked up, self absorbed, negligent to outright abusive parents with really bad decision making skills and low emotional intelligence. They had kids right out of high school and until at least late in their 30s, just wanted to party and fuck around and not even pretend to be adults. Much like Arrested Development. They never really developed mentally past their early 20s and have low empathy for their offspring. Parentification abuse was through the roof.
A lot of us, the lucky ones anyway, had some intervention and received love and guidance from our Silent Gen or, even Greatest Gen, grandparents. Those of us that didn’t have grandparents just forged it all alone. As soon as we were aware of what was going on, like age 6, it was like being 6 going on 30.
But those I know whose Boomer parents who were born in the early 50s, barring any addictions, seemed to have faired a bit better. They have better parents with a little more empathy that practiced a little more common sense. But if addiction played a role, all that’s out the window.
In my head, it seems like it is literally the Marcia Brady Bunch of Boomers that were the most problematic parents, because that’s who my mom emulated in middle school / freshman year, Fucking Marcia Brady. And she’s still a fucking Marcia, from the parody anyway. And she treats me like Jan!
bigfatfurrytexan@reddit
Something g people don’t consider is that after the literal horrors of WWI and the flu, then being raised by those vets, the population went through the dust bowl, the depression, and then the horrors of WWII.
We look too harshly at people who suffered under pain and loss few of us can even imagine.
Ok-Technician-2905@reddit
I’m so sick of generational generalizations. All they do is divide us, for no benefit. By and large people aren’t that different through the generations.
Solid-Still-7590@reddit
Enough of the divisive generation hatred already. There are great parents and shitty parents in every generation.
Ok-Elevator8530@reddit
Seriously. It’s so pathetic there are 50-somethings on here propagating this nonsense…
Gecko23@reddit
My kids had peers raised the same way, ineffective parents and sheltering (and enabling) grand parents is not a generational thing at all.
AccomplishedCash3603@reddit
And the subjectivity of "great vs shitty" is at play, too. Example: My Silent Gen Dad and Boomer Mom lived childhoods with food scarcity - not food scarcity as in they didn't have enough money for Door Dash, as in there was not enough food to make dinner until payday, and the hope that drunk Dad would not spend that payday on booze.
Finally my Dad got pushed to a relative's family where there was plenty of food, but not enough water apparently? I don't know, but he wasn't allowed to bathe more than 1x per week in high school. Can you imagine?!
They recognized the trauma and dysfunction in each other and called it love, and here we are. I also grew up in dysfunction, just not THEIR dysfunction.
Mel Robbins has a fantastic podcast on this topic. She talks about having space and respect for their perspective - which was shaped by their circumstances. Circumstances that most of Gen Z could never imagine, unless they saw it in a horror movie.
Azreel777@reddit
My wife (45f) and I (47m) often find ourselves parenting our parents (her's are 75, mine are 68). It's like they lost some part of their problem solving and rational thinking brain.
GenX-ModTeam@reddit
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Speech that targets someone based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other personal attributes.
itoshiineko@reddit
My dad is problematic but he was raised by dysfunctional silent generation parents.
Oily_Bee@reddit
Worse, I had silent generation parents and upbringing.
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
Please elaborate
Oily_Bee@reddit
Children are to be seen and not heard. Question nothing, perpetual chores. Can't wear jeans, must wear a button shirt, in bedroom lights out by 9 my sr year in high school. Must earn place in household.
Brizzledude65@reddit
I had a very similar childhood. Still pisses me off now, I was so different with my kids.
Oily_Bee@reddit
I didn't have children because my childhood was so awful I just assumed that was what it was like.
toqer@reddit
I'm watching comments defending the boomers. OK mileage may vary, but in my family...
I spent 7 years starting in 2015 defending my grandmother from her 3 sons when she was diagnosed with dementia. She wanted to stay in her home with caregivers, they wanted to put her in a facility because "Insurance would pay for all of it" (quoting my father) She had a $20m dollar estate and put them in charge of it years ago.
When I was 13 she fostered me, because my mom and dad were just horribly abusive.
I spent more time bouncing between houses, in therapy, in courtrooms than I care to remember. Best I can figure is, they saw me as the catalyst for their issues (they divorced when I was 5) I went to 6 high schools in 3 years. In total k-12 I went to 11 schools. Dropped out and got a GED junior year.
My dad and his younger brother stopped working at 35. I'm 52, still working. 3rd brother worked all his life, but this made him feel more entitled to my grandmothers money.
Pretty much all of their cousins have worked as little, or are as out of touch as they are with the exception of maybe 4-5 out of 20.
My own stats? Married, about to leave and take a trip to wine country. Kids are 15 and 19. I still have issues, just this morning I had a flare up, and got upset about the handle for the bathtub water being bent (after I had to fix it myself a few years ago.. replacing a cartridge when the screw is stripped wasn't fun) Kids have gone to a total of 2 schools between K-12 (k-8 private)
I kind of feel like the boomers tend to self diagnose a lot. Like they want a reason why they act so shitty. They also Munchausen a bit (this is why those wilderness camp / outward bound type detox programs exploded in the 80's and 90s) They seem to be wrapped up so hard in their own "Abusive Childhood" that they can't stop the cycle. Hell, the police took me from both my parents for abuse.
And yes, I did co-parent my father a bit with my grandmother. He'd refuse to show up at things like his grandfathers funeral, because his uncles that "Treated him mean" were there, or my sisters wedding because "Your mom is there" My grandmother would write me a check to get him cleaned up, and drag his ass there.
BoggyCreekII@reddit
The boomers got so messed up by being the first generation to grow up under threat of annihilation via the Cold War. It made them sociopaths.
Granted, we grew up with that shit too, but by then we had another generation to look to who'd dealt with the same thing so it seemed more "normal" to us and didn't pathologize our minds.
Trudi1201@reddit
I had a parent and a grandparent (singular).
Both did the best they could, neither were perfect (and nor was I).
I absolutely don't hold either of them as the standard for their respective generation and I really hope no one ever looks at me as the standard for Gen X...
DenThomp@reddit
I forgave my parents for the many misgivings as they were a product of their times. Like smoking nonstop in the house,car or anywhere. Jammed religion down our throats even tho they didn’t really believe. We ate horribly. It’s just what everyone did. They weren’t prepared and never were ready for kids as they never had parents, so they winged it as best they could which wasn’t very good. Their legacy to me was showing me how not to raise my kids and the lesson paid off.
DJ_Desertlama@reddit
I've never understood how my parents' generation went from the causes of social justice in the 60's to extreme selfishness that has I feel has led us in many ways to the current mess we find ourselves in. As a latchkey kid and the product of a broken family, I learned to be fiercely independent. Independence has its benefits, but my romantic partners would be driven crazy by my independence.
Now I'm 59 and I've made my peace with it all. My mother and I discussed this recently. I pointed out that I've found a lot of goodness in my upbringing -- especially my willingness to take chances, seek adventure on my own, and not be bullied by authority. I've come to love all those aspects of myself.
I'm sure my adult sons probably have a thing or two to say about their old man. haha
Bennieplant@reddit
Oh yeah I do. Moved 2000 miles away from them and it still doesn’t seem far enough. By coparenting do you mean temporarily being disowned by having me live with my grandparents parents for months at a time? Shit my brother was totally kicked out at 13 and was raised by my grandmother. Boomers aren’t all bad but my parents take the fu!king cake.
FadingOptimist-25@reddit
I had Silent Gen parents. Born during the war. My father was… a mess. My mom did her best to raise us with the situation she was in. Though we did swap roles after my parents divorced in the ‘80s. I started being the parent taking care of her as a teen.
HelenaHansomcab@reddit
Culturally, it was weird growing up next to the Boomers because it felt like all light bent towards them, and they weren’t terribly curious about other generations as a result. Say what you will about Neil Peart (of Rush), he was the first person I ever heard wonder what ABOUT those kids? (with Tom Sawyer and Subdivisions). John Hughes was the second.
Individually, though, it’s harder to say. I had fucked up Silent Generation parents. Some of my friends had great Boomer parents. I’m not sure one can make sweeping generalizations.
Over-Direction9448@reddit
Good analysis
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
Very true. I'm wasn't trying to make generalizations. After reading some comments, I'm quickly reminded of how challenging it was to have difficult silent generation parents.
Thanks
klippDagga@reddit
I have no disdain for any generation. Each one is largely a product of their times.
d2r_freak@reddit
I had silent gen parents and they were/are the best.
Didn’t have a lot of money, but had all the love in the world.
AnnieB512@reddit
I too have parents born in the silent generation. They were firm but loving, and I wouldn't ask for anyone else to raise me. They were actively involved in our lives without hovering too much. We all came out strong and independent.
626337@reddit
Our cohort wasn't large enough that entire industries were re-shaped to accommodate us (building new schools, hospitals, suburbs, roads & other infrastructure) .... I guess it's easy to believe the world revolves around you when it actually does revolve around you
Last_Cod_998@reddit
It was the "me" generation after all. We survived on the infrastructure built for them.
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
Great point, thanks
PragmaticPrime@reddit
It seems like every few generations there is the "spoiled generation" (in general, not as a whole). This Gen doesn't have to work as hard as their parents, just enjoys the fruits of the previous gen's labor. It's similar to the kid who inherits their parents' business and runs it into the ground bc they didn't have the same business-building mindset. This Gen has more time to focus on social issues, etc. bc they don't have to get a job in their teen years. They tend to be more selfish and their beliefs are that everyone experiences life in the same way.
Besides that, it's a change in values from their parents. Makes for an explosive environment similar to what we've seen with Millennials/Gen Z. The Silent Gen suffered through the Great Depression. They didn't want their kids to suffer the same way.
It's pretty wild when you start looking at the trends over the human timeline and baffling that humans haven't figured out how to not be this way.
Adventurous_Leg_1816@reddit
Personally, I feel like trying to put an entire generation in a box with a label, while not spelling properly, shows you are a hateful person that is very myopic and careless. As if this isn't still going on with different generations? As if one or the other is personally to blame for one thing or another? Geez, get over yourself and stop the hate and division rhetoric already. There are plenty of labels that fit every generation, and every type of person exists in all generations, represented by the obvious. That doesn't EVER make the entire generation fit one description, or make that description some kind of majority. Here are some labels that likely fit your division campaign.
Hungry-University609@reddit (OP)
Excellent! Thanks for the feedback.