Today’s young adults want apologies from their parents; parents want a thank you
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Anonymous
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Do you think this is a real dynamic?
Young adults (18-23) with a sense of being wronged. They’re exhausted parents who did everything they could. Lots of resentment bubbling over. |
Anonymous
| *their. Fat finger typo. |
Anonymous
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Don't most of us have a sense of being wronged? I don't think that's new.
I accept the general screw ups - we're all human - but the very bad behavior - affairs for example - it would be nice to at least get an acknowledgement that their choices had impacts on people besides themselves. |
Anonymous
| I’m 45 and was very difficult with my parents around 18-23, feeling wronged in many ways. I think it’s fairly typical as make the last separation from dependence and learn to take responsibility for ourselves as adults. It’s not necessarily a clean process. I eventually matured and came around and all is good with them now. |
Anonymous
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I don’t think it’s new to want an apology for a screw-up. Seeing and feeling sad for the pain another has gone through, regardless of the source, is a way to have a deeper connection with somebody. I think it’s more socially acceptable to talk about it with others.
Same with appreciation for what you have done for others, but since adult children have become more firm about wanting apologies, I think there has been a backlash against that with parents saying “you want an apology? Well what about some appreciation for everything I did?” That has always been the case because people are just bad at conflict and relationships but it might be more prevalent now. It certainly is more visible. |
Anonymous
| Maybe because of social media, maybe because of how they were raised, 18+ often expect perfection in everything, from their partners to their parents to their jobs. It’s unrealistic and can do them a great disservice. |
Anonymous
You don’t define pain or screwups. Nobody would defend the abusers, but there’s a lot of room for error beneath this. Yet somehow you jump to blaming parents because they’re “just bad at conflict.” Typical, and that’s probably exactly what OP is talking about. |
Anonymous
| Can’t imagine asking my parents for an apology. Maybe for an affair, drug use, or ugly divorce. Certainly for abuse or any kind. But otherwise, hard no. |
Anonymous
| My parents have nothing to apologize for. I know they did their best. I am forever grateful. |
Anonymous
Are you a social scientist researcher who has studied this question? Did you read this somewhere? Or are you just spouting some random observations based on a handful of young people in your orbit? |
Anonymous
Np, I am 45, and don't feel at all wronged by my parents. They were terrific people, and I am grateful that I had them. Perfect? Nope. |
Anonymous
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Kids 18-23 are (mostly) still in college and under financial control of their parents. Given the amount of pressure that kids are under in high school these days- possibly into college?- it might be a form of establishing independence.
I met DH in college and think that he would have had a much healthier dynamic with his parents in early adulthood if he had told them to f-off a few more times when he was 16. |
Anonymous
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I've heard people say that they resented their parents until they had kids, and then they realized how well their parents did because they realized how hard parenting is and they appreciated some of the stuff their parents did once they understand the context of what it means to be a parent. So maybe some of these very young kids will feel more grateful later.
However, this was not my experience. Having kids actually made me realize that my parents were much worse than I had allowed myself to believe before, and that my family was deeply dysfunctional. There are a lot of things I give my kid easily and happily that I never had as a child, because my parents were very emotionally immature and had no idea how to provide it. Stuff like a calm and loving home environment or the ability to listen to her talk about her life without criticizing/sarcasm/impatience/resentment. I don't expect an apology but I definitely don't find myself getting more grateful as I get older and experience more parenting myself. Instead I've had to go into therapy to work through some of the memories from childhood that have come up as I parent, so that I can continue to be the best parent I can despite not having had much good parenting modeled for me. |
Anonymous
Perhaps you had good parents and the PP didn't. This website is full of people comparing and judging other people's parenting. But then whenever someone says "my parents were bad parents" posters jump all over them to be more grateful. Well guess what? Some of us had really terrible parents whose parenting you would judge very harshly. |
Anonymous
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I’m not a young adult. I accept that my parents did the best that they could to parent me in a rapidly changing world that they were unable to fully prepare me for. I also recognize that from early childhood through young adulthood, I paid a heavy price during their ugly divorce and beyond — as each parent tried to get their share of daughterhood. I won’t go into the details of the ugliness except to say that it was sometimes brutal and that divorce didn’t make an angry controlling parent any less angry or controlling — although it changed the available focus of that rage. An apology, or even an open acknowledgment would have been helpful and possibly even healing. In contrast, my parents each got many thank you moments although I have no idea if they were felt as being adequate.
TLDR: It’s not just an issue for “Today’s young adults” and their parents. |