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[quote=Anonymous]My mother by any measure is not a good one.  She was verbally and physically abusive and emotionally neglectful.  She was dutiful (made sure we were fed, had clean laundry, got to school) but treated us as annoyances and really couldn’t be bothered by our human-ness.  She’s just not maternal.  She’s also from a culture in which physical abuse of children is normalized, and one in which children should be “seen and not heard.”

Sometimes when we’re talking she’ll critique the intensiveness of modern parenting and ridicule parents who are patient with their children, focus on them, respect them etc.  She derides this approach as soft and recently said “until very recently you were just responsible for making sure your children were fed and safe.”  I said that indeed the landscape has changed and parenting has become a lot more intensive.  I also noted that it’s become a lot more difficult in society to become successful and that this intensiveness is probably needed.  Sue rebutted by saying that college admissions are down :roll:

It always feels like a thinly veiled criticism of my own parenting, as I am patient with my kids, allow them to have a voice, and am not punitive (as she was).  She also manages to make this a racial issue - I am half-white, and she associates these “soft,” “ridiculous” parenting approaches as being entirely in the purview of white people.

She’ll also be very condescending to me about having kids, being a working mom, being a wife etc and speaks to me as though I have no personal experience in these realms (recent example: she said “kids are expensive!”’and I said “yes, I have three kids, I know.”)

I get very annoyed by these conversations and really need some advice on how to assertively shut them down.[/quote]

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