Reply to Millennials who are mean.

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Millennials who are mean. "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP clearly has a blind spot toward her own behaviors. All 3 kids? She thinks they are spoiled but takes no blame? Describes herself in positive ways and everyone else in negative ways. She’s the problem.

Boomer women didn’t work and did far, far less kid centric things than millennials do today. Their identities were tied to their husband, his work, friends and having kids. As those things have slipped away with time , they seem very empty and are forcing themselves are their adult children.

I’m GenX and see it with our boomer parents and their siblings. Not a one did anything more than a card or call on Mother’s Day for their mothers but boy do they still demand a full on celebration of them on Mother’s Day. As GenX we just ignore it or appease them but I see my millennial younger cousins being much less tolerant of the behavior. [/quote]

You could not be more wrong here. You have your generations mixed up. Boomer women were the first to be in the work force fully,  and they were expected to be in the work force- not a choice thing. We broke glass ceilings in the work force, established work policies for women in while in the work force, expected to take on male dominated STEM field roles with less pay, expected to manage  daycare effortlessly,  fought off misogynistic practices, sexual abuse and workplace harassment,  and as they said over and over in ads and songs: " She brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan."

Our identities were  not tied to our spouse and  women were frowned upon if they did. Many of us married later, had kids later,  and we were the first generation to normalize  divorce. We were the first to keep our names. We had our own accts.

I am 66. I have friends in the age group going towards 75. Some a little older.  No one was a stay at home wife and mother. All  socioeconomic levels, all income levels.

[/quote]

I would say you were the exception, not the norm. My boomer mom got married 20, had me at 23, never went to college. She did work, but only sporadically when she had to. She always had jobs, not careers. [/quote]

Don't generalize  your personal experience with actual history.  Why your mom took a route from a previous generation  has nothing to do with what was actually going on. It might be a religious or socioeconomic thing  or sociological  ( midwest?)  ...but no getting married at 20 was definitely not a thing. Is she in her late 70s?  Older boomer?  Is your family name Falwell or Duggar?
This is my generation,  mid 60s and I can say your mother's experience doesn't reflect the times. I was there. [/quote]

No, she's mid 60s also. Must be where I was raised, because most Boomer women I know got married in their 20s and had kids in their 20s. [/quote]

I would have to ask- why didn't she go to college? All these Boomer women you know,  why didn't they? Why didn't they work? 
I had kids in my late 20s,  and all of my contemporaries finished college and graduate school by then and had kids between 25 ish to 35ish.. I worked for 35 years amongst my contemporaries, all similar experiences. Getting married at 20, staying home in the 80s would have seemed odd. Getting married at 25, but staying home due to wealth was a different story, though, and that happened. But, even they went to work when the kids were older. [/quote]

If most of the women you know had college degrees and a significant percentage had graduate degrees and you're a Boomer, you come from an outlier community. Title IX took effect in 1972 and it took a while for it to take hold and change habits. Prior to Title IX, women could be kicked out of college/grad school for getting pregnant. The numbers of women in professional graduate programs other than maybe education was tiny (and back then teachers did not need graduate degrees and few got them). Even fields that today are now dominated by women, like psychology, back then were predominantly male. And the higher paying professions like law and medicine? Overwhelmingly male. The number of lawyers who were women went from 3% in 1970 to 8% in 1980 -- a huge jump and also a drop in the bucket.

The vast majority of Boomer women were encouraged to marry and have children young and lacked educational opportunities. There were a lot of Boomer women who worked, but it was out of necessity, not choice, and the jobs they worked were either "pink collar" professions like teaching or nursing, or labor that today is largely performed by low-income immigrants -- childcare and housekeeping.

If most of the Boomer women you know were educated professionals, you are unusual, which is why the way people on this thread are describing their upbringing by Boomer parents may sound foreign to you. But their story is much more common than yours.[/quote]

Ridiculous.  Don't talk to me about my own generation.  I was certainly not an outlier.  I didn't live in any bubble either. My parent's  parents  were immigrants who were destitute, raised kids during the depresion. My parents  had a different experience than their parents. They were the women who didn't  largely work,  but wanted to. 
In my career, I have worked with a diverse  group of contemporary  women,  diverse ages, ethnicities, races, socioeconomic status- all over  the country.  I can tell you we were absolutely in the work force,  full stop. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics