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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think this has nothing to do with age. If one thinks of it, people who behave in this way have always done so. They're usually also people who don't have many friends (if any) and are socially awkward. They don't know how to have a two-way conversation. They usually also never figure out when their kids have grown up, have their own agency, and should be treated as peers rather than a 5-year-old. They talk AT people. They also think that their kids/grandkids HAVE to listen to them, no matter what (anybody unrelated to them has disappeared long ago). For some reason, there are a lot of women like this in our parents generation (boomers). My mom and MIL are like this. When I call my mom, she literally asks me why I'm not more interested in her life -- i.e. gossip about people I don't know. In her ideal, everybody should be interested in her and she should sit like a queen on a throne and be peppered with attention. It doesn't even occur to her to be interested in others. She doesn't know anything about me or my kids, nor my brother or his kids. Never been to any school plays or sports games. I once asked her why she's never been to brother's son's soccer games (he plays at a high level). She was surprised: what would I do there?! I had to chuckle recently when she thought that a "normal" involvement with this same teen was to offer to pay for his driving school so that then he'd be "obliged" (her words) to drive her around. He refused and she cannot understand why. [/quote]

I posted this before, but boomer women saw this behavior modelled by the women older than them. Grandma ruled the day and and everyone was just expected to suck it up. Grandma wasn't interested in what her daughter thought about anything or what she was doing (to be fair, daughter was likely greatly restricted in what she could do in mid-century America), and even less interested in the grandkids, but Grandma sure was interested in making sure she was the center of attention nd everyone listened to what she had to say. The daughters/moms were biding their time until it was their turn to be the family matriarch--and they could then act as their mothers did and everyone who bow to them. Our moms and MILs saw this and internalized it.

And then the world changed dramatically. Gen Xers and older Millennials had no intention of continuing these patterns. But our moms had waited (and waited and [i]waited[/i]!) for their time to come and they want their reward, gosh darn it.[/quote]

I’m surprised this dynamic also happened in the U.S. I thought it was just an Asian/ Indian thing.[/quote]

It's a bit more subtle, but its definitely a thing. The family social hierarchy is more in your face and openly discussed as normal and how things are in some other cultures, whereas in the US (at least White America), it's there but not so explicitly talked about. Heck, I'm not even sure some people even really understand that's what's going on, but as I said, it's what they've seen modelled for generations and so that's just how they expect things to go. I guarantee my mom and MIL could not articulate it, but it's very much there. They can't tell you why they're upset that their grown children refuse to play the role of dutifully obedient adult child who patiently listens to their gossip about meaningless things, just that they're upset.

Sometimes I feel bad for them. The rug basically got pulled out from under them. They're navigating major social change with few (if any) examples. From a young age, they saw the prize, biding their time, just as their own mothers did. They want their prize, and they have no idea how to have meaningful two-way relationships with their adult children because they never saw meaningful two-way relationships between a parent and adult child--they literally don't know how to do it. They know how to be The Matriarch. It's easier to do what you know than to learn something new.[/quote]

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