My Mom & Dad Didn’t Play With Me

You know that I defend my generation with passion, but there is an annoying & unfair phenomenon going on, that is entirely caused by my generation:

The complaints about our 'cold' upbringing in the 80s and 90s compared to the upbringing in the 21st century.

"My mom didn't play with me at all, I wouldn't do that to my son. I play with him for at least 15 minutes every day and teach him to play soccer and ride a bike and go camping."

"Family time is really important for us"

"I don't remember my dad, although my parents were together. He was present, but only physically"

"My mom said that she and my father didn't have the time to play with me. And at that time kids were one part of the family life, not the center of attention."

The last line is from me.

When I first noticed the differences between my upbringing and my kids' upbringing, I never said anything to my parents about it (although I did want to note that "you know it would have been nice to play one game with you every once in a while") because I knew how their upbringing was.

My grandparents were extremely strict, so strict that the word cruel/rough could be used in some of the cases compared to this time of mindset about parenting. When my grandfather returned from the war, he came back like a broken man who tried to forget the horrors of the war with alcohol. He and my grandmother had so many children that they gave one away to my aunt who was not able to have kids of her own. When my mother went to school, she had to go through a big forest and therefore had a pack of matches in her pocket in case she encountered wolves, at 7 years old. My aunt started to brush her teeth when she was 12, therefore she had artificial dentures when she was 30.

When I was maybe 10 years old, I got my first cell phone.

And these are just a few examples of the time and circumstances my parents experienced when they were growing up.

But the odd thing is that they still talk warmly about their parents, they never complain. They remember the good moments and they understand that their parents did their best in the surroundings they were living in.

When they tell me about their childhood, I look like I have just seen a ghost, then they laugh and say: "time was different back then".

But for some reason, millennials don't act this way. I don't understand why.

Is it because of the general individualism in this era, when things are evaluated only from your own experiences? Or is it the general panic mode in everything that developed the hysteric helicopter parenting?

I think it's immature and nonrespectful to complain about your upbringing if you had a decent home (in any era) because many kids out there would be more than happy to have that.

I think that the reason why my parents don't complain, although life was difficult and different, is because they had a decent home, they were taken care of by their parents and their community with the means and customs of that time.

Nowadays kids receive so many things in their lives making their parents think that they lacked something, but it's not true.

If you had a decent upbringing, where you felt you were safe, and taken care of, that's enough.

Today I read about a court case where a family rented a summer cabin, stayed for one night, and then sued the owner because it didn't meet their expectations; things were broken, they thought it was dirty...Well, they lost the case and ended up paying 30 000€ in court fees. Why? Because investigators didn't think the cabin was that bad, but just a normal summer cabin, not a luxury one, but normal. They also lost the case because they didn't give the owner the chance to fix what they thought was bad. They just left and sued.

Old bad, new good.

But that kind of thinking is twisted because only by understanding and respecting the old we can create something new that could be an improvement in the future.

Every generation improves the next generation with small things. My parents were spanked when they misbehaved, but they didn't want that for me because they remembered how awful that was; they learned from that. And now, we millennials have learned that children need more affection; we have learned that. The next generation (the Alphas) will learn something else (and then complain about it to us millennial parents, probably about the fact that we never gave them the chance to do anything by themselves :D)

It is natural progress, that has been going on from the day we started to be more humans and not monkeys. Bit by bit we learn the means to make our offspring a little bit better than we were.

In the end, the number of bike rides and family picnics don't matter alone, but the amount of general care and safety which by the way, in my era of growing up were considered love.

Now, love is also affection. Hugs, kisses, words of "I love you", all good things to add to the relationship with your child.

But differences in previous upbringings is one of those things when the best thing is just to say: "the time was different back then", and leave the conversation there.

Let the natural progress do its thing, without the unfair complaining.