I recently read this post by cliffelam and it got me thinking. The post is a letter written by a disappointed father to his children. My guess is that his children regard him as "old fashioned" and out of touch. It's clear from reading the other link, that Cliffelam provides in the comments, that his kids and he are no longer on speaking terms.
As a father this is scary stuff. While I love my parents, I simultaneously think they're nuts. My parents both think that their parents are nuts too. It's a never ending cycle.
I love the little girl pictured below and I will give her every ounce of my attention and abilities to ensure she has the best of every opportunity and is a well rounded and highly functional human. But is she destined to think me crazy and out of touch someday?
Ask Hubski: what's your relationship with your parents like?
My daughter at her first Detroit Tigers game 2011
My parents and I have an extremely strained relationship, or did when I saw them regularly. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but that's a different post. I have a theory about this, though -- generational gaps have been huge over the last ~100 years (when the concept of generations started to crop up, gen x, gen y, Boomers, etc). Part of this is technology -- my greatgrandparents were children before WW1, my grandparents were Boomers who listened to the radio for entertainment, my parents can remember the advent of color TV to an extent, and I, of course, have the internet. This makes it easy to trace the gaps in simple terms through time. Such differences in lifestyle make it extremely easy to dismiss an older (or younger) relative -- I might think my parents are naive about certain things, and they might thing I don't spend my time effectively. This comes down to not having a shared framework of past experience. This is a problem exacerbated by technology -- but as the first generation to truly be "comfortable" with technology grows older and has children, perhaps the problem will vanish. (Or perhaps, of course, the technologies will grow with us and we will no longer have that shared experience platform to stand on with our children. Who knows.) EDIT: mk summed up what I was trying to say. And hopefully we have. Or maybe we're just deluding ourselves.So perhaps [previous generations] didn't adopt technological adaptation as a life-skill.
I try to think of technology that will someday out match me. So far in life I have been able to adapt, but one day the technology will become useless to me or even worse I will be unable to use it. The technology gap is wide, but I've noticed it is wider between the newer generation and the middle aged then the new and the old old generations. This has been true for thousands of years, but I honestly expected it to change as soon as technology started to exponentially grow.
I've often joked that someday my grandchildren will spend their time moving their hands through empty space in complicated patterns that I cannot understand. Every once in a while, they will smile or snicker, and I won't have a clue. However, my hope is that adaptation might be a part of my generation and those younger than me. As you note, the baby-boomer generation seems to be on the other side of the gap. However, during their formative years, technological advance was relatively slow-paced. So perhaps they didn't adopt technological adaptation as a life-skill. That said, you might be right about the changing speed of advance. We might be more able to adapt to new technology than the boomers, but the rate of change might be something that we can't manage. Still, there has to be a human limit to the rate at which one can adapt, and therein lies the premise for singularity.
TNG - when it's time to let go -- that's the hard part. What's your relationship with your parents like? I'm a boomer, 3rd child of five kids born post-war 1949-1960. My father was an injured vet who nonethelss wanted to make his impact on the world. After a heroic life, he died at age 43 of complications arising from war-related injuries. I wish we could know each other - both as adults. I wish I could have seen my father and my mother grow old together. That would have been amazing. But way leads on to way. Maybe they are growing old together in another universe. flagamuffin makes an interesting point below about technology and the generations. My guess, though, is that parents who were supportive, loving, accepting, and appreciative of their kids probably have kids who are supportive, loving, accepting, and appreciative of them. My mom is about to turn 86. We've had some rough spots, but worked them out. I appreciate her every day. She refuses to engage with most technology. It makes my life a little harder because other relatives are always emailing me messages for her. Here's what she says, "I passed the liquor store today and I thought to myself, 'I'm so glad I don't have to go in there, because I don't drink.' I feel the same way about computers."
I don't think she's crazy and out of touch. She's just living her life. My daughter is 28. We've had our rough spots. I suspect we'll work them out. I hope so.
My relationship with my parents is good. I am very close with my father. I worry about my mother though, particularly her health. She is not an active person, she just sits around watching TV and being on Facebook. If we are sticking with the "liquor store analogy", I'd say she has a drinking problem. My parents are young and as such, they hadn't a clue about how to raise me. All said, they did a fine job. That said, now that I'm a father I am noticing the deficiencies in my upbringing. Particularly as they relate to learning/educaction I coulda been somebody, I coulda been a contender
We might be destined to be incapable of understanding our parents, or our children.
Thanks for the link. While it reeks a bit of the same sort of generalities you get with "astrology", I find such things interesting. I wouldn't argue that there aren't certain archetypes that continually rear their collective heads but to say all "millenials" or "boomers" are "X" seems a bit much. Or perhaps I'm misreading this. Related: My wife is a big fan of the Myers Briggs personality index and loves to take their "tests" and have others take it too. It is startling how accurate those types of things can be.
Well speaking of parents, millennials and generalizations, Perhaps there is hope that you won't be as strange as your parents.
I find the older I become, the less effort they put into showing a happy marriage. It's troubling and I often wonder if they stayed together and miserable for my sake or if there are still glimmers of the former love that I'm just not seeing in day-to-day operations. Since they both consider me a confidant, I find myself walking a tightrope of objectivity while still trying to remain supportive.
Since they both consider me a confidant, I find myself walking a tightrope of objectivity while still trying to remain supportive.
That must be difficult and I don't think it's right for anyone to put their child in that situation. I can recall knowing way too much of my parents marriage woes as a child. Should my wife and I ever have a dispute, I hope to be able to shield it from my daughter or at the very least, never include her in it.
Price of admission to adulthood. The older you get, the more the parents become the children and the children become the parents. Never arguing in front of your child is a good policy and one that resonates for me as a new parent. Again - tightrope. Don't want to argue in front of the kid but don't want to suppress an issue until it blows up to be worse due to festering.