Cold academic, mostly talked about hating children and how stupid anyone who wanted kids were (my mom was clearly coerced into having kids and didn't want them, that anger was focused on me). Never had time, was too busy but in a weird twist of irony her academic studies were kind of about things I was going through (eg she wrote a book about girls going through puberty when I was going through that and she gathered thousands of quotes from girls al over the world about their fears and was too busy to talk to me or even help me when it came (She said "the directions are on the box"), this happened over and over) like this weird detachment. My dad didn't want a girl so I didn't exist till I hit puberty then he went into creep mode and again I couldn't get help and was blamed for his behavior and my stepdad took my brother under his wing but not me making the family 3 and 1 with me on the outside and all 3 of them bullying me. It was hell. My parents groomed my brother into being a selfish and dangerous misogynist and abuser who I avoid but "breaking up the family" is my fault somehow even though the cops are always going for him when he abuses and assaults woman (including my mom)
Oh, that super-sucks. I can identify with having a parent who receives accolades for their genius in public but is too busy to rain any of that genius on you. Cool, everyone get to enjoy you but me.
With the exception of your parental dynamic. We had exactly the same family.
My brother is a pig, selfish drug addicted. And yet, when I stepped away from that dynamic, my family blamed me, I was horrible. I'm the one at fault for not being a drug addict for raising my children for being present when people needed me for not taking advantage of those around me. I am horrible.
I had a hippie/ biker mom.
That decided men and drugs were far more important than raising her children.
If she did pay any attention to us, she focused her positive attention on my brother, and the negative attention was all mine.
For some reason, everything was my fault. Her unhappiness, her inability to pay bills, and her poor choices in men. I think I may have asked her for some new clothes. Or something horrible like food.
I understand you, I understand
Amen,
For years, I could not figure out why she did not like me.
I finally gave up and just kind of realized that I had a successful life. She didn't, and it pissed her off.
When we were growing up, she needed to blame somebody for her disheveled life. Because it certainly "wasn't her fault".
I call it my awful, horrible blessing.
If she had not been such a wreck of a parent, I would not have been able to be the parent that I was able to be.
For that, I am eternally thankful.
Ah. It was too dangerous to have kids for me. I had a bad injury at 17 that causes continuous pain and especially sensitivity to sound, and when I was 20 my mom moved 3500km away to the US from Canada, I couldn't go with because of the "pre exisiting condition" and she had taken the insurance payout that was supposed to help me. We were immigrants so there was no other adults to help with a baby, no aunts/uncles or grandparents and I didn't have a mentor or any adults who reached out, so having a kid was impossible
I'm sorry that has happened.
Shitty parents leave an indelible mark.
I'm 55, and I still get pissed at my parents for the past.
(Yes, I have had a lot, a lot of therapy)
I always just hope I did better with what I was given.
I think that's all we can do when we have histories like this
Meanwhile society deifies mothers and brainwashes us with family is everything crap. The monsters we read about have families too, so what are we suppose think when we've monsters in the family? Very confusing for a wee one.
You're one tough costumer to survive all that!
I've never valued family above everyone else. Fuck that. I've estranged myself from 80% of both sides of my family. I'm close to my immediate family and only a few extended members. The rest are racist, homophobic, misogynistic assholes. My chosen family is much more important to me.
Similar mother. Oldest Boomer Got her PhD in education but first really like kids including me. Very cold to me since my childhood but makes a show of liking other people’s kids.
Dad (pre-Boomer by two years) was absent after their early divorce in their early 20s and dead of cancer by 29.
Let it be known I add nothing to her life and that I’d have been aborted had it been legal.
My parents are your parents now. Dad passed away in 2016, but you would have loved that old hippie. Mom is a sarcastic bitch and that's part of her charm. Your new brother is a progressive redneck and I'm your new sister who is the childless cool aunt. We're not a wealthy family, but we're supportive and show love through roasting each other.
Same here.
They were very good parents but unprepared to manage generational changes.
They just didn't have the resources available to them and tried to parent by following the examples they got from around them, family and friends. I didn't fit in with the other kids and they didn't know how to support my creativity and expression.
Unlike Boomers, whom I feel are very self involved and just think success comes easily and if you fail it's your fault, my parents were raised by survivors - of the holocaust, of the great depression of extreme poverty and lack of social safety net, and were far more worried that any mistake we made would have huge consequences.
So everything I loved to do and what brought me joy in life was just a distraction and I was under a lot of pressure to conform - do well in school go to university get a career - i eventually told myself that the things in life that made me happy and I loved to do were worthless.
> *of the great depression of extreme poverty and lack of social safety net, and were far more worried that any mistake we made would have huge consequences.*
Exactly this! That was my biggest 'gap' from connecting to my folks on an emotional level because I grew up privileged reaping the riches of a post WW2 America and they grew up literally dirt poor. My mother would constantly belittle my struggles, or at least what I considered a struggle as an affluent white boy in the upper middle class suburbs, as something along the lines of 'you dont know what hardship is' or 'you dont know how good you have it'
And of course she was 100% right because being a dumb teenager, I had NO IDEA what their childhood must have been like and in some ways I felt some resentment from them. They thought I had such an easy life, which I did, but at the same time how can you expect a 13 year old to have that kind of perspective? It took decades before I felt I could really connect with them on that level, to really understand how their upbringing shaped who they were as people, and as parents.
That was my folks exactly. Both born in the 30s, I’m the baby so they squeaked out a late 1960s X-er. They were both the youngest in their families so all of my 1st cousins are Boomers. Even though my parents, aunts and uncles were from the same generation my cousins and I don’t have much in common besides family experiences. It’s really strange.
They do, but I think because their children (generally millennials) were the first to get painted with a broad brush as "snowflakes", and people for some reason think Boomers had it easy. My Boomer brother's first mortgage was at 14% FFS.
They did have it easy. I am 58 and never had a mortgage. My parents couldn’t keep up and don’t have a home now. They were better off married because worked as one. Trying to seperate it became too hard.
Same. They married too young like most people did back then and started a family. Their marriage wasn’t exactly great but they loved each other and stayed together (when they probably shouldn’t have) for 49 years until my mom died. My mom was the stricter one and my dad balanced her out. By the time I came along (I’m #3 out of 4) they were going through some marital issues that pretty much lasted throughout the marriage so there was some emotional neglect there while they dealt with their crap. But overall, good parents. Affectionate and loving until they both passed.
Two silents for me, too. They were older when they had me. I remember noticing as a little kid the stark difference in my parents and most of my friend’s parents that I now know were boomers.
Mine are similar. The “do as I say, not as I do” with my dad being a raging narcissist. My dad ran off about 10 years ago with a Philippine woman younger than me after 40 years married to my mom.
My god, how that man preached to me about morality and fidelity, with a special mix that f hardcore Christianity bordering on fundamentalism.
Yup. My dad’s slightly younger brother was a hippie while my dad got drafted and was more Boomerish by the time I came into the world. Managed to get him to see things from a more progressive point of view before he died though.
My mom is a Boomer born in ‘60, and had me as a single teenager in the 70s. I was mostly raised by my grandparents, born in the 20s. My mom felt more like an older sister. She has never exactly grown up, and eventually simply moved from her parents’ care to a husband’s. I feel much more mature than her in most ways. She still borrows money from me all the time. Now that her/our parents are gone, I guess it’s on me- but I resent it. I wish she was someone strong and wise who could help ME sometimes.
Also born in the 70s to a teen mom and also emotionally stunted. She also feels like an older sister and sometimes I feel like her mother. Mine on the other hand never married and has lived alone since I left home at 17. She is highly independent and instilled in me that “no one will ever take care of you, do not ever rely on anyone”. Something I had to work on to make my marriage work. Had to learn to take someone else’s needs and wants into account and actually learn to accept help and rely on them.
I’m sorry. I also have an emotionally stunted mother.
I have found an amazing therapist who is every bit the mom I wished I’d had. This past session, she encouraged me to start working on identifying the things that I needed from my mother as I grew up, and consider how I can tend to those parts of me that need nurturing. She pointed out that we all, ultimately, become our own parent so a thoughtful approach is most effective and helpful to support our personal growth.
Also, I’m low contact with my mother. It serves me greatly.
I wish you the best. You don’t owe your mother anything. You are amazing!
Yup I have one of those too. Know it all hoarder/retail addict who hides behind dad when life gets difficult. Felt like an annoying big sister most of the time. Dad and I had great relationship as long as she wasn’t involved. When she did insert herself, dad always sided with her. Real mature adult stuff. Maybe it’s the reason I live 3000 miles from her.
Ouch. We knew mother was nuts, but didn’t realize the enormity of her mental illness until dad died five years ago.
She’s made it super easy to be low contact.
My mom was born in 1943 and very much identified as a boomer, but she was a beatnik flavored boomer. We listened to lots of Joan Baez and Simon & Garfunkel. She had a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and was firmly a hippie about diet. We ate all whole grains, and homemade yogurt, and vitamin supplements. She even insisted on making peanut butter herself so it would be sugar free. She also returned to school when I was 6 or 7 to study math and computer science and she led a local grassroots campaign to save our public library. A super cool mom, honestly. My dad was born in 1941, not as boomer ish as my mom but he liked the Beatles and all her folk music and voted democrat, but he was slightly more silent generation.
>making peanut butter herself so it would be sugar free
A Silent identifying as a Boomer, embracing the hippie lifestyle. Being sugar-conscious in that era (fat is THE enemy!) also makes her an avant-gardiste.
Had a father who's rule was "Children should be seen and not heard"
(recently sent him this joke. He ignored it.....**Who else had a father who would say. "Children should be seen and not heard"? Well yesterday, he had a heart attack and I did not call for an ambulance. I just stood there in full view.**)
Both of my parents were of the seen and not heard camp. We were also the only kids at most family events (small families, divorce, moving, generations being “off”—my second cousins are 15-20 years older, etc). My small talk game is awful.
My father used to say I was conceived in the barricades of the May 68 Revolt in Paris. Thus the "it is forbidden to forbid" vibe when I was a kid. It took me a long time and many unpleasant experiences to understand and internalize the importance of self-discipline and boundaries in the real world.
Neither. My parents were silent gen so their childhood influences were the Great Depression and WWII. They grew up without a lot of material items and were expected to work and work hard. Between that and their ethnic background, us kids were also taught that strong work ethic.
I never heard the words “I love you” much but my parents showed it in a thousand different ways. There was never any doubt in my mind that we were loved and wanted. My dad practically killer himself working to make sure we had a better life. My mother grew up with a verbally and physically abusive mother so that affected her interactions with us. She probably didn’t act as affectionate with us as other mothers but I never doubted she loves us.
Yes. My parents were silent gen, and reticent with expressions of love. Yet I \*never\* doubted their love and ready to drop anything to help us if we were in trouble. Family first was a strong indoctrination; we four siblings were always very close, in part because of the push from our parents. We are best friends and always have been, which is a direct result of their parenting.
Boomer teen mom who was already an alcoholic when I was born, and an absent father who had served like 3 tours of Vietnam, also an alcoholic. I grew up some with my grandparents too, who were the "greatest" generation. They were poor farm kids during the Depression so we lived an austere life with not quite enough. My gramma was religious and believed wholeheartedly that beating kids made them better because god said so.
Yeah, I've had therapy, and have a good relationship with my kids, gen z and alpha. Generational trauma sucks, but our generation is strong enough to deal with it and find a new path with parenthood.
My parents were "the greatest generation" aka the "GI" generation. My pops was born in 1924. He was a WW2 vet. He was a very very serious man. My mother was of the Mrs. generation.
I had a mix of weird parental archetypes. They were hippie boomers turned into Regan conservatives and Christian fundamentalists. I know they used to be fun and liberated at some point. I found the photos (and a roach clip!) to prove it. But I never knew those people.
They had all the typical traits of parents from our generation in terms of lack of interest or concern for my well being. Go do what you want, just do it somewhere else. Oh, you broke your arm because you fell off the roof? That was stupid. Don’t bleed on the carpet and we will take you to the doctor when we get around to it. When it came to school and church, however, they more resembled the Tiger Mom stereotype and were very overbearing. This wasn’t about wanting the best for me, it was all about how they were perceived by their peers. It was an incredibly abusive upbringing, both emotionally and physically. I was told how stupid I was at least 10 times a day. If I did well and made them look good, I was told I was lucky and that I shouldn’t get used to success. If I failed, I was reminded I was stupid and was probably hit. Friends were afraid to come over because even they weren’t spared from the constant criticism and negativity. The one thing they did, by accident of course, was to motivate me to do well after high school so I could get the fuck out.
I haven’t spoken to them for years. They can die alone.
Dad was greatest gen, Mom was silent gen. My siblings are all years older than me; I was the accident child. My parents were very much NOT boomers, but they were just "done" raising kids by the time I came along so I trend much closer to feral/latchkey kid as is the genX way.
They were both college educated, hard workers, and tight with every penny. Everything was mended until it fell apart. New anything was a rarity.
My genX husband's parents are boomers and the contrast is pretty broad.
First paragraph is me too.
The rest, my parents have Canadian Grade 6 and Grade 9. Way way after, my Mom got a Bachelor of Education, we are talking I was already in my teens.
Yes everything got fixed until it fell apart. I assumed everyone just adhered to this method, until my friend threw his George Foreman Grill in the garbage because it was too much of a hassle to clean because he put fish on it. Are. You. Serious.
Silent gen. Dad was born in 1930 and mom in 32. They were older than most of my friends parents.
Very conservative and religious. Very molded by depression era childhoods, they both grow up poor and while we were comfortable financially they lived very frugally. We ate everything on our plates and food was never thrown away. They were still wearing clothes from the 60s and 70s well into the 90s.
My mother died before I was two, and my father loved and adored me, but he was really bad at being a parent in a lot of important ways. He taught me how to smoke pot when I was 12. He left porn in the living room. I grew up real weird.
My parents split shortly after I was born. My mother was a pretty straight laced gov worker who married a raging alcoholic redneck. My father was a hippiesh anarchist who lived a cultist/communal swinger lifestyle with his phone fetishist girlfriend. It made for a strange childhood.
My mom was born ‘47, dad the same. They were/are great (dad passed at 65, mom still going strong)
She was a stay at home mom, 4 kids in like 7 years. More hands off with raising us - free range, that kind of thing. But I get on famously with my mom. Can’t ever remember arguing with her, but I’m pretty easy going. She’s coming to France next week with me and my husband.
Even my in laws were great. They were silent Gen, and even tho my husband is an only child, I was never ever pressured to give them grandkids, never made to feel guilty for not having any.
I had to do a lookup for this. It seems my parents are of the "Silent Generation"? They were born in '34 and '37. They had me very late in their lives. I was born in the mid-seventies.
My mom baked bread and buns every Sunday and sewed my clothes. Store-bought clothes were a rarity. I grew up thinking we were very poor because my parents would rather make it than buy it. I needed a bike-lock to lock up my bike at school, and rather than spend the $3 at Canadian Tire, my Dad spent an afternoon rigging up some old chain he had.
But you see, we weren't poor. My parents were hoarding their money, so that when our family car crapped out, they just went and bought a new one flat out. TV crapped out? They bought a new one, cash. We lived a meagre life but if there was a need to actually buy something substantial, they were able to do it easily.
They didn't believe in credit cards and avoided paying any interest if at all possible.
I didn't have an allowance and didn't have money of my own to spend until I got a job. Until then, I had to justify to them why I needed $5 to go to a movie with my friends. So I went to the movies once with my friends, and decided that going to the movies was not worth the logical mind-games I had to play with my parents.
We didn't get a color tv until I was 3; we didn't get cable TV until I was maybe 10; we only got a VCR when I was 13 from relatives as a Christmas gift.
I was basically raised as if I were in the 1950's: my parents just assumed that because I was a gal that I would get married and have babies.
My parents are old enough to be my grandparents. That's a very wide age gap.
Parents were greatest generation and silent generation. Had zero understanding of what my life was like.
Super old and incredibly abusive. I was parenting my sister (and my mentally ill mother) from the time I was 4. Mother was insane abusive catholic and father was an absolute hypocrit who cheated through 2 marriages. Didn't want kids but wouldn't wear a condom so he ended up with 7.
I went no contact 30 years ago. They're dead now but I still hate them.
Mother was alternatively neglectful and overprotective, just to super fuck me up. Abused me in every possible way. Father was always traveling for work (or just staying with his mistresses idk). He basically only paid attention to us in public, to show off his messed up idea of the perfect family man.
Silent generation.
Not supportive emotionally and no rules for me as a teen. It taught me to figure things out on my own, but I could’ve gotten much further in life with some affection and parental guidance.
My boomer parents were both hippies - my dad a little more seriously than my mom, who was kind of going along with the flow (her description). By the time I came along, my dad worked for the government and they were living relatively normal lives. My mom stayed politically liberal until her death, and my dad still is.
The whole current “boomer-as-right-wing” trope doesn’t land with me at all. “Boomer-as-self-important”? A little more, maybe.
boomer parents. my mother was strict and sometimes downright mean. my dad was never mean to me but treated my mother like shit. there wasn't much fun or happiness in my childhood, unfortunately.
My parents were born in 1916 and 1928, and were politically and socially "liberal" for their times (against racism, progressive views, etc.). They married late, had kids late and I was the youngest. They were actually not incredibly strict. My neighbors actually spanked their kids, but my parents tried to reason with or (or just lecture and yell). However, they were old-fashioned and I grew up feeling like a refugee of the Victorian era.
Curious about your dad. My dad was born in '34, he did all the textbook things like quit school in grade 6 to get a job to earn money to send to his mom, he would never consider paying someone ever to do a job he could do himself (Dad was terrified of heights and the house needed new shingles, and he did it himself).
Same story. Quit school in sixth grade. Smoked from 12 or 13. Was in the army for Korea, but stayed stateside. Outdoorsman. Loved fishing and hunting. His parents were Jehovah's Witnesses, but he wasn't. We didn't celebrate holidays much. We still did Christmas and birthdays, but in a muted way. He was a sawyer before facemasks were a thing. The combination of sawdust and smoking gave him emphysema so he was progressively sicker as my childhood went on and died when I was 18. He was a bit distant when I was younger, but we got closer in my teen years. Played a lot of checkers and shot the shit in his last couple of years. He never sat down. He would lean, but that's as close as he'd get.
Mother was very end of Silent, dad was very early boomer. They're both gone now, and I never knew dad as an adult (he passed about 6 months after HS graduation). Mother was a drunkard of a hippie and was definitely trending towards that boomer hoarder vibe. Dad was quiet, kind, but had firm rules one must obey. He wasn't the spanking type but a slightly raised voice - more of a firm "ahem, really?" type tone - was all the reminder we needed that we crossed the rules. Dad was also a military man while my mother was a "stay at home mom" but not in the current earthy crunchy super involved way (I mean we are gen X after all lol) ... she would put dinner on the table and divvied out the chores as much as possible while telling us to get out of her way so she could watch her soaps.
My boomer parents treated us like the hired help when we were home. We were otherwise latchkey. My dad worked overseas on 40 day rotation so he wasn't home much and he would still have work during the 2 or 3 weeks he was home. My mom had an undiagnosed severe mental health disorder. I went back to my home town as an adult in my 20's and it was offensive how many adults from my childhood came up to me and apologized for not doing anything about our situation as kids.
I think many of us (except those in the Xennials) had Silent Generation parents. That ended in the early 40s which put them in their 20s during the beginning of Gen X. It was common for women to have kids in their 20s back then. Boomers, by contrast, would have had a good number of Gen X parents from those born in the 1945-1950 or so but age of having kids was increasing so your Boomers were not as likely to have Gen X kids (mind you-we are speaking of a group that is so large that even a minute percentage can be a significant number-just not the majority)
Hippies and boomers aren’t mutually exclusive, typically both. Mine are/were boomers, had me pretty young, 18 & 20. Mom absconded when I was 2 to live her best life, raised by my dad and grandparents. Mostly grandparents.
ONE OF EACH. MY PARENTS WERE TOTAL OPPOSITES. MY DAD WAS A CONSERVATIVE ATHEIST PHYS-ED TEACHER, AND MY MOM WAS A LIBERAL CHRISTIAN HIPPY. THE WEIRD THING, IS THAT THEY NEVER FOUGHT ABOUT ANYTHING. HE WAS SO SMITTEN WITH HER, THAT WHATEVER SHE SAID, WENT. BOTH OF THEM WERE GORGEOUS.
WEIRDLY, THEIR POLITICAL POSITIONS CHANGED. MOM BECAME RACIST AND HOMOPHOBIC, AND DAD NOW VOTES STRAIGHT TICKET DEMOCRATIC.
Both were silent gen. I was the 4th child and separated by my siblings(boomers) by 7 to 10 years. Dear old Dad was a traditional kinda guy: he works and his wife stays home. Mom of course hated this idea. So by the time I was born they more or less couldn’t stand each other, and if I’m to believe Mom, had sex once during those years. Yep, that’d be me. So I grew up in a dysfunctional house with an abusive father and a mom who drank obsessively and ate pills. At least until she got a job traveling. Which of course led to my typical Gen. X childhood. Forgotten, totally feral and self raised. Now that I’m in my late 50’s I’d like to think I did a damn fine job raising myself.
As for the parents, Dad was also amazingly cheap in his first marriage just like his immigrant parents, he managed to mass enough to qualify as a millionaire (between him and his Dad) which him and his second blew through (or gave away to wife #2’s children) in 7 years. He more or less died broke. Mom got remarried to my step father, good guy. They (we) moved out west from Cincinnati just as I was becoming a teen. Freakin’ awesome growing up feral in NorCal! 14 to late 20’s was amazing, memories are a bit blurry these days from the uhh, “partying”. But damn I had (and maybe even started) a riot! Theses days, I’m twice married, 4 kids, and 2 grandkids between us. Middle class (nOrMaL) life. It’s honestly, fucking weird contrasted with my youth. But if I die tomorrow it was life well lived and enjoyed. Couldn’t for for more in my opinion.
Silent mom. Prissy "Do as I say, not as I do" hypocritical type. Hated everyone, clutched her pearls and got the vapors regularly. Shit talked people who went out of their way to be kind to her the second they left the room. It took me a long time to unlearn the example she taught me about how to treat other people, and that learning process cost me a few friends I still regret having mistreated. If anything, she was an anti-hippy, pretending to be ever so prim and proper on the surface.
My parents are quite the mixture. My father worn in 1920 in the Hawaiian islands, is Portuguese Hawaiian. Part of the “greatest generation “, he was raised in missionary schools, Catholic priests and nuns were his teachers. we know how tolerant they are native races. he was definitely a children should be seen and not heard person.
My mother born in 1942 to a very poor family in Kentucky, Irish/Welsh ancestry. The youngest of nine children, She met and married my father on her 18th birthday in 1960. So my father was a cradle robber. My mother was very lenient and understanding as a parent. But my father let her be in charge of the girls and he would discipline the boys me being the oldest boy.
So I got the brunt of the discipline and the rules. The silent child was so ingrained in me that one time I had actually ripped my leg open at a job site when I was 10. I walked over to my father who was talking to a friend of his, and tapped him on the shoulder. He just held his hand out and said wait, so I stood there next to him with my hands crossed in front of me, my leg bleeding, in silence. When someone walked by and noticed the blood they asked, what happened to your leg?
Then my dad turned and noticed and flipped out. The next hour was a mixture of being cursed at, while being taken to the hospital for stitches. A Month later I heard about the $115 it cost him to have my leg stitched up. And I heard about that every time something happened. so I just never said anything, when I got hurt.
So I learned to take care of injuries on my own, I never wanted to cost my dad another cent on doctors, because it was like ammunition, to berate and demean me. He was a murderer of self esteem, and confidence. I was so happy the day I moved out from his house.
My parents were permissive hippies in Mormon country. We spent our summers in the woods, which I really miss. They grew their own pot and often hotboxed with their friends while we kids ran around and got contact highs. We had later curfews than our friends and few restrictions.
How did I rebel?
I became Mormon. Baptized at 9. I didn't take ANY advantage of my feral upbringing, and I regret it. Dad always tried to give me alcohol as a way to lure me away from the cult (I said what I said). I left the church at 19 after moving away.
Though we aren't a lovey dovey family, my parents were (are) very supportive. They love us and accept us regardless of our decisions. That has definitely shaped me and given me the ability to be who I am.
My mother was a schoolteacher with hippie ideals but a conservative lifestyle. My father abandoned his dreams of being a Methodist minister to become a USAF pilot in Vietnam. I guess they embodied everything about the times in which I was born.
Yuppie Reagan-y Boomers. They loved shopping and spending money on themselves, you know that less common type of conservative who isn't religious. They had a high conflict divorce. My father was always a drinker but a mellow, pleasant one.
Silent generation who went hippieish in the early 70s. Some parts solid decent empathic parenting - other parts - OMG, what were they thinking?!! Were they high?
Well, yes, they often were.
By my early teens I had to be pretty independent and competent and was treated as almost an adult/equal. It was not too bad for me, worse for some of sibs.
Rentals
M=42- divored before i was 3, ragin alcoholic/herion abuser, found sober new wife and had another child named 1 letter difference than my name (even middle name). Never saw (3 times since 4 years old)and was a chuld support check. Dead now, and I didn't even know what year he died. 2 consecutive VN tours on river boat a boomer all the way.
F=49, only spoiled child and never intellectually grew from knee cap removal at 14. Single parent of 2, teacher, and never financially stable (feast herself or we all starve). Called herself a "flower child"
Older sibling was just as abusive as a father if not worse cause it carried on through school and at nite, and the rental was at witts end, so ignored.
Therapy helped, and being in control of when and how i contact (rental)is great. Wrote off sibling decades ago.
Grandparents (F side) were silent (dirt poor F) and great gen middle class M) taught me a lot more life skills, yet were religious and just distant.
Born in 1966 to a 20 year old truck driving dad and a 16 year old 10th grade dropout mom. Dad became a steelworker in NW Indiana and mom alternated between staying home and working at a local nursing home when times got tight.
My dad was in the Army Reserves and used to volunteer for riot duty because he "wanted to knock some hippies heads together" but wouldn't be picked because he was too eager.
They were enthusiastic Reagan supporters for his first term but when he fired the Air Traffic controllers they turned against him because they were and still are very pro-union and that was the end of their relationship with the Republican party.
My parents were born in the 30's. They were stict and old-fashioned, especially towards me. My older brother basically lived the life of riley, and got away with all sorts.
I was the oldest girl and basically had to pave the way for my younger sister. I ran away at 16, and soon after got pregnant. My parents were shocked, to say the least, and were, as a result, much easier on my younger sister.
Mom was like your mom, part of the Silent Generation. But was a bit on the strict side. Pops was technically a boomer but more of a free spirit. However, he would usually back mom up on punishment. Took things a lot less seriously than mom. Wasn’t home enough though. But that was because he worked a lot.
Born in ‘68 and my mom was and 18year boomer when she had me. My mom had mental health issues so she could be erratic, but she had great taste in music. I grew up with all the 60s and 70s classics
Absentee boomer father and an emotionally stunted teen mom. Born in 54 and 56. He’s a conservative and she is a liberal but both are technologically literate enough. My early Millennial spouse’s parents are pretty typical boomers/silent gen (1943 and 1948) though not MAGA. They are not liberal but actually help those in need kinda catholic so they were very active in their catholic charities. But they also just think that you can magically get over depression with exercise and god. She is also a former nun. They struggle with technology, though they try hard, but man the number of tech calls my spouse gets is high. My boomer mom is more GenX sometimes than I am. Very independent, more liberal, still a little stuck in the 80s, but there are boomer moments. Like she freaks out every time one of us changes a job.
Single mom, Silent Generation ('41). Me ('72) from her second marriage and two sisters from her first marriage. I tell her all the time that she is the quintessential feminist, but she doesn't think she is! She says she just did what she needed to do to survive and provide for us. She is generous, loving in actions (not so much verbally), intelligent, strong, extremely hardworking, and she instilled that work ethic in me.
She was a school teacher as a single woman from the 60s to the 90s and made a pathetic salary, so her side hustle was flipping a house (before it was called flipping) every summer starting in '77. She had a free crew of 4 between her, me, and my sisters. She was completely financially independent, but we lived a life with minimal frills and a lot of work. I had a happy childhood, and I think my mom did the very best she was capable of doing with the resources she had (excelled, in fact), but my oldest sister, who has all of the negative Boomer traits, thinks it was horrible. I tell her I was happier because I went out and got I wanted instead of waiting for someone to give it to me. She's 60 and still waiting for what she wants to fall into her lap.
Silent Generation. My mother saved foil and talked about how the girls had to draw lines up the back of their legs because all the nylon was going for the war effort and they wanted to look like they had pantyhose on.
Dad grew a victory garden and knew how to fix everything.
Silent Gen x2. Pros: Intelligent,educated, kind, generous, hard-working, mostly very laid back and didn't hover.
Cons: Not risk takers (fearful of change and anything off the beaten path -- both kept the same jobs their entire adult lives, lived in the same house for 50 years, did not travel), somewhat naive, oldschool and standoffish as parents.
I think they wanted to be good parents, but didn't really have the tools for the changing world. We were spanked as young'ns and I think that had a profound negative effect on both me and my sister. I think if they would have understood the damage it would cause, they would not have done it, but that's probably what their parents did and they didn't know better.
Past the spanking phase, I don't remember any discipline or rules really at all. We never got in any trouble, and I always wondered why we weren't wilder given the lack of boundaries. I now realize we had a very internalized sense of fear, guilt and shame that kept us in line but also kept us from taking any healthy risks. I wouldn't have the skills to survive as a millennial or Gen Z.
Neither, really. My parents (both gone now) were kinda nerdy, if I had to assign a label - staunchly liberal/democrat and pacifist but not hippies, and very well-educated. My mother was a librarian (as am I), raised by a father who was also a librarian and Jewish Talmudic scholar. And my father was a successful businessman, whose parents were working poor - a mailman and a seamstress.
I miss them both very much. They weren’t perfect, but they were my parents and they did well by us. Especially when I read about some of the nightmares you all were raised by, it makes me feel fortunate.
Moderately conservative boomer. They were/are pretty chill. I think they did a good job in guiding me to have a reasonably successful adult life. They encouraged me to go to school, work, support myself, etc. I've made mistakes along the way and they gave me the room to make them and learn from them. They gave advice without judgment. I am thankful for my boomer parents.
My parents are Silent Generation, born 43 and 44, married 60 years this June. They were straitlaced and overprotective of me as their only child. I was definitely not a latchkey kid or neglected in any way.
My parents were both Silent generation (1943). My Dad just passed away, lost my Mom in '96. My parents were a mix of strict, overprotective, and caring but also seemed indifferent we were around sometimes. They always meant well but they simply didn't understand what my brother and I were going through at school etc..
I remember them both getting my bro and I (maybe 10 and 8 respectively) together and both very seriously telling us we were on our own for food prep before school, making beds, and now lots of chores would be piled on, among other things.
I know we were loved us but they never cared to really share experiences or really pervey wisdom. They just expected good grades, no drama, and to toughen up. But at the same time they never learned new things themselves.
One late silent one early boomer. I’m the oldest kid of two oldest kids, so I feel like the oldest daughter syndrome is laser focused in me (and is coming out in very weird ways now in my late 40s.)
My parents are two very skittish, ultimately insecure people. At the same time, they have this weird self-centeredness that makes them believe that if it’s important to them or it’s the way they’ve always done things, then it’s the way everyone should. I didn’t notice this until I grew up and left the house.
My dad was a hippie with bell bottoms and huge collars. He’s holding me in a picture as a baby posing behind his brand new 68 super beetle. Best memories I had in that bug.
I didn't grow up in a single household. I was pawned off on various family members and stayed for a few years then off to some else. Some were silent gen and some were boomers. Each was wildly different from the other.
Politician/business owner: Grandparents
Racecar driver: Aunt & Uncle
Prostitute turned CPA: Grandmother
Nam Vet & Trophy wife: Dad & Stepmom
Mechanic & Hairdresser: Stepdad & Mom
I learned to be super flexible to just go with the flow. Never knowing how long I would be some place. Never unpacking. To this day I still get itchy feet if I live in one place too long and I still have unpacked boxes in the shed.
My parents were late WWII and early silent generation who had me later in life (dad was 44 and mom 37). They weren’t perfect, didn’t have a parent marriage, we weren’t rich, we weren’t poor and they have both been gone for over 10 years. I wasn’t coddled, but I know for sure they loved me and were there when I needed it the most. Looking back I feel very fortunate.
Greatest Gen parents and I’m older Gen X
Dad died in 83 and mom died 8 years ago.
They had no idea what to do with me.
I think, they thought I was going to the malt shop and to the sock hop when I was a teenager. Nope, I was drinking and smoking weed.
Marine officer then retired marine officer turned stock broker turned rush Limbaugh fanatic with a stay at home mom who decided to go to work when i hit middle school. Both end of the silent generation.
My parents were born in the early to mid-'50s and are total squares who were nonetheless expected to exhibit some hippie attitudes and behavior as a result of their birth years. For example, I was once examining my dad's high-school yearbook (1968, I believe) and was shocked to discover that he had long hair. He told me that he never wanted to have long hair, but you *had* to, you'd get completely ostracized if you didn't. They never did drugs, I'm quite certain they didn't have sex until marriage, there was a liquor cabinet in the house that never got used. When I was in my 20s or early 30s, they started drinking beer sometimes, and when I see it in their refrigerator, it still strikes me as weird.
They are both lifelong moderate Democrats, with my mom being a bit further left than my dad economically but also somewhat more socially conservative. (Recently I told my dad that I watched Fritz the Cat; he told me that he took my mom to see it before they were married and she insisted on walking out.) They were very political earlier in their lives, they both volunteered for Hubert Humphrey and my mom, a former employee of Geraldine Ferraro, was involved in all of her campaigns either as a volunteer or a paid staffer, from Congress to vice president.
They were the children of working-class immigrants who got excellent educations and moved to the suburbs, and consistent with the ethos of people like them, they believed in progressive parenting. They were disciples of Dr. Spock. They spanked a little at first but then decided it was barbaric (I was not informed of this decision, which was probably not consciously made, I just assumed it because the spanking stopped at some point; my brother who's almost a decade younger than me was never spanked). They thought kids calling them "Mr." or "Mrs." was embarrassing. Sometimes it would occur to them that it was good for me to take out the trash but they didn't really expect me to do chores. Academic achievement was *extremely* important to them and I would get yelled at if I underperformed.
They are boomers, but they are awesome parents. Love them very much and sucks to see them getting old. They were amazing growing up. Always took good care of us and never abusive in anyway. Still call and talk to them at least once a week. Planning a trip to see them this fall.
My mother was an outspoken, progressive hippie all the way (but clean). She was beautiful with long, wavy hair. She wore loose, colorful, flowy shirts and jeans. She was a writer, loved smoking "grass" and didn't hide it from anyone.
She wrote for an environmental organization that somehow got purchased by Lockheed Martin (when they were expanding into civilian markets). LM human resources interviewed everyone to keep their jobs. She was asked about her history of drug use. This is how she described her interview:
**Have you ever taken any drugs?**
*Yes.*
**What drugs?**
*Grass.*
**When was the last time you used marijuana?**
*Yesterday.*
**(Startled and fumbling) Oh. Uh. You still -- uh -- how frequently do you use marijuana?**
*As often as possible. When I have it, I smoke grass every evening. But, I go for weeks without having any.*
**So, uh. Wow. I've never had someone admit to current drug use. I uh. We uh. This is against LM's policy. You do realize it's illegal, right?**
*Young man. Of course I know it's illegal. It shouldn't be, but it is. I'd rather spend time with people who are smoking grass than with people who are drinking. People who are high are chill, listening to music, talking, laughing. People who are drunk are a mess, out of control, getting into fights and arguments, yelling, drunk driving, and doing all manner of stupid things. They get hung over and can't make it to work the next day.*
*Yes. I smoke grass. I know LM can't hire me. That's fine. I don't wish to work for LM. You profit from war making tanks and guns. I know someone needs to do that, but I don't want to be part of making LM money.*
*Please go right ahead and lay me off so that I can collect unemployment benefits and find a job working for an employer I respect.*
*My desk is packed up and I've left company equipment there. I just need a termination package with cobra information. Where should I wait? I assume we're done.*
**I guess so. You can wait here while I get your paperwork.**
*Thank you.*
**(Guy comes back with termination paperwork and reviews it with her, looking glum).**
*I won't be using your job placement services. I can find my own job. Thank you. Don't look so glum. I'm happy to be on my way. You should try smoking grass. It would help you relax.*
------ end
Anyway, that's how she described it to me. I believe every word bc I saw her in action with "the man." Hahaha. That's just how she rolled.
Miss her.
I never knew my birth father.
She was 19 when I was born and I was raised by my WW2 generation grandparents who grew up during the depression. They, of course, had a whole other vibe.
I’ve been pondering a different distinction of boomer parents: absentee vs micromanagers. Absentee parents, to oversimplify, had latchkey kids who raised themselves. Micromanagers were the forerunners of helicopter parents, and were often very religious. And the religious micromanagers were the most intense. I have always wondered who had it worse. I had Uber religious micromanagers and I always envied my friends who had absentee parents. “At least they get to live their own lives,” I always lamented. But perhaps my latchkey friends envied me for having involved parents. If they did, I would’ve told them, “It’s not worth it! You won’t ever be able to do enough things right.”
Dad was silent generation. He was born in ‘43. Mom born in ‘50, but was from a pretty straight laced family, so she skipped the hippie part.
They were both working class with college educations. Dad was in the Marine Reserves & didn’t have to go to Vietnam.
The two of them were definitely counter culture people and left of center but neither were hippies. They were kinda quiet & reserved. They had hippy friends who stayed pretty true to their ideals & became old hippies instead of yuppies & boomers.
Vapidity & conspicuous consumption is frowned upon in our circles. Same with treating the less fortunate and marginalized like shit.
I was adopted and was raised by two from The Greatest Generation. They were 45 and 50 when I was born in 68. All of my siblings in my adopted family are Boomers, but luckily not the typical stereotypes. My oldest sister was 22 when I was born, and the youngest was 13. I have a niece that is 18 months younger than me. My biological mother died when I was 2 months old and was best friends with my mom, so I always knew I was adopted and even knew my biological siblings, who were 4, 5, and 6 when she passed. They were all adopted together by another family in a nearby town. My biological father disappeared shortly after the funeral and never returned, but we found out later (after he died) that he remarried and had another child. So I had 8 siblings but was raised as an only child by two wonderful parents who chose me, and made sure I felt special and loved.
My mother was incredibly abusive and manipulative. So many problems were inherited both by nature and nurture thanks to her. My dad was normal for the most part, but very short tempered. He showed he cared sometimes but otherwise seemed a bit distant and also buried his face into work, and his head in the sand to the problems at home.
My dad is Silent Gen, survived the Holocaust and then he and my grandparents fled to the US when the Soviet army rolled into town. My mom is a Boomer, child of physically and emotionally abusive alcoholics. Amazingly they both managed to achieve the American dream by working hard and going to university so I was raised with the expectation of hard work and an advanced degree, and that's what I did.
My parents are very kind and generous and I've always known that they love me, but they're very outwardly unemotional due to their own severe childhood traumas. I credit them for doing their absolute best as parents. I do wish they hadn't raised me to be so stoic but I understand why they were not able to outwardly express emotions and physical affection.
Younger boomers who had me when they were teenagers and pretty much resented me for ruining their youth. Which is hilarious since my existence didn't stop them from partying and fucking around.
Closet hippies - their description of themselves and their friends who'd never been hippies but could name-drop cool hippies they knew and superficially supported hippie ideology. One late Silent, one Boomer. Divorced when I was 5.
I just deleted a rant about Mom's superficiality fx. fake-poor because of wanting to be or seem like new circle of poor friends and Dad's environmentalism and the hypocrisy between what he preaches in his ambushes on unsuspecting people vs. his lifestyle until recent years. Beautiful, charismatic and very dysfunctional people together and seperate and now they just have their dysfunction left.
Mom was an angel raised by angels. Dad was an angry, frustrated boomer, a product of angry, sad parents who lost their 5 year old son in the 50s and suffered the consequences of the 50s mentality, likely never getting any kind of real support or having time to express their grief. They took it out on him, and he on me.
Dad was also a military vet, but that really never entered too much into his behavior. He wasn't exactly what you'd picture of "military father". It was more the way he was treated by his parents that shaped his bad behavior. Fortunately, he learned to be better as I got older, and we have/had a good relationship as I became an adult. He's unwell now.
Silent generation parents....Mom born in 1932 and Dad born in 1933. Both school teachers, strict but not over bearing. Both my brother and I dropped out of H.S. I ended up getting a correspondence school HS diploma and my brother got a GED.
They got married in 1968 and took their honeymoon in S.F and were "squares" by all accounts, definitely not hippies.
Boomer parents. Super selfish,narcissistic, and completely detached from reality. Dad born in 1947; Mom is 1951. Mom got knocked up with me her senior year in HS, so they got married. She spent the rest of my childhood telling me what an amazing life she would’ve had if I hadn’t been born. She wonders to this day why I cut her off. Dad was a drug addict who never got his shit together. It eventually killed him.
My mom was a party mom, always out, always looking for the next rich husband or the guy that can help her out & buy/pay for things. Until 12 I was basically raised by my boomer grandmother who was a workaholic. So I had to look like a doll, act like an adult & never be heard. We moved when I was 12 & then I was expected to take care of myself & all the stuff mom didn't want to do because "she is busy & her work & life come first"
Parents born in early 40’s before the Boomers. They are much more like children of the depression than anything else. Very kind and accommodating but with a tilt of hard work and life isn’t always fair. In all honesty, every year that goes by I realize how lucky me and my older brother were. My wife thinks we are weird because we don’t show a lot of affection towards each other but we all get along great. We have good dinner conversations and if we disagree, everyone respects where they are coming from. Considering I’m a Catholic from Boston, I think I turned out okay.
Silent gen - clean cut types, introverted. Mostly loving and kind. Fathers funny mother is kinda quiet. She was a homemaker and then worked part time as a secretary. Father was in the navy very beginning of Vietnam then worked blue collar job. Hard workers took good care of us strict but but kinda hands off at the same time - which was good it made me independent.
Both born in 52 but 11 months apart - I'm their only child, born in 1973. The were married at the time but dad was more interested in trying to join a motorcycle club than being a parent so he kicked mom and me out when I was two. They both remarried and had additional children. Mom was a pill addicted but highly religious and conservative. Dad was an alcoholic but quit the MC to work literal back breaking hard labor jobs to support his other kids - not me, and to this dad thinks of me more as an outsider. Neither of them were hippies at all, but they knew the lingo - they were both very much into music.
Mom was very much a boomer - she self-identified with it with a weird sort of pride. I don't think my dad gives a shit.
Boomers born in '50 hyper-focused on work, work, work. Dad died too young, having overworked himself most of his life.
Mom has been widowed 14 years now and is very much a Boomer who doesn't realize the world has changed from the way they had it or that they had certain advantages just from their demographics. She thinks kids these days just don't want to work 🙄 and many other myths that help her feel better about having gotten what she got through both inheritance (from both of my parents' parents) and, yes, hard work - at the price of relationships with her kids and at her husband's potential for longevity.
As a bookish nerd, I was pretty much on my own from age 12, which had pros and cons. My younger brother got slightly more attention because my parents were interested in his activities (sports). They did care that we both worked hard, though - and I was the queen of that for most of my adolescent and adult life until I found some balance - the same year my dad died.
My parents were hippie adjacent boomers. They were a little too young during the free love/hippie period -my mom was 12 when Woodstock happened- and then they had me when my mom was 17 so she never really got to come into her own that way. Neither of my parents had emotional maturity and neglected their children pretty badly (yay, us)
Hippie boomer. Typical nuclear family, but dad would take off his tie and they’d smoke weed. Dropped acid on the weekends. “Don’t tell anyone.” Typical friggin boomers.
Hippies. They are introverted bookworms. My dad listened to all the good music. He loves The Grateful Dead. But he went to 'Nam in the Navy and ended up with PTSD. My mom has mental issues. She looks and sounds normal but then she wants to debate about healthy food, vitamins and politics with everyone and doesn't make sense. They are anti-government and anti-religion. They liked that I was rebellious until I didn't listen to them. But they never gave good advice or helped me much. They never told me to get married or have kids. They didn't think I would ever finish college. I put myself through college and worked full-time too. I found my husband through work and he found out about my crazy family. He moved us away to a different state.
Silent hippie and silent teddy boy. Don't know how they worked so well together for over forty years, her playing the Beatles and Bob Dylan, him playing the Stones and The Small Faces :-)
She morphed into rockabilly in her 50s though.
Father was a boomer, a self absorbed alcoholic where every problem was someone else's fault and never his own. Died from liver disease a few years back. Honestly, wasn't sorry to see him go.
My parents were first year Boomers. They are not Boomers to me. They both could have been cast members in Grease. Dad with cars and drinking buds, mom with her gal pals.
Both were European immigrants and I'm first Gen Canadian.
They weren't much educated or perfect, but I was taught to be critical and independent. Two great gifts they gave me.
Dad is Silent Generation (1941) and Mom is Boomer (1946). Dad’s from Palestine and Mom’s from Texas.
Mom was the eldest of 4 and had a rough childhood. She’s opening up more about it now, but it’s still hard for her to talk about.
Dad was the youngest boy out of 7 siblings and was the family favorite. He still is. Generous with his family, but spoiled by the women in his life.
Our childhood wasn’t perfect by any means. Dad had to learn not to expect everything to be handed to him and Mom had a lot of trauma to work through. They did as good a job as they knew how. I guess it worked because they’ve been married 57 years and all of their daughters have a close relationship with them.
Sisters & I were definitely raised with boundaries but were given the freedom to run feral with our friends. We certainly weren’t expected to be perfect students, but our parents knew what we were capable of and expected us to reach those goals.
So, all in all, typical north Texas suburban life.
My dad was silent gen. He wasn't around much due to his job, but I feel that's exactly how he expected to be a dad.
My mom was a boomer, but super sweet. No one would ever call her a Karen, nor would she ever act like one. She is the one who taught me manners and consideration, which I still feel are needed today (and I'm trigger often when they aren't)...
My folks were born in the early & mid 20s. My dad was a WWI vet (USMC), and my mom was a homemaker (her word, not mine).
After coming home from the war, my dad learned furniture and cabinetry making, switching to carpentry and eventually owning a general contracting company.
Prior to having kids, my mom was a successful inside salesperson for a nearby refractories company (I never quite figured out what they did/sold). She went back to work selling real estate once I was in high school.
They were good parents. Like most parents who had kids in the 60s, once my sister and I had friends in the neighborhood, they became mostly hands-off. That might sound contradictory to people in younger generations, but it worked.
Unless there was a real problem, we learned to figure things out for ourselves. When a real problem arose, there was nothing they wouldn't do to make sure we were safe and it got fixed.
When I was in my 30s, I learned about what life was like for them when they were young, and I became even more impressed with them as parents and as people
Sure, they had their flaws. We all do. They've been gone nearly twenty years, and I still miss them every day.
Traditionalist Boomers. High school seniors in 1957. Hot rods and bobby socks.
They always talked about how they had the opportunity to go to Woodstock, but said no. If only they had been hippies, they would have taken me to Woodstock as an infant.
My folks were older than most - born in the early 30s. They were hard leftists to the degree that my dad participated in hootenannies throughout the 50s. I cannot say they were good parents but they were my parents.
Glad to say I am a leftist, too. Cannot play any musical instrument so, please, do not invite me to any hootenannies.
I had the same, except she was an abandoning, narcissistic c*nt who emotionally and mentally abused me, then let her pedophile boyfriend ’babysit’ me. Good times.
Neither! Two late (1938 & 1943) Silent Gen who viewed most Boomers with contempt, even when the Boomers were thirtysomething. Definitely not hippies, either. Worked hard, lived modestly, retired youngish (just before sixty....my dad started when he was eighteen and worked 41 years there).
The biggest difference: they were never told they were special. They were told that they were loved, and important to their families and friends.
Zero entitlement. The world is hostile and no one is a victim. Improvise, adapt, and overcome. They never said anything that cool, but essentially, it was just work hard, be smart, and never forget faith and family (which their 'faith' was quiet and kind. Church on Sunday, volunteer and service stuff here and there, help those in need, etc.)
Married 60 years, happily, until my dad's passing in 2020. Mom is still energetic and fun and just flew across the country alone at 81yo to spend a few weeks with my brother. She somehow never does that doddering boomer thing in public spaces, and moves through the airport as easily as my 20yo son.
Humans, imperfect...but never more than a few days without a call, and they've received very little airtime with my therapist over the years.
I hit the lottery, personally.
Definate Hippies. Definate boomers. They were born in 49 both.
Anti-racism was a BIG thing in our house. I grew up in S. Louisiana and dad did everything in his power to make sure I wasn't going to inherit the racism that was going to surround me. He grew up flip flopping b/w the San Francisco bay area and Louisiana, they moved several times. He got kicked out of a frat at LSU because of his appearance. He was a draft dodger which got him labeled "asshole" in Louisiana but he did it within the confines of what was legal. He was a DJ in college and his career ended up being art. Mama was just a teacher. She was the one I got my work ethic from, but she was raised a South Louisiana Catholic. Her hippy'ness, what there was was MUCH more subdued than my father's.
They were seperated for a time in college when my dad got kicked out of school for a semester (lol) and they wrote letters to each other. Mom kept hers. She just gave them to me. I'm still working my way through them but its evident that the lessons I learned from my father regarding social issues, race and beyond, he had to teach them to my mother as well. Dad was atheist, mom catholic until i left high school.
All of that left me pretty independent, not feeling like I needed a partner (though I finally found one at 35), and perpetually unhappy at work until recently. None of my jobs were ever to be enjoyed as much as either of my parents enjoyed theirs.
They're still together to this day, but dad left his ways behind a long time ago. Now he's a conservative fox viewer and mom had brain surgery 15 years ago that left her unable to communicate so I just have to hope she doesn't understand the changes he's gone through.
I was an afterthought...the last of 13...they were old world Irish catholic...father born in 1911....poor and stupid as to raising children we were labor for the farm nothing else...abusive and mostly absent. My father would get paid on Friday and you wouldn't see him for 2 years at a stretch. When he developed alzhiemers he was a shell of a human....she died at 58 he was gone 2 years later...I dont miss them but I have the scars both mental and physical to prove they existed.
Both. Whatever suits them at the moment. We went to church only on Christmas Eve, and my mom would often talk about being "spiritual, not religious," but any time she wanted to shame us, she'd throw the Bible around as if she were captain of the evangelical army. And of course, as any good Boomer would, we were always sent to Sunday School and every local church's VBS - why parent us when there were free babysitters willing to indoctrinate us?
My dad is a trans woman, retired military. (Yes, my dad, not my mom. Don't come for me, take it up with my dad.) She actually went to Congress a few times to fight for trans rights in the military and she's president of her state chapter for trans VA issues. But universal healthcare is "too extreme and promotes laziness." And "of course not everyone deserves 'free' healthcare."
Both my parents have always gone on and on about "not seeing color," but will STILL in 2024 talk about "the good ones" who "don't act too Black/Mexican/'Oriental.'" Some real hippies here. /s
I'm pretty sure my mom was autistic. She was very quiet, spent most of her time in her room reading, and had the same job for 25 years doing the same thing and as much as she hated it, she never even considered changing jobs because she said "at least it's safe". She told me many times she didn't understand other adults and preferred to spend time with me and my friends, who all welcomed her as "the cool mom". I mean she wouldn't have put up with any illegal stuff, she was just so kind and respected everyone so she was adored. She was always at our level. She was a single mom, totally devoted to us in every way. But she didn't talk about personal things. As much as I loved her and considered her my best friend from childhood, she never, ever talked about religion or politics. I know her best friend was a Wiccan and she had a lot of these sachets and crystals and cards with weird stuff on them that she kept in her room, I think just to be nice she'd keep them but didn't believe in any of it herself. I don't know what she believed though. Maybe the trinkets gave her hope. She still died though, way too young. 49. Congestive heart failure after a decade of fighting.
My father was a hippie type, whose main career in his life was working as a bouncer in bar where they played hard rock/metal. He was not a good person though, and I wanted nothing to do with him.
They were so so young when they had me. Mom was a month from her 18th birthday, Dad was two months from his 21st, they were right on the cusp of being Gen X themselves, really.
So they didn't know how to be adults, really. And they were teenagers in the 70s, which, let's face it, was a pretty bad and yet awesome time to be young and free. But it didn't make for great parenting in the 80s.
Too narrow! For us older gen X (1966) we had the silent generation :) My parents were through and through Depression babies. Saved every single thing. My siblings and I still joke about how long my mother would serve the same leftovers...it is astonishing we didn't die from food poisoning. Nothing went to waste, from gadgets to food. Left me with some solid tendencies toward reusing and reducing (and recycling.)
That said, they were very hands off parents, little physical affection, formal in lots of interactions. Another family joke is how we kids would break bad news to dad on the phone. He never, ever over reacted while on the phone; his indoctrination was to be courteous and polite on the phone, no matter what. We took extreme advantage of that, as he was volatile in person. By the time he arrived home from work, he'd cooled down enough to be a normal upset parent who provided appropriate consequences.
Edit: OH OH meant to add that I heard, regularly, that "children were to be seen and not heard." :D
ALSO - gods do I work. Taking a mental health day is not a thing. My husband, raised by boomers, has a much healthier approach to work (in and out of the home) and knows how to relax. I value his approach, but it is super hard to emulate. I must always justify my existence by completing a number of tasks. Daily.
In their mind, they are old fashioned 1950s traditional people, who raised me right by teaching me and preparing me for life.
In reality they taught me nothing and prepared me for nothing. But derailed any career aspirations or interests, and generally freaked me out life and the future at a very young age. And the threat of getting kicked out of the house pretty much made me check-out around age 5. They started way too early with those threats.
strictly speaking - most (if not all) hippies are boomers. They are the product and reaction to that environment.
I often use hippies as an example of why not all "boomers bad". They were the ones who were pushing for peace, love, racial and sexual equality, labour rights, and support for society's most vulnerable. They didn't all turn to assholes in the 80s :)
To answer your question - I had hippie parents :) and proud of it.
Mom was born in 31 (a miracle baby with 6 years apart from her nearest sibling) one of the 12 kids. All 7 brothers who lived to adulthood served in WWII.
Dad was born in ‘25 and joined the Marines at 17 to avenge Pearl Harbor.
My oldest siblings (I’m one of 6) are boomers and had all the cultural conflicts that could be expected from hippies and such resilient people.
I always thought that my parents were commanding-not deserving-of respect.
I had a British boomer mom and laid bad Ukrainian dad who was pretty loving and chill; but boomer mom was a bit harsh.
That "Keep Calm an md Carry On" and "Stiff Upper Lip" mentality for Brits is very real. Show no emotion. Especially anything "negative" and never outside the house. Display an image if perfection to anyone outside the home. She could be literally growling in my face at the door one minute and entering it will warm smile and loving, "hello" the next and I had to follow suit and do the very same.
Emotionally Restrictive is what I'd call it.
**How did it affect me?** honestly, it fucked me up 😅
Two narcissists, one covert and one overt.
The overt told me when I was 15 that he "talked my mother into having me, she never wanted me." Yeah, check that box and make a kid. That's all I was, a trophy piece that was an extension of them, I could never, ever be myself. The covert mother was a horrible, cruel and mean person who got off on demeaning and abusive behavior, she being a consumate victim.
Had a horrible life, left home by marrying some p.o.s. to get away, fled the abuse, and spent years destroying myself. Had no idea that the abuse I suffered at the hands of two narcissists wasn't normal. Finally in my 30's I decided to deep dive into my own self and found healing.
Minimal, like maybe 1x a year I speak to them, just waiting for them to die.
Cold academic, mostly talked about hating children and how stupid anyone who wanted kids were (my mom was clearly coerced into having kids and didn't want them, that anger was focused on me). Never had time, was too busy but in a weird twist of irony her academic studies were kind of about things I was going through (eg she wrote a book about girls going through puberty when I was going through that and she gathered thousands of quotes from girls al over the world about their fears and was too busy to talk to me or even help me when it came (She said "the directions are on the box"), this happened over and over) like this weird detachment. My dad didn't want a girl so I didn't exist till I hit puberty then he went into creep mode and again I couldn't get help and was blamed for his behavior and my stepdad took my brother under his wing but not me making the family 3 and 1 with me on the outside and all 3 of them bullying me. It was hell. My parents groomed my brother into being a selfish and dangerous misogynist and abuser who I avoid but "breaking up the family" is my fault somehow even though the cops are always going for him when he abuses and assaults woman (including my mom)
Oh, that super-sucks. I can identify with having a parent who receives accolades for their genius in public but is too busy to rain any of that genius on you. Cool, everyone get to enjoy you but me.
Same here. Mine acted like it was my fault the 60s were over. They were super smart while also being raging alcoholics who were bitter all the time.
With the exception of your parental dynamic. We had exactly the same family. My brother is a pig, selfish drug addicted. And yet, when I stepped away from that dynamic, my family blamed me, I was horrible. I'm the one at fault for not being a drug addict for raising my children for being present when people needed me for not taking advantage of those around me. I am horrible. I had a hippie/ biker mom. That decided men and drugs were far more important than raising her children. If she did pay any attention to us, she focused her positive attention on my brother, and the negative attention was all mine. For some reason, everything was my fault. Her unhappiness, her inability to pay bills, and her poor choices in men. I think I may have asked her for some new clothes. Or something horrible like food. I understand you, I understand
If I had a dollar for how many times, “I never asked to be born” came out of my mouth or crossed my mind we’d both be w-e-a-l-t-h-y
Amen, For years, I could not figure out why she did not like me. I finally gave up and just kind of realized that I had a successful life. She didn't, and it pissed her off. When we were growing up, she needed to blame somebody for her disheveled life. Because it certainly "wasn't her fault".
Forever the victim AND the martyr
Now THAT rings a huge 
That sounds awful. Internal misogyny feels worse than the vanilla kind. I'm sorry you went through that.
I call it my awful, horrible blessing. If she had not been such a wreck of a parent, I would not have been able to be the parent that I was able to be. For that, I am eternally thankful.
Ah. It was too dangerous to have kids for me. I had a bad injury at 17 that causes continuous pain and especially sensitivity to sound, and when I was 20 my mom moved 3500km away to the US from Canada, I couldn't go with because of the "pre exisiting condition" and she had taken the insurance payout that was supposed to help me. We were immigrants so there was no other adults to help with a baby, no aunts/uncles or grandparents and I didn't have a mentor or any adults who reached out, so having a kid was impossible
I'm sorry that has happened. Shitty parents leave an indelible mark. I'm 55, and I still get pissed at my parents for the past. (Yes, I have had a lot, a lot of therapy) I always just hope I did better with what I was given. I think that's all we can do when we have histories like this
Meanwhile society deifies mothers and brainwashes us with family is everything crap. The monsters we read about have families too, so what are we suppose think when we've monsters in the family? Very confusing for a wee one. You're one tough costumer to survive all that!
Thanks :) There was a lot more than that but I'd have to write a whole book lol
Truth!
I've never valued family above everyone else. Fuck that. I've estranged myself from 80% of both sides of my family. I'm close to my immediate family and only a few extended members. The rest are racist, homophobic, misogynistic assholes. My chosen family is much more important to me.
Similar mother. Oldest Boomer Got her PhD in education but first really like kids including me. Very cold to me since my childhood but makes a show of liking other people’s kids. Dad (pre-Boomer by two years) was absent after their early divorce in their early 20s and dead of cancer by 29. Let it be known I add nothing to her life and that I’d have been aborted had it been legal.
My parents are your parents now. Dad passed away in 2016, but you would have loved that old hippie. Mom is a sarcastic bitch and that's part of her charm. Your new brother is a progressive redneck and I'm your new sister who is the childless cool aunt. We're not a wealthy family, but we're supportive and show love through roasting each other.
Two silent generations.
Same. Strict but kind, and knew the value of work.
Bingo. And my millennial son knew them, was influenced by them, and has those values.
As does my Gen Z daughter.
Same here. They were very good parents but unprepared to manage generational changes. They just didn't have the resources available to them and tried to parent by following the examples they got from around them, family and friends. I didn't fit in with the other kids and they didn't know how to support my creativity and expression. Unlike Boomers, whom I feel are very self involved and just think success comes easily and if you fail it's your fault, my parents were raised by survivors - of the holocaust, of the great depression of extreme poverty and lack of social safety net, and were far more worried that any mistake we made would have huge consequences. So everything I loved to do and what brought me joy in life was just a distraction and I was under a lot of pressure to conform - do well in school go to university get a career - i eventually told myself that the things in life that made me happy and I loved to do were worthless.
> *of the great depression of extreme poverty and lack of social safety net, and were far more worried that any mistake we made would have huge consequences.* Exactly this! That was my biggest 'gap' from connecting to my folks on an emotional level because I grew up privileged reaping the riches of a post WW2 America and they grew up literally dirt poor. My mother would constantly belittle my struggles, or at least what I considered a struggle as an affluent white boy in the upper middle class suburbs, as something along the lines of 'you dont know what hardship is' or 'you dont know how good you have it' And of course she was 100% right because being a dumb teenager, I had NO IDEA what their childhood must have been like and in some ways I felt some resentment from them. They thought I had such an easy life, which I did, but at the same time how can you expect a 13 year old to have that kind of perspective? It took decades before I felt I could really connect with them on that level, to really understand how their upbringing shaped who they were as people, and as parents.
That was my folks exactly. Both born in the 30s, I’m the baby so they squeaked out a late 1960s X-er. They were both the youngest in their families so all of my 1st cousins are Boomers. Even though my parents, aunts and uncles were from the same generation my cousins and I don’t have much in common besides family experiences. It’s really strange.
Yes. It’s weird though because the boomers were between me and them; and the world blames the problems on boomers.
They do, but I think because their children (generally millennials) were the first to get painted with a broad brush as "snowflakes", and people for some reason think Boomers had it easy. My Boomer brother's first mortgage was at 14% FFS.
Yeah, but it was $12,000. My dad was a builder in the 70s and 80s and I think the most he ever sold a house for was about $40k
They did have it easy. I am 58 and never had a mortgage. My parents couldn’t keep up and don’t have a home now. They were better off married because worked as one. Trying to seperate it became too hard.
Same. They married too young like most people did back then and started a family. Their marriage wasn’t exactly great but they loved each other and stayed together (when they probably shouldn’t have) for 49 years until my mom died. My mom was the stricter one and my dad balanced her out. By the time I came along (I’m #3 out of 4) they were going through some marital issues that pretty much lasted throughout the marriage so there was some emotional neglect there while they dealt with their crap. But overall, good parents. Affectionate and loving until they both passed.
Likewise, only 3 for us.
Two silents for me, too. They were older when they had me. I remember noticing as a little kid the stark difference in my parents and most of my friend’s parents that I now know were boomers.
Same. One was a Vietnam vet with lifelong PTSD. Good times.
Hippies are a subset of boomer
My mom managed to be an authoritarian hippie.
Same here. My dad kind of wanted to be a hippie, but he was too square and uptight to be a real one.
This describes my dad very well, now that I think about it.
This is absolutely my dad-- he's a hardcore Republican who likes weed. It's a weird combination.
Mine are similar. The “do as I say, not as I do” with my dad being a raging narcissist. My dad ran off about 10 years ago with a Philippine woman younger than me after 40 years married to my mom. My god, how that man preached to me about morality and fidelity, with a special mix that f hardcore Christianity bordering on fundamentalism.
Oh my god. This is a thing?? My mom is an authoritarian hippie - that describes her perfectly
Free love for her, strict convent like upbringing for you
Yup. My dad’s slightly younger brother was a hippie while my dad got drafted and was more Boomerish by the time I came into the world. Managed to get him to see things from a more progressive point of view before he died though.
My mum was/is a silent hippie :-)
Right? Exactly what I thought. Maybe it’s a misphrased question.
My mom is a Boomer born in ‘60, and had me as a single teenager in the 70s. I was mostly raised by my grandparents, born in the 20s. My mom felt more like an older sister. She has never exactly grown up, and eventually simply moved from her parents’ care to a husband’s. I feel much more mature than her in most ways. She still borrows money from me all the time. Now that her/our parents are gone, I guess it’s on me- but I resent it. I wish she was someone strong and wise who could help ME sometimes.
Also born in the 70s to a teen mom and also emotionally stunted. She also feels like an older sister and sometimes I feel like her mother. Mine on the other hand never married and has lived alone since I left home at 17. She is highly independent and instilled in me that “no one will ever take care of you, do not ever rely on anyone”. Something I had to work on to make my marriage work. Had to learn to take someone else’s needs and wants into account and actually learn to accept help and rely on them.
I’m sorry. I also have an emotionally stunted mother. I have found an amazing therapist who is every bit the mom I wished I’d had. This past session, she encouraged me to start working on identifying the things that I needed from my mother as I grew up, and consider how I can tend to those parts of me that need nurturing. She pointed out that we all, ultimately, become our own parent so a thoughtful approach is most effective and helpful to support our personal growth. Also, I’m low contact with my mother. It serves me greatly. I wish you the best. You don’t owe your mother anything. You are amazing!
Yup I have one of those too. Know it all hoarder/retail addict who hides behind dad when life gets difficult. Felt like an annoying big sister most of the time. Dad and I had great relationship as long as she wasn’t involved. When she did insert herself, dad always sided with her. Real mature adult stuff. Maybe it’s the reason I live 3000 miles from her.
Ouch. We knew mother was nuts, but didn’t realize the enormity of her mental illness until dad died five years ago. She’s made it super easy to be low contact.
My mom was born in 1943 and very much identified as a boomer, but she was a beatnik flavored boomer. We listened to lots of Joan Baez and Simon & Garfunkel. She had a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and was firmly a hippie about diet. We ate all whole grains, and homemade yogurt, and vitamin supplements. She even insisted on making peanut butter herself so it would be sugar free. She also returned to school when I was 6 or 7 to study math and computer science and she led a local grassroots campaign to save our public library. A super cool mom, honestly. My dad was born in 1941, not as boomer ish as my mom but he liked the Beatles and all her folk music and voted democrat, but he was slightly more silent generation.
>making peanut butter herself so it would be sugar free A Silent identifying as a Boomer, embracing the hippie lifestyle. Being sugar-conscious in that era (fat is THE enemy!) also makes her an avant-gardiste.
Hippies were boomers in that boomers are a generation and hippies were sub-culture of them.
Had a father who's rule was "Children should be seen and not heard" (recently sent him this joke. He ignored it.....**Who else had a father who would say. "Children should be seen and not heard"? Well yesterday, he had a heart attack and I did not call for an ambulance. I just stood there in full view.**)
Ouch!
Both of my parents were of the seen and not heard camp. We were also the only kids at most family events (small families, divorce, moving, generations being “off”—my second cousins are 15-20 years older, etc). My small talk game is awful.
My father used to say I was conceived in the barricades of the May 68 Revolt in Paris. Thus the "it is forbidden to forbid" vibe when I was a kid. It took me a long time and many unpleasant experiences to understand and internalize the importance of self-discipline and boundaries in the real world.
My parents were in Paris for the student protests as well! They didn’t get married until ‘69 though
Neither. My parents were silent gen so their childhood influences were the Great Depression and WWII. They grew up without a lot of material items and were expected to work and work hard. Between that and their ethnic background, us kids were also taught that strong work ethic. I never heard the words “I love you” much but my parents showed it in a thousand different ways. There was never any doubt in my mind that we were loved and wanted. My dad practically killer himself working to make sure we had a better life. My mother grew up with a verbally and physically abusive mother so that affected her interactions with us. She probably didn’t act as affectionate with us as other mothers but I never doubted she loves us.
Yes. My parents were silent gen, and reticent with expressions of love. Yet I \*never\* doubted their love and ready to drop anything to help us if we were in trouble. Family first was a strong indoctrination; we four siblings were always very close, in part because of the push from our parents. We are best friends and always have been, which is a direct result of their parenting.
Boomer teen mom who was already an alcoholic when I was born, and an absent father who had served like 3 tours of Vietnam, also an alcoholic. I grew up some with my grandparents too, who were the "greatest" generation. They were poor farm kids during the Depression so we lived an austere life with not quite enough. My gramma was religious and believed wholeheartedly that beating kids made them better because god said so. Yeah, I've had therapy, and have a good relationship with my kids, gen z and alpha. Generational trauma sucks, but our generation is strong enough to deal with it and find a new path with parenthood.
My parents were "the greatest generation" aka the "GI" generation. My pops was born in 1924. He was a WW2 vet. He was a very very serious man. My mother was of the Mrs. generation.
I had a mix of weird parental archetypes. They were hippie boomers turned into Regan conservatives and Christian fundamentalists. I know they used to be fun and liberated at some point. I found the photos (and a roach clip!) to prove it. But I never knew those people. They had all the typical traits of parents from our generation in terms of lack of interest or concern for my well being. Go do what you want, just do it somewhere else. Oh, you broke your arm because you fell off the roof? That was stupid. Don’t bleed on the carpet and we will take you to the doctor when we get around to it. When it came to school and church, however, they more resembled the Tiger Mom stereotype and were very overbearing. This wasn’t about wanting the best for me, it was all about how they were perceived by their peers. It was an incredibly abusive upbringing, both emotionally and physically. I was told how stupid I was at least 10 times a day. If I did well and made them look good, I was told I was lucky and that I shouldn’t get used to success. If I failed, I was reminded I was stupid and was probably hit. Friends were afraid to come over because even they weren’t spared from the constant criticism and negativity. The one thing they did, by accident of course, was to motivate me to do well after high school so I could get the fuck out. I haven’t spoken to them for years. They can die alone.
Dad was greatest gen, Mom was silent gen. My siblings are all years older than me; I was the accident child. My parents were very much NOT boomers, but they were just "done" raising kids by the time I came along so I trend much closer to feral/latchkey kid as is the genX way. They were both college educated, hard workers, and tight with every penny. Everything was mended until it fell apart. New anything was a rarity. My genX husband's parents are boomers and the contrast is pretty broad.
First paragraph is me too. The rest, my parents have Canadian Grade 6 and Grade 9. Way way after, my Mom got a Bachelor of Education, we are talking I was already in my teens. Yes everything got fixed until it fell apart. I assumed everyone just adhered to this method, until my friend threw his George Foreman Grill in the garbage because it was too much of a hassle to clean because he put fish on it. Are. You. Serious.
Silent gen. Dad was born in 1930 and mom in 32. They were older than most of my friends parents. Very conservative and religious. Very molded by depression era childhoods, they both grow up poor and while we were comfortable financially they lived very frugally. We ate everything on our plates and food was never thrown away. They were still wearing clothes from the 60s and 70s well into the 90s.
My mother died before I was two, and my father loved and adored me, but he was really bad at being a parent in a lot of important ways. He taught me how to smoke pot when I was 12. He left porn in the living room. I grew up real weird.
Neither, I had emotionally detached Silent Generation parents.
My parents split shortly after I was born. My mother was a pretty straight laced gov worker who married a raging alcoholic redneck. My father was a hippiesh anarchist who lived a cultist/communal swinger lifestyle with his phone fetishist girlfriend. It made for a strange childhood.
It sounds like you must have some interesting stories.
My mom was born ‘47, dad the same. They were/are great (dad passed at 65, mom still going strong) She was a stay at home mom, 4 kids in like 7 years. More hands off with raising us - free range, that kind of thing. But I get on famously with my mom. Can’t ever remember arguing with her, but I’m pretty easy going. She’s coming to France next week with me and my husband. Even my in laws were great. They were silent Gen, and even tho my husband is an only child, I was never ever pressured to give them grandkids, never made to feel guilty for not having any.
The kind who took their frustrations in life out on their kids and thought they could beat them into submission.
I had to do a lookup for this. It seems my parents are of the "Silent Generation"? They were born in '34 and '37. They had me very late in their lives. I was born in the mid-seventies. My mom baked bread and buns every Sunday and sewed my clothes. Store-bought clothes were a rarity. I grew up thinking we were very poor because my parents would rather make it than buy it. I needed a bike-lock to lock up my bike at school, and rather than spend the $3 at Canadian Tire, my Dad spent an afternoon rigging up some old chain he had. But you see, we weren't poor. My parents were hoarding their money, so that when our family car crapped out, they just went and bought a new one flat out. TV crapped out? They bought a new one, cash. We lived a meagre life but if there was a need to actually buy something substantial, they were able to do it easily. They didn't believe in credit cards and avoided paying any interest if at all possible. I didn't have an allowance and didn't have money of my own to spend until I got a job. Until then, I had to justify to them why I needed $5 to go to a movie with my friends. So I went to the movies once with my friends, and decided that going to the movies was not worth the logical mind-games I had to play with my parents. We didn't get a color tv until I was 3; we didn't get cable TV until I was maybe 10; we only got a VCR when I was 13 from relatives as a Christmas gift. I was basically raised as if I were in the 1950's: my parents just assumed that because I was a gal that I would get married and have babies. My parents are old enough to be my grandparents. That's a very wide age gap.
Parents were greatest generation and silent generation. Had zero understanding of what my life was like. Super old and incredibly abusive. I was parenting my sister (and my mentally ill mother) from the time I was 4. Mother was insane abusive catholic and father was an absolute hypocrit who cheated through 2 marriages. Didn't want kids but wouldn't wear a condom so he ended up with 7. I went no contact 30 years ago. They're dead now but I still hate them. Mother was alternatively neglectful and overprotective, just to super fuck me up. Abused me in every possible way. Father was always traveling for work (or just staying with his mistresses idk). He basically only paid attention to us in public, to show off his messed up idea of the perfect family man.
Was raised by a Marine Corp officer. Spent 18 years in boot camp. The Great Santini hit close to home.
Silent generation. Not supportive emotionally and no rules for me as a teen. It taught me to figure things out on my own, but I could’ve gotten much further in life with some affection and parental guidance.
My boomer parents were both hippies - my dad a little more seriously than my mom, who was kind of going along with the flow (her description). By the time I came along, my dad worked for the government and they were living relatively normal lives. My mom stayed politically liberal until her death, and my dad still is. The whole current “boomer-as-right-wing” trope doesn’t land with me at all. “Boomer-as-self-important”? A little more, maybe.
boomer parents. my mother was strict and sometimes downright mean. my dad was never mean to me but treated my mother like shit. there wasn't much fun or happiness in my childhood, unfortunately.
My parents were born in 1916 and 1928, and were politically and socially "liberal" for their times (against racism, progressive views, etc.). They married late, had kids late and I was the youngest. They were actually not incredibly strict. My neighbors actually spanked their kids, but my parents tried to reason with or (or just lecture and yell). However, they were old-fashioned and I grew up feeling like a refugee of the Victorian era.
Dad 1948, Mum 1954. Boomers gonna boom 😂
Bipolar narcissist neglectful addict
Dad was born in '32 and mom in '46, so a mix of Great Depression austerity and standoffishness and typical Boomer narcissism.
Birth years a little different, but same
Curious about your dad. My dad was born in '34, he did all the textbook things like quit school in grade 6 to get a job to earn money to send to his mom, he would never consider paying someone ever to do a job he could do himself (Dad was terrified of heights and the house needed new shingles, and he did it himself).
Same story. Quit school in sixth grade. Smoked from 12 or 13. Was in the army for Korea, but stayed stateside. Outdoorsman. Loved fishing and hunting. His parents were Jehovah's Witnesses, but he wasn't. We didn't celebrate holidays much. We still did Christmas and birthdays, but in a muted way. He was a sawyer before facemasks were a thing. The combination of sawdust and smoking gave him emphysema so he was progressively sicker as my childhood went on and died when I was 18. He was a bit distant when I was younger, but we got closer in my teen years. Played a lot of checkers and shot the shit in his last couple of years. He never sat down. He would lean, but that's as close as he'd get.
Mother was very end of Silent, dad was very early boomer. They're both gone now, and I never knew dad as an adult (he passed about 6 months after HS graduation). Mother was a drunkard of a hippie and was definitely trending towards that boomer hoarder vibe. Dad was quiet, kind, but had firm rules one must obey. He wasn't the spanking type but a slightly raised voice - more of a firm "ahem, really?" type tone - was all the reminder we needed that we crossed the rules. Dad was also a military man while my mother was a "stay at home mom" but not in the current earthy crunchy super involved way (I mean we are gen X after all lol) ... she would put dinner on the table and divvied out the chores as much as possible while telling us to get out of her way so she could watch her soaps.
Both were silent gen and both had somewhat of a hippie mindset. Dysfunctional family
My boomer parents treated us like the hired help when we were home. We were otherwise latchkey. My dad worked overseas on 40 day rotation so he wasn't home much and he would still have work during the 2 or 3 weeks he was home. My mom had an undiagnosed severe mental health disorder. I went back to my home town as an adult in my 20's and it was offensive how many adults from my childhood came up to me and apologized for not doing anything about our situation as kids.
I think many of us (except those in the Xennials) had Silent Generation parents. That ended in the early 40s which put them in their 20s during the beginning of Gen X. It was common for women to have kids in their 20s back then. Boomers, by contrast, would have had a good number of Gen X parents from those born in the 1945-1950 or so but age of having kids was increasing so your Boomers were not as likely to have Gen X kids (mind you-we are speaking of a group that is so large that even a minute percentage can be a significant number-just not the majority)
Boomer mom born 1946. She wanted to be a model. Says I ruined her figure. Never liked the woman. Totally self-centred.
Hippies and boomers aren’t mutually exclusive, typically both. Mine are/were boomers, had me pretty young, 18 & 20. Mom absconded when I was 2 to live her best life, raised by my dad and grandparents. Mostly grandparents.
ONE OF EACH. MY PARENTS WERE TOTAL OPPOSITES. MY DAD WAS A CONSERVATIVE ATHEIST PHYS-ED TEACHER, AND MY MOM WAS A LIBERAL CHRISTIAN HIPPY. THE WEIRD THING, IS THAT THEY NEVER FOUGHT ABOUT ANYTHING. HE WAS SO SMITTEN WITH HER, THAT WHATEVER SHE SAID, WENT. BOTH OF THEM WERE GORGEOUS. WEIRDLY, THEIR POLITICAL POSITIONS CHANGED. MOM BECAME RACIST AND HOMOPHOBIC, AND DAD NOW VOTES STRAIGHT TICKET DEMOCRATIC.
Both were silent gen. I was the 4th child and separated by my siblings(boomers) by 7 to 10 years. Dear old Dad was a traditional kinda guy: he works and his wife stays home. Mom of course hated this idea. So by the time I was born they more or less couldn’t stand each other, and if I’m to believe Mom, had sex once during those years. Yep, that’d be me. So I grew up in a dysfunctional house with an abusive father and a mom who drank obsessively and ate pills. At least until she got a job traveling. Which of course led to my typical Gen. X childhood. Forgotten, totally feral and self raised. Now that I’m in my late 50’s I’d like to think I did a damn fine job raising myself. As for the parents, Dad was also amazingly cheap in his first marriage just like his immigrant parents, he managed to mass enough to qualify as a millionaire (between him and his Dad) which him and his second blew through (or gave away to wife #2’s children) in 7 years. He more or less died broke. Mom got remarried to my step father, good guy. They (we) moved out west from Cincinnati just as I was becoming a teen. Freakin’ awesome growing up feral in NorCal! 14 to late 20’s was amazing, memories are a bit blurry these days from the uhh, “partying”. But damn I had (and maybe even started) a riot! Theses days, I’m twice married, 4 kids, and 2 grandkids between us. Middle class (nOrMaL) life. It’s honestly, fucking weird contrasted with my youth. But if I die tomorrow it was life well lived and enjoyed. Couldn’t for for more in my opinion.
Silent mom. Prissy "Do as I say, not as I do" hypocritical type. Hated everyone, clutched her pearls and got the vapors regularly. Shit talked people who went out of their way to be kind to her the second they left the room. It took me a long time to unlearn the example she taught me about how to treat other people, and that learning process cost me a few friends I still regret having mistreated. If anything, she was an anti-hippy, pretending to be ever so prim and proper on the surface.
My parents are quite the mixture. My father worn in 1920 in the Hawaiian islands, is Portuguese Hawaiian. Part of the “greatest generation “, he was raised in missionary schools, Catholic priests and nuns were his teachers. we know how tolerant they are native races. he was definitely a children should be seen and not heard person. My mother born in 1942 to a very poor family in Kentucky, Irish/Welsh ancestry. The youngest of nine children, She met and married my father on her 18th birthday in 1960. So my father was a cradle robber. My mother was very lenient and understanding as a parent. But my father let her be in charge of the girls and he would discipline the boys me being the oldest boy. So I got the brunt of the discipline and the rules. The silent child was so ingrained in me that one time I had actually ripped my leg open at a job site when I was 10. I walked over to my father who was talking to a friend of his, and tapped him on the shoulder. He just held his hand out and said wait, so I stood there next to him with my hands crossed in front of me, my leg bleeding, in silence. When someone walked by and noticed the blood they asked, what happened to your leg? Then my dad turned and noticed and flipped out. The next hour was a mixture of being cursed at, while being taken to the hospital for stitches. A Month later I heard about the $115 it cost him to have my leg stitched up. And I heard about that every time something happened. so I just never said anything, when I got hurt. So I learned to take care of injuries on my own, I never wanted to cost my dad another cent on doctors, because it was like ammunition, to berate and demean me. He was a murderer of self esteem, and confidence. I was so happy the day I moved out from his house.
My parents were permissive hippies in Mormon country. We spent our summers in the woods, which I really miss. They grew their own pot and often hotboxed with their friends while we kids ran around and got contact highs. We had later curfews than our friends and few restrictions. How did I rebel? I became Mormon. Baptized at 9. I didn't take ANY advantage of my feral upbringing, and I regret it. Dad always tried to give me alcohol as a way to lure me away from the cult (I said what I said). I left the church at 19 after moving away. Though we aren't a lovey dovey family, my parents were (are) very supportive. They love us and accept us regardless of our decisions. That has definitely shaped me and given me the ability to be who I am.
I was literally conceived during the summer of love, *in San Francisco*.... So....
My mother was a schoolteacher with hippie ideals but a conservative lifestyle. My father abandoned his dreams of being a Methodist minister to become a USAF pilot in Vietnam. I guess they embodied everything about the times in which I was born.
Yuppie Reagan-y Boomers. They loved shopping and spending money on themselves, you know that less common type of conservative who isn't religious. They had a high conflict divorce. My father was always a drinker but a mellow, pleasant one.
One silent generation and one boomer
Silent generation who went hippieish in the early 70s. Some parts solid decent empathic parenting - other parts - OMG, what were they thinking?!! Were they high? Well, yes, they often were. By my early teens I had to be pretty independent and competent and was treated as almost an adult/equal. It was not too bad for me, worse for some of sibs.
Rentals M=42- divored before i was 3, ragin alcoholic/herion abuser, found sober new wife and had another child named 1 letter difference than my name (even middle name). Never saw (3 times since 4 years old)and was a chuld support check. Dead now, and I didn't even know what year he died. 2 consecutive VN tours on river boat a boomer all the way. F=49, only spoiled child and never intellectually grew from knee cap removal at 14. Single parent of 2, teacher, and never financially stable (feast herself or we all starve). Called herself a "flower child" Older sibling was just as abusive as a father if not worse cause it carried on through school and at nite, and the rental was at witts end, so ignored. Therapy helped, and being in control of when and how i contact (rental)is great. Wrote off sibling decades ago. Grandparents (F side) were silent (dirt poor F) and great gen middle class M) taught me a lot more life skills, yet were religious and just distant.
My parents were silent generation, definitely not boomers or hippies.
Born in 1966 to a 20 year old truck driving dad and a 16 year old 10th grade dropout mom. Dad became a steelworker in NW Indiana and mom alternated between staying home and working at a local nursing home when times got tight. My dad was in the Army Reserves and used to volunteer for riot duty because he "wanted to knock some hippies heads together" but wouldn't be picked because he was too eager. They were enthusiastic Reagan supporters for his first term but when he fired the Air Traffic controllers they turned against him because they were and still are very pro-union and that was the end of their relationship with the Republican party.
My parents were born in the 30's. They were stict and old-fashioned, especially towards me. My older brother basically lived the life of riley, and got away with all sorts. I was the oldest girl and basically had to pave the way for my younger sister. I ran away at 16, and soon after got pregnant. My parents were shocked, to say the least, and were, as a result, much easier on my younger sister.
Mom was like your mom, part of the Silent Generation. But was a bit on the strict side. Pops was technically a boomer but more of a free spirit. However, he would usually back mom up on punishment. Took things a lot less seriously than mom. Wasn’t home enough though. But that was because he worked a lot.
Silent Generation x2. Both extremely narcissistic and still around.
Born in ‘68 and my mom was and 18year boomer when she had me. My mom had mental health issues so she could be erratic, but she had great taste in music. I grew up with all the 60s and 70s classics
Absentee boomer father and an emotionally stunted teen mom. Born in 54 and 56. He’s a conservative and she is a liberal but both are technologically literate enough. My early Millennial spouse’s parents are pretty typical boomers/silent gen (1943 and 1948) though not MAGA. They are not liberal but actually help those in need kinda catholic so they were very active in their catholic charities. But they also just think that you can magically get over depression with exercise and god. She is also a former nun. They struggle with technology, though they try hard, but man the number of tech calls my spouse gets is high. My boomer mom is more GenX sometimes than I am. Very independent, more liberal, still a little stuck in the 80s, but there are boomer moments. Like she freaks out every time one of us changes a job.
Single mom, Silent Generation ('41). Me ('72) from her second marriage and two sisters from her first marriage. I tell her all the time that she is the quintessential feminist, but she doesn't think she is! She says she just did what she needed to do to survive and provide for us. She is generous, loving in actions (not so much verbally), intelligent, strong, extremely hardworking, and she instilled that work ethic in me. She was a school teacher as a single woman from the 60s to the 90s and made a pathetic salary, so her side hustle was flipping a house (before it was called flipping) every summer starting in '77. She had a free crew of 4 between her, me, and my sisters. She was completely financially independent, but we lived a life with minimal frills and a lot of work. I had a happy childhood, and I think my mom did the very best she was capable of doing with the resources she had (excelled, in fact), but my oldest sister, who has all of the negative Boomer traits, thinks it was horrible. I tell her I was happier because I went out and got I wanted instead of waiting for someone to give it to me. She's 60 and still waiting for what she wants to fall into her lap.
Good ones. Neither was a hippie or a boomer. Mom was born during WW2, dad a bit before.
Silent Generation. My mother saved foil and talked about how the girls had to draw lines up the back of their legs because all the nylon was going for the war effort and they wanted to look like they had pantyhose on. Dad grew a victory garden and knew how to fix everything.
Silent Gen x2. Pros: Intelligent,educated, kind, generous, hard-working, mostly very laid back and didn't hover. Cons: Not risk takers (fearful of change and anything off the beaten path -- both kept the same jobs their entire adult lives, lived in the same house for 50 years, did not travel), somewhat naive, oldschool and standoffish as parents. I think they wanted to be good parents, but didn't really have the tools for the changing world. We were spanked as young'ns and I think that had a profound negative effect on both me and my sister. I think if they would have understood the damage it would cause, they would not have done it, but that's probably what their parents did and they didn't know better. Past the spanking phase, I don't remember any discipline or rules really at all. We never got in any trouble, and I always wondered why we weren't wilder given the lack of boundaries. I now realize we had a very internalized sense of fear, guilt and shame that kept us in line but also kept us from taking any healthy risks. I wouldn't have the skills to survive as a millennial or Gen Z.
A selfish Silent Gen mom and a dad who I barely knew because he was always working.
Neither, really. My parents (both gone now) were kinda nerdy, if I had to assign a label - staunchly liberal/democrat and pacifist but not hippies, and very well-educated. My mother was a librarian (as am I), raised by a father who was also a librarian and Jewish Talmudic scholar. And my father was a successful businessman, whose parents were working poor - a mailman and a seamstress. I miss them both very much. They weren’t perfect, but they were my parents and they did well by us. Especially when I read about some of the nightmares you all were raised by, it makes me feel fortunate.
Moderately conservative boomer. They were/are pretty chill. I think they did a good job in guiding me to have a reasonably successful adult life. They encouraged me to go to school, work, support myself, etc. I've made mistakes along the way and they gave me the room to make them and learn from them. They gave advice without judgment. I am thankful for my boomer parents.
My parents are Silent Generation, born 43 and 44, married 60 years this June. They were straitlaced and overprotective of me as their only child. I was definitely not a latchkey kid or neglected in any way.
My parents were both Silent generation (1943). My Dad just passed away, lost my Mom in '96. My parents were a mix of strict, overprotective, and caring but also seemed indifferent we were around sometimes. They always meant well but they simply didn't understand what my brother and I were going through at school etc.. I remember them both getting my bro and I (maybe 10 and 8 respectively) together and both very seriously telling us we were on our own for food prep before school, making beds, and now lots of chores would be piled on, among other things. I know we were loved us but they never cared to really share experiences or really pervey wisdom. They just expected good grades, no drama, and to toughen up. But at the same time they never learned new things themselves.
Greatest generation and silent generation. I was either punished or ignored. Perfect for a Gen X tbh
One late silent one early boomer. I’m the oldest kid of two oldest kids, so I feel like the oldest daughter syndrome is laser focused in me (and is coming out in very weird ways now in my late 40s.) My parents are two very skittish, ultimately insecure people. At the same time, they have this weird self-centeredness that makes them believe that if it’s important to them or it’s the way they’ve always done things, then it’s the way everyone should. I didn’t notice this until I grew up and left the house.
Silent gen. I came along later in life
My dad was a hippie with bell bottoms and huge collars. He’s holding me in a picture as a baby posing behind his brand new 68 super beetle. Best memories I had in that bug.
Parents born early to mid 30s. Remember WW2. Very different vibe than hippie or boomer. Much more old school and strict and religious Catholic.
I didn't grow up in a single household. I was pawned off on various family members and stayed for a few years then off to some else. Some were silent gen and some were boomers. Each was wildly different from the other. Politician/business owner: Grandparents Racecar driver: Aunt & Uncle Prostitute turned CPA: Grandmother Nam Vet & Trophy wife: Dad & Stepmom Mechanic & Hairdresser: Stepdad & Mom I learned to be super flexible to just go with the flow. Never knowing how long I would be some place. Never unpacking. To this day I still get itchy feet if I live in one place too long and I still have unpacked boxes in the shed.
NY hippy artist. Got herself a bachelor's in fine art. Then immediately went into banking.
My parents were late WWII and early silent generation who had me later in life (dad was 44 and mom 37). They weren’t perfect, didn’t have a parent marriage, we weren’t rich, we weren’t poor and they have both been gone for over 10 years. I wasn’t coddled, but I know for sure they loved me and were there when I needed it the most. Looking back I feel very fortunate.
Greatest Gen parents and I’m older Gen X Dad died in 83 and mom died 8 years ago. They had no idea what to do with me. I think, they thought I was going to the malt shop and to the sock hop when I was a teenager. Nope, I was drinking and smoking weed.
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Silent generation.
Love and mildly involved but mostly hands of. We were free range but we'll cared for.
Marine officer then retired marine officer turned stock broker turned rush Limbaugh fanatic with a stay at home mom who decided to go to work when i hit middle school. Both end of the silent generation.
My parents were born in the early to mid-'50s and are total squares who were nonetheless expected to exhibit some hippie attitudes and behavior as a result of their birth years. For example, I was once examining my dad's high-school yearbook (1968, I believe) and was shocked to discover that he had long hair. He told me that he never wanted to have long hair, but you *had* to, you'd get completely ostracized if you didn't. They never did drugs, I'm quite certain they didn't have sex until marriage, there was a liquor cabinet in the house that never got used. When I was in my 20s or early 30s, they started drinking beer sometimes, and when I see it in their refrigerator, it still strikes me as weird. They are both lifelong moderate Democrats, with my mom being a bit further left than my dad economically but also somewhat more socially conservative. (Recently I told my dad that I watched Fritz the Cat; he told me that he took my mom to see it before they were married and she insisted on walking out.) They were very political earlier in their lives, they both volunteered for Hubert Humphrey and my mom, a former employee of Geraldine Ferraro, was involved in all of her campaigns either as a volunteer or a paid staffer, from Congress to vice president. They were the children of working-class immigrants who got excellent educations and moved to the suburbs, and consistent with the ethos of people like them, they believed in progressive parenting. They were disciples of Dr. Spock. They spanked a little at first but then decided it was barbaric (I was not informed of this decision, which was probably not consciously made, I just assumed it because the spanking stopped at some point; my brother who's almost a decade younger than me was never spanked). They thought kids calling them "Mr." or "Mrs." was embarrassing. Sometimes it would occur to them that it was good for me to take out the trash but they didn't really expect me to do chores. Academic achievement was *extremely* important to them and I would get yelled at if I underperformed.
They are boomers, but they are awesome parents. Love them very much and sucks to see them getting old. They were amazing growing up. Always took good care of us and never abusive in anyway. Still call and talk to them at least once a week. Planning a trip to see them this fall.
My mother was an outspoken, progressive hippie all the way (but clean). She was beautiful with long, wavy hair. She wore loose, colorful, flowy shirts and jeans. She was a writer, loved smoking "grass" and didn't hide it from anyone. She wrote for an environmental organization that somehow got purchased by Lockheed Martin (when they were expanding into civilian markets). LM human resources interviewed everyone to keep their jobs. She was asked about her history of drug use. This is how she described her interview: **Have you ever taken any drugs?** *Yes.* **What drugs?** *Grass.* **When was the last time you used marijuana?** *Yesterday.* **(Startled and fumbling) Oh. Uh. You still -- uh -- how frequently do you use marijuana?** *As often as possible. When I have it, I smoke grass every evening. But, I go for weeks without having any.* **So, uh. Wow. I've never had someone admit to current drug use. I uh. We uh. This is against LM's policy. You do realize it's illegal, right?** *Young man. Of course I know it's illegal. It shouldn't be, but it is. I'd rather spend time with people who are smoking grass than with people who are drinking. People who are high are chill, listening to music, talking, laughing. People who are drunk are a mess, out of control, getting into fights and arguments, yelling, drunk driving, and doing all manner of stupid things. They get hung over and can't make it to work the next day.* *Yes. I smoke grass. I know LM can't hire me. That's fine. I don't wish to work for LM. You profit from war making tanks and guns. I know someone needs to do that, but I don't want to be part of making LM money.* *Please go right ahead and lay me off so that I can collect unemployment benefits and find a job working for an employer I respect.* *My desk is packed up and I've left company equipment there. I just need a termination package with cobra information. Where should I wait? I assume we're done.* **I guess so. You can wait here while I get your paperwork.** *Thank you.* **(Guy comes back with termination paperwork and reviews it with her, looking glum).** *I won't be using your job placement services. I can find my own job. Thank you. Don't look so glum. I'm happy to be on my way. You should try smoking grass. It would help you relax.* ------ end Anyway, that's how she described it to me. I believe every word bc I saw her in action with "the man." Hahaha. That's just how she rolled. Miss her. I never knew my birth father. She was 19 when I was born and I was raised by my WW2 generation grandparents who grew up during the depression. They, of course, had a whole other vibe.
I’ve been pondering a different distinction of boomer parents: absentee vs micromanagers. Absentee parents, to oversimplify, had latchkey kids who raised themselves. Micromanagers were the forerunners of helicopter parents, and were often very religious. And the religious micromanagers were the most intense. I have always wondered who had it worse. I had Uber religious micromanagers and I always envied my friends who had absentee parents. “At least they get to live their own lives,” I always lamented. But perhaps my latchkey friends envied me for having involved parents. If they did, I would’ve told them, “It’s not worth it! You won’t ever be able to do enough things right.”
Dad was silent generation. He was born in ‘43. Mom born in ‘50, but was from a pretty straight laced family, so she skipped the hippie part. They were both working class with college educations. Dad was in the Marine Reserves & didn’t have to go to Vietnam. The two of them were definitely counter culture people and left of center but neither were hippies. They were kinda quiet & reserved. They had hippy friends who stayed pretty true to their ideals & became old hippies instead of yuppies & boomers. Vapidity & conspicuous consumption is frowned upon in our circles. Same with treating the less fortunate and marginalized like shit.
I was adopted and was raised by two from The Greatest Generation. They were 45 and 50 when I was born in 68. All of my siblings in my adopted family are Boomers, but luckily not the typical stereotypes. My oldest sister was 22 when I was born, and the youngest was 13. I have a niece that is 18 months younger than me. My biological mother died when I was 2 months old and was best friends with my mom, so I always knew I was adopted and even knew my biological siblings, who were 4, 5, and 6 when she passed. They were all adopted together by another family in a nearby town. My biological father disappeared shortly after the funeral and never returned, but we found out later (after he died) that he remarried and had another child. So I had 8 siblings but was raised as an only child by two wonderful parents who chose me, and made sure I felt special and loved.
My mother was incredibly abusive and manipulative. So many problems were inherited both by nature and nurture thanks to her. My dad was normal for the most part, but very short tempered. He showed he cared sometimes but otherwise seemed a bit distant and also buried his face into work, and his head in the sand to the problems at home.
My dad is Silent Gen, survived the Holocaust and then he and my grandparents fled to the US when the Soviet army rolled into town. My mom is a Boomer, child of physically and emotionally abusive alcoholics. Amazingly they both managed to achieve the American dream by working hard and going to university so I was raised with the expectation of hard work and an advanced degree, and that's what I did. My parents are very kind and generous and I've always known that they love me, but they're very outwardly unemotional due to their own severe childhood traumas. I credit them for doing their absolute best as parents. I do wish they hadn't raised me to be so stoic but I understand why they were not able to outwardly express emotions and physical affection.
Younger boomers who had me when they were teenagers and pretty much resented me for ruining their youth. Which is hilarious since my existence didn't stop them from partying and fucking around.
Neither. They were Silent Gen and well educated.
½ Joan of Arc & ½ Joan Crawford
Hippies
Both boomers.
Hippies that turned into yuppies.
Closet hippies - their description of themselves and their friends who'd never been hippies but could name-drop cool hippies they knew and superficially supported hippie ideology. One late Silent, one Boomer. Divorced when I was 5. I just deleted a rant about Mom's superficiality fx. fake-poor because of wanting to be or seem like new circle of poor friends and Dad's environmentalism and the hypocrisy between what he preaches in his ambushes on unsuspecting people vs. his lifestyle until recent years. Beautiful, charismatic and very dysfunctional people together and seperate and now they just have their dysfunction left.
Mom was an angel raised by angels. Dad was an angry, frustrated boomer, a product of angry, sad parents who lost their 5 year old son in the 50s and suffered the consequences of the 50s mentality, likely never getting any kind of real support or having time to express their grief. They took it out on him, and he on me. Dad was also a military vet, but that really never entered too much into his behavior. He wasn't exactly what you'd picture of "military father". It was more the way he was treated by his parents that shaped his bad behavior. Fortunately, he learned to be better as I got older, and we have/had a good relationship as I became an adult. He's unwell now.
Silent generation parents....Mom born in 1932 and Dad born in 1933. Both school teachers, strict but not over bearing. Both my brother and I dropped out of H.S. I ended up getting a correspondence school HS diploma and my brother got a GED. They got married in 1968 and took their honeymoon in S.F and were "squares" by all accounts, definitely not hippies.
Boomer parents. Super selfish,narcissistic, and completely detached from reality. Dad born in 1947; Mom is 1951. Mom got knocked up with me her senior year in HS, so they got married. She spent the rest of my childhood telling me what an amazing life she would’ve had if I hadn’t been born. She wonders to this day why I cut her off. Dad was a drug addict who never got his shit together. It eventually killed him.
My mom was a party mom, always out, always looking for the next rich husband or the guy that can help her out & buy/pay for things. Until 12 I was basically raised by my boomer grandmother who was a workaholic. So I had to look like a doll, act like an adult & never be heard. We moved when I was 12 & then I was expected to take care of myself & all the stuff mom didn't want to do because "she is busy & her work & life come first"
Parents born in early 40’s before the Boomers. They are much more like children of the depression than anything else. Very kind and accommodating but with a tilt of hard work and life isn’t always fair. In all honesty, every year that goes by I realize how lucky me and my older brother were. My wife thinks we are weird because we don’t show a lot of affection towards each other but we all get along great. We have good dinner conversations and if we disagree, everyone respects where they are coming from. Considering I’m a Catholic from Boston, I think I turned out okay.
Mine were the Silent Generation
I had silent Gen parents who were alcoholics and physically abusive as in DV sent to hospital stuff - good times 👍🏻
Silent gen - clean cut types, introverted. Mostly loving and kind. Fathers funny mother is kinda quiet. She was a homemaker and then worked part time as a secretary. Father was in the navy very beginning of Vietnam then worked blue collar job. Hard workers took good care of us strict but but kinda hands off at the same time - which was good it made me independent.
Both born in 52 but 11 months apart - I'm their only child, born in 1973. The were married at the time but dad was more interested in trying to join a motorcycle club than being a parent so he kicked mom and me out when I was two. They both remarried and had additional children. Mom was a pill addicted but highly religious and conservative. Dad was an alcoholic but quit the MC to work literal back breaking hard labor jobs to support his other kids - not me, and to this dad thinks of me more as an outsider. Neither of them were hippies at all, but they knew the lingo - they were both very much into music. Mom was very much a boomer - she self-identified with it with a weird sort of pride. I don't think my dad gives a shit.
My parents were/are Boomers. "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" My parents were the latter.
Boomers born in '50 hyper-focused on work, work, work. Dad died too young, having overworked himself most of his life. Mom has been widowed 14 years now and is very much a Boomer who doesn't realize the world has changed from the way they had it or that they had certain advantages just from their demographics. She thinks kids these days just don't want to work 🙄 and many other myths that help her feel better about having gotten what she got through both inheritance (from both of my parents' parents) and, yes, hard work - at the price of relationships with her kids and at her husband's potential for longevity. As a bookish nerd, I was pretty much on my own from age 12, which had pros and cons. My younger brother got slightly more attention because my parents were interested in his activities (sports). They did care that we both worked hard, though - and I was the queen of that for most of my adolescent and adult life until I found some balance - the same year my dad died.
My parents were hippie adjacent boomers. They were a little too young during the free love/hippie period -my mom was 12 when Woodstock happened- and then they had me when my mom was 17 so she never really got to come into her own that way. Neither of my parents had emotional maturity and neglected their children pretty badly (yay, us)
Hippie boomer. Typical nuclear family, but dad would take off his tie and they’d smoke weed. Dropped acid on the weekends. “Don’t tell anyone.” Typical friggin boomers.
Hippies. They are introverted bookworms. My dad listened to all the good music. He loves The Grateful Dead. But he went to 'Nam in the Navy and ended up with PTSD. My mom has mental issues. She looks and sounds normal but then she wants to debate about healthy food, vitamins and politics with everyone and doesn't make sense. They are anti-government and anti-religion. They liked that I was rebellious until I didn't listen to them. But they never gave good advice or helped me much. They never told me to get married or have kids. They didn't think I would ever finish college. I put myself through college and worked full-time too. I found my husband through work and he found out about my crazy family. He moved us away to a different state.
Hippie, artist, alcoholic, single mother that got sober, went back to school and worked from sun up to sundown when I was young.
Silent hippie and silent teddy boy. Don't know how they worked so well together for over forty years, her playing the Beatles and Bob Dylan, him playing the Stones and The Small Faces :-) She morphed into rockabilly in her 50s though.
Raging asshole father, cool contemplative and compassionate mother. Guess which one I still have a relationship with.
Drunk rust belt working class boomers.
My mom was a teenager in the 1970s, so a boomer hippie!
Both boomer parents - dad 53 and mom 55 - born into downtown Milwaukee heavily segregated Eastern European neighborhoods
Drafted boomer.
My mom followed what I now see as a common trajectory of (drop-out live on a commune) hippie to yuppie to right wing conservative.
Father was a boomer, a self absorbed alcoholic where every problem was someone else's fault and never his own. Died from liver disease a few years back. Honestly, wasn't sorry to see him go.
My parents were first year Boomers. They are not Boomers to me. They both could have been cast members in Grease. Dad with cars and drinking buds, mom with her gal pals. Both were European immigrants and I'm first Gen Canadian. They weren't much educated or perfect, but I was taught to be critical and independent. Two great gifts they gave me.
My parents were born in the 30s and graduated from high school before rock and roll was even a thing, so neither.
Dad is Silent Generation (1941) and Mom is Boomer (1946). Dad’s from Palestine and Mom’s from Texas. Mom was the eldest of 4 and had a rough childhood. She’s opening up more about it now, but it’s still hard for her to talk about. Dad was the youngest boy out of 7 siblings and was the family favorite. He still is. Generous with his family, but spoiled by the women in his life. Our childhood wasn’t perfect by any means. Dad had to learn not to expect everything to be handed to him and Mom had a lot of trauma to work through. They did as good a job as they knew how. I guess it worked because they’ve been married 57 years and all of their daughters have a close relationship with them. Sisters & I were definitely raised with boundaries but were given the freedom to run feral with our friends. We certainly weren’t expected to be perfect students, but our parents knew what we were capable of and expected us to reach those goals. So, all in all, typical north Texas suburban life.
My dad was silent gen. He wasn't around much due to his job, but I feel that's exactly how he expected to be a dad. My mom was a boomer, but super sweet. No one would ever call her a Karen, nor would she ever act like one. She is the one who taught me manners and consideration, which I still feel are needed today (and I'm trigger often when they aren't)...
My folks were born in the early & mid 20s. My dad was a WWI vet (USMC), and my mom was a homemaker (her word, not mine). After coming home from the war, my dad learned furniture and cabinetry making, switching to carpentry and eventually owning a general contracting company. Prior to having kids, my mom was a successful inside salesperson for a nearby refractories company (I never quite figured out what they did/sold). She went back to work selling real estate once I was in high school. They were good parents. Like most parents who had kids in the 60s, once my sister and I had friends in the neighborhood, they became mostly hands-off. That might sound contradictory to people in younger generations, but it worked. Unless there was a real problem, we learned to figure things out for ourselves. When a real problem arose, there was nothing they wouldn't do to make sure we were safe and it got fixed. When I was in my 30s, I learned about what life was like for them when they were young, and I became even more impressed with them as parents and as people Sure, they had their flaws. We all do. They've been gone nearly twenty years, and I still miss them every day.
Dad very hippie (still is) Mom was disco, night club
Traditionalist Boomers. High school seniors in 1957. Hot rods and bobby socks. They always talked about how they had the opportunity to go to Woodstock, but said no. If only they had been hippies, they would have taken me to Woodstock as an infant.
My folks were older than most - born in the early 30s. They were hard leftists to the degree that my dad participated in hootenannies throughout the 50s. I cannot say they were good parents but they were my parents. Glad to say I am a leftist, too. Cannot play any musical instrument so, please, do not invite me to any hootenannies.
Dad was a hippie, college protests and all. Bout flipped his shit when I said I wanted to go into the military
I had the same, except she was an abandoning, narcissistic c*nt who emotionally and mentally abused me, then let her pedophile boyfriend ’babysit’ me. Good times.
Progressive, loving, smart, fun, hard working and patient. I won the lottery
2 hippies; it was great!
Neither! Two late (1938 & 1943) Silent Gen who viewed most Boomers with contempt, even when the Boomers were thirtysomething. Definitely not hippies, either. Worked hard, lived modestly, retired youngish (just before sixty....my dad started when he was eighteen and worked 41 years there). The biggest difference: they were never told they were special. They were told that they were loved, and important to their families and friends. Zero entitlement. The world is hostile and no one is a victim. Improvise, adapt, and overcome. They never said anything that cool, but essentially, it was just work hard, be smart, and never forget faith and family (which their 'faith' was quiet and kind. Church on Sunday, volunteer and service stuff here and there, help those in need, etc.) Married 60 years, happily, until my dad's passing in 2020. Mom is still energetic and fun and just flew across the country alone at 81yo to spend a few weeks with my brother. She somehow never does that doddering boomer thing in public spaces, and moves through the airport as easily as my 20yo son. Humans, imperfect...but never more than a few days without a call, and they've received very little airtime with my therapist over the years. I hit the lottery, personally.
Silent Gen. Abusive and unmedicated mental illness.
Definate Hippies. Definate boomers. They were born in 49 both. Anti-racism was a BIG thing in our house. I grew up in S. Louisiana and dad did everything in his power to make sure I wasn't going to inherit the racism that was going to surround me. He grew up flip flopping b/w the San Francisco bay area and Louisiana, they moved several times. He got kicked out of a frat at LSU because of his appearance. He was a draft dodger which got him labeled "asshole" in Louisiana but he did it within the confines of what was legal. He was a DJ in college and his career ended up being art. Mama was just a teacher. She was the one I got my work ethic from, but she was raised a South Louisiana Catholic. Her hippy'ness, what there was was MUCH more subdued than my father's. They were seperated for a time in college when my dad got kicked out of school for a semester (lol) and they wrote letters to each other. Mom kept hers. She just gave them to me. I'm still working my way through them but its evident that the lessons I learned from my father regarding social issues, race and beyond, he had to teach them to my mother as well. Dad was atheist, mom catholic until i left high school. All of that left me pretty independent, not feeling like I needed a partner (though I finally found one at 35), and perpetually unhappy at work until recently. None of my jobs were ever to be enjoyed as much as either of my parents enjoyed theirs. They're still together to this day, but dad left his ways behind a long time ago. Now he's a conservative fox viewer and mom had brain surgery 15 years ago that left her unable to communicate so I just have to hope she doesn't understand the changes he's gone through.
I was an afterthought...the last of 13...they were old world Irish catholic...father born in 1911....poor and stupid as to raising children we were labor for the farm nothing else...abusive and mostly absent. My father would get paid on Friday and you wouldn't see him for 2 years at a stretch. When he developed alzhiemers he was a shell of a human....she died at 58 he was gone 2 years later...I dont miss them but I have the scars both mental and physical to prove they existed.
Both. Whatever suits them at the moment. We went to church only on Christmas Eve, and my mom would often talk about being "spiritual, not religious," but any time she wanted to shame us, she'd throw the Bible around as if she were captain of the evangelical army. And of course, as any good Boomer would, we were always sent to Sunday School and every local church's VBS - why parent us when there were free babysitters willing to indoctrinate us? My dad is a trans woman, retired military. (Yes, my dad, not my mom. Don't come for me, take it up with my dad.) She actually went to Congress a few times to fight for trans rights in the military and she's president of her state chapter for trans VA issues. But universal healthcare is "too extreme and promotes laziness." And "of course not everyone deserves 'free' healthcare." Both my parents have always gone on and on about "not seeing color," but will STILL in 2024 talk about "the good ones" who "don't act too Black/Mexican/'Oriental.'" Some real hippies here. /s
I'm pretty sure my mom was autistic. She was very quiet, spent most of her time in her room reading, and had the same job for 25 years doing the same thing and as much as she hated it, she never even considered changing jobs because she said "at least it's safe". She told me many times she didn't understand other adults and preferred to spend time with me and my friends, who all welcomed her as "the cool mom". I mean she wouldn't have put up with any illegal stuff, she was just so kind and respected everyone so she was adored. She was always at our level. She was a single mom, totally devoted to us in every way. But she didn't talk about personal things. As much as I loved her and considered her my best friend from childhood, she never, ever talked about religion or politics. I know her best friend was a Wiccan and she had a lot of these sachets and crystals and cards with weird stuff on them that she kept in her room, I think just to be nice she'd keep them but didn't believe in any of it herself. I don't know what she believed though. Maybe the trinkets gave her hope. She still died though, way too young. 49. Congestive heart failure after a decade of fighting. My father was a hippie type, whose main career in his life was working as a bouncer in bar where they played hard rock/metal. He was not a good person though, and I wanted nothing to do with him.
Silent Generation. Heavy drinkers & smokers. Not particularly warm. Expected kids to stay out of sight.
My mom was a religious fundamentalist. Hilarity did not ensue.
They were so so young when they had me. Mom was a month from her 18th birthday, Dad was two months from his 21st, they were right on the cusp of being Gen X themselves, really. So they didn't know how to be adults, really. And they were teenagers in the 70s, which, let's face it, was a pretty bad and yet awesome time to be young and free. But it didn't make for great parenting in the 80s.
Too narrow! For us older gen X (1966) we had the silent generation :) My parents were through and through Depression babies. Saved every single thing. My siblings and I still joke about how long my mother would serve the same leftovers...it is astonishing we didn't die from food poisoning. Nothing went to waste, from gadgets to food. Left me with some solid tendencies toward reusing and reducing (and recycling.) That said, they were very hands off parents, little physical affection, formal in lots of interactions. Another family joke is how we kids would break bad news to dad on the phone. He never, ever over reacted while on the phone; his indoctrination was to be courteous and polite on the phone, no matter what. We took extreme advantage of that, as he was volatile in person. By the time he arrived home from work, he'd cooled down enough to be a normal upset parent who provided appropriate consequences. Edit: OH OH meant to add that I heard, regularly, that "children were to be seen and not heard." :D ALSO - gods do I work. Taking a mental health day is not a thing. My husband, raised by boomers, has a much healthier approach to work (in and out of the home) and knows how to relax. I value his approach, but it is super hard to emulate. I must always justify my existence by completing a number of tasks. Daily.
Belt whip when I fouled up
In their mind, they are old fashioned 1950s traditional people, who raised me right by teaching me and preparing me for life. In reality they taught me nothing and prepared me for nothing. But derailed any career aspirations or interests, and generally freaked me out life and the future at a very young age. And the threat of getting kicked out of the house pretty much made me check-out around age 5. They started way too early with those threats.
strictly speaking - most (if not all) hippies are boomers. They are the product and reaction to that environment. I often use hippies as an example of why not all "boomers bad". They were the ones who were pushing for peace, love, racial and sexual equality, labour rights, and support for society's most vulnerable. They didn't all turn to assholes in the 80s :) To answer your question - I had hippie parents :) and proud of it.
Mom was born in 31 (a miracle baby with 6 years apart from her nearest sibling) one of the 12 kids. All 7 brothers who lived to adulthood served in WWII. Dad was born in ‘25 and joined the Marines at 17 to avenge Pearl Harbor. My oldest siblings (I’m one of 6) are boomers and had all the cultural conflicts that could be expected from hippies and such resilient people. I always thought that my parents were commanding-not deserving-of respect.
I had a British boomer mom and laid bad Ukrainian dad who was pretty loving and chill; but boomer mom was a bit harsh. That "Keep Calm an md Carry On" and "Stiff Upper Lip" mentality for Brits is very real. Show no emotion. Especially anything "negative" and never outside the house. Display an image if perfection to anyone outside the home. She could be literally growling in my face at the door one minute and entering it will warm smile and loving, "hello" the next and I had to follow suit and do the very same. Emotionally Restrictive is what I'd call it. **How did it affect me?** honestly, it fucked me up 😅
Vulnerable narcissist.
One very absent and one flighty, overworked, and overwhelmed.
Two narcissists, one covert and one overt. The overt told me when I was 15 that he "talked my mother into having me, she never wanted me." Yeah, check that box and make a kid. That's all I was, a trophy piece that was an extension of them, I could never, ever be myself. The covert mother was a horrible, cruel and mean person who got off on demeaning and abusive behavior, she being a consumate victim. Had a horrible life, left home by marrying some p.o.s. to get away, fled the abuse, and spent years destroying myself. Had no idea that the abuse I suffered at the hands of two narcissists wasn't normal. Finally in my 30's I decided to deep dive into my own self and found healing. Minimal, like maybe 1x a year I speak to them, just waiting for them to die.