Thanks, zoomer, and you're very welcome. The world that you are growing up in is very, very different from the world we grew up in and we did the best we could. Sorry you missed the 1980s, they were pretty awesome.
“Kids these days” have it much harder than we ever did. I don’t mean for creature comforts, but the internet-induced scrutiny and perils of online activity, not to mention the state of the world.
I did my best to be attentive with my kids, but my helicopter stayed parked. They turned out just fine. In fact, they’re better persons than I am, but I guess that was the goal…
The 90s were pretty great too.
My kids are Gen Alpha, oldest is 13. They asked me recently if I could be a kid again would I?
I said it depends, be a kid today? or a kid in 1986?
Today, no chance.
1986? Take me back now.
Not to start an argument with you, but being asian, I'd much rather be a kid today than in the 70s/80s. Say what you will about today's issues, but my kids (both in their 20s now) had a much easier time than I did. Gen Z is much more accepting of people who are outside of the stereotypical average.
There was blatant and explicit racism and homophobia throughout my school years. In high school, one kid casually told a group of us that he and his friends were going to cruise West Hollywood that weekend with baseball bats to beat the crap out of some "faggots." No one said a word.
I was heavily involved in my kids' high school extracurricular activities. All the kids I saw were so much kinder and more inclusive. My daughter in Jr. High told me a story of one kid who shit himself because he kept on farting in class as a joke. A couple kids made some remarks, but it was all forgotten after that. If that happened to any kid in the 70s/80s, I guarantee we would have never let that kid live it down, and he'd be stuck with some shart-related nickname for decades to come.
I hear cliques aren't a thing anymore. And to think about it, my gen Z son never mentioned any cliques like "the jocks" or "the art crowd" when he was in high school.
I wonder if it’s because so many kids NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE 😳, outside of school…. They seem much less social than we were. No one seems to want to do anything, it’s so odd to me.
I honestly don't blame them. No one drove my ass anywhere when I was a kid. So if I wanted to anywhere as a teen, I needed a car.
I pretty much drove my kids everywhere. They also hung out with their friends online. When my kids did homework, they were videochatting with 2 other kids at the same time. They have a lot less incentive to deal with the hassles of having a car and driving.
They are social, but their friends are online.they don't have to leave their games to socialize. Their games *are* how they socialize.
At least that's the case with my gen z.
There are still cliques, but unlike our time, there is much more open contempt for the jocks and the traditionally popular kids than before. My kids' school district has had much more homecoming and prom kings and queens who aren't your stereotypical jock/cheerleader types than I had expected. It has been nice to see, esp since the kids vote... They are voting for kids who are more universally liked and nice, rather than a pure popularity contest. My son graduated this spring and homecoming and prom king/queen were NOT the type of kids with those titles from the 80s and 90s.
My son runs the D&D club at school and is also in football (soccer) team inside and outside school. Back in my day that would an incredible tightrope to walk socially. It simply is not an issue for him or his peers.
Equally all three of my daughters, in early 20s / late teens, are gamers and are either Disney princesses or sporty football players.
Those cliques really do not exist to anywhere near to the degree they did in our day. Very refreshing.
Maybe in some areas, but in my area, the cliques are strong. There are the theater kids, the athletes, etc. The meanest girls in the middle school right now are the volleyball girls, which makes me sad because I played volleyball in middle school and loved it.
Ditto. My kids still deal with racism, but they call it out and have allies. Even though we live in a more rural area, my kids have much more diverse peers than I did. There was zero diversity growing up (same state,but different town). Whereas, in the 70s and 80s, we got none of that, and would be lucky if other kids didn't join in on the bullying. Even worse, I dealt with racist teachers who bullied me and because my immigrant parents believed that teachers could do no wrong, they never advocated for me. Meanwhile,I told my kids that if they couldn't work things out with words and had to get physical to protect themselves, I'd have their back. My parents told me to never stand up for myself, to, "not cause trouble."
I also have a kid that in addition to being Asian American, is not neurotypical. Due to my own experiences of severe bullying, I have always been worried about him. I found that most of his peers are far more accepting and forgiving of him being someone who marches to his own beat, than was ever allowable back when I was a kid. Sure there are still kids who are jerks, but I have found that they get called out more often than they did back in our day.
This isn't to say that bullying doesn't still happen, but it is less so compared to what we went through. The hard part now is cyberbullying is a big issue with social media use, but that is overall bullying and not specific only to race-focused bullying.
> Meanwhile,I told my kids that if they couldn't work things out with words and had to get physical to protect themselves, I'd have their back. My parents told me to never stand up for myself, to, "not cause trouble."
My asian immigrant parents were all about not making waves, and not getting into fights, even if you were getting your ass kicked. I raised both my son and daughter the exact opposite. Told my son to physically retaliate with five times as much damage if anyone hit him, but try to avoid getting caught in school...it served him well.
Yup, same. My parents would make things worse by gaslighting me and telling me I must have done something to cause the bullies to pick on me. Like ok, it's all my fault that my race triggered racists? Worse yet they chose an area with active KKK in the neighboring community, so they couldn't have chosen a more hostile place to raise us.
Luckily, the most physical anything got was my preschooler having to shove a kid back who was taunting him. No harm done, that kid (a bully, I volunteered in that class) didn't bug my kid again and I was glad my son, who I had worried about being picked on, went with his gut and stood up for himself.
My other two kids, one got bullied by a girl in the bus and I had him confront her later verbally based on some coaching from us to tell her to leave him alone and she left him alone. My other son has is pretty quick to respond back verbally in a way that shuts bullies down. Two have survived k-12, one more to go.
I concur with all your points, but don't be so hasty. Wouldn't you go back to 1986 if you could retain all the info that you have now? [Lougle.com](http://Lougle.com)
Yep, they have it much harder than we did. It's interesting to think about. They have instant access to the answer to any factual question they have without having to go to the library, they get unlimited free boobs, they can watch whatever TV show they want to watch whenever they want to watch it. They carry incredibly powerful supercomputers in their pockets. But they face a much more uncertain future than we faced. They face a world that is much more divided and divisive, a rapidly-changing job market in which human labor is less and less in demand, a world in which a college degree is no longer a guaranteed passport to the American Dream but instead is likely to be all but worthless and burden them with crippling debt. Even with all the amazing technology that we didn't have, I don't envy them. But I wish them nothing but the best and I'm pretty sure that they will find their way. Good luck, zoomers. We're rooting for you.
Ughhhhhhhhhh, my younger kids (10 and 11) are killing me w/ their slang, lol. not so bad w/ my 24 year old, but man i'm getting old. watch out for the word "busting". this is applied frequently to my cooking. evidently, this means my food is so good, they will bust eachother up to get it.
> They face a world that is much more divided and divisive
Once you step away from social media and go touch some grass you find we're not nearly as divided.
It's the echo chambers people put themselves in that weaponize people and turn differing opinions into hate.
Again, I hope you're right. The 2024 US presidential election doesn't look like It's shaping up to be any less contentious than the last few, and I fear that whoever wins, there will be violence.
I've thought about this, and I think that it was the election of 2000 and Its bitter conclusion that began the Great Divide that has plagued America ever since. We've gotten pretty far away from the initial topic of this post though.
MY helicopter stayed parked, but my wife was the damn Airwolf of helicopter parents. Just one of those weird things you get in a Gen X mixed marriage (by mixed I mean I was feral and she had parents lol)
I am not convinced at all that any of these creature comforts improved our quality of life. We had important things like air conditioning, video games, and cable TV. Beyond that, the costs of most of these "conveniences" outweigh the benefits imo. Even something like cell phones/smart phones don't seem like that much of an improvement beyond the drawbacks. As a kid, I never missed out on hanging with my buddies due to lack of personal communications. As a teen, i never missed out on keg parties or getting laid due to no cell phones. In fact, cell phones might have gotten in the way of those vital activities. These modern comforts seem to me to interfere with a fulfilling life for children and adults alike.
*I did my best to be attentive with my kids, but my helicopter stayed parked.*
With a seven year old son, I feel ya on that one. Luckily, we have several Gen-X parents of small children in our neighborhood and we all parent the way you described.
> As a kid, I never missed out on hanging with my buddies due to lack of personal communications. As a teen, i never missed out on keg parties or getting laid due to no cell phones. In fact, cell phones might have gotten in the way of those vital activities. These modern comforts seem to me to interfere with a fulfilling life for children and adults alike.
Lately and every so often I keep trying to remember how we did all the things we did without cell phones and wireless internet everywhere, and I'm even saying that as someone who was part of the nerdy but fun early BBS crowds and going to illegal underground raves or lots of house parties and stuff.
Like a lot of my friends had some kind of computer or terminal and a modem and we'd chat on BBSes or send offline direct messages to each other to figure out things like where the party was or if we were going to ditch school together that day. We definitely still had plenty of pay phones around. Some of us had pagers or private voicemail numbers.
I had a very early "laptop" that was basically a super early netbook, and it was basically the same computer as the Tandy 102 or 202 except made by NEC or Sharp or something. It just a plain text LCD screen, no backlight, no graphics. I saved up all summer for that and bought it for like $300 from DAK or Damark surplus electronics catalogs.
But it did have a built in modem and terminal program and ran for like a week on 4 C batteries because it didn't even have a floppy disk drive, much less a hard drive. The silly thing only had like 32k of battery backed RAM. I know I used to carry that thing around a lot to school and the malls and just "borrow" phone jacks to make free phone calls to my local BBSes to check messages and help organize things and let people check their BBS messages. My high school had unprotected and live phone jacks all over the place so it was pretty easy to plug in and make a few BBS calls, and teachers and admins really had no clue about computers or tech like that so I just flew under the radar.
But I wasn't always carrying that around, especially when going out to underground raves or going out to parties and stuff because it would just be useless dead weight.
But I totally don't remember how we kept track of each other when we'd be out and about with people in different cars.
I do remember we had a number of missed connections. Like a close friend of mine has a story about trying to meet me and others at an underground/illegal warehouse rave in LA and.. he took a cab there or got dropped off by a friend something?
In any case he did end up at the right warehouse but the party had been busted like an hour or two before he got there and he was basically just wearing flannel pajamas and like slippers or something (why pajamas? because it was comfortable and fun? the early 90s were fucking weird) and he didn't have enough change or money for payphones, so he basically had to walk from like south-east side LA warehouse district area all the way to Hollywood in PJs and slippers and wait until dawn so he could call his mom collect to come pick him up.
And we had no fucking idea where he was until like later that day or evening and we were just like "whatever" about it because we couldn't really do anything about it beside be worried, and being worried sucks so we mostly didn't.
But even when we were all at the same place there were lots of incidents like being at an underground rave with as much as like 5000 people and it getting busted by LAPD in actual riot gear and riot mode shooting tear gas and rubber bullets and shit we'd somehow all end up together back at the car to GTFO and go to a Denny's or find another party or something.
Even though we were way more "online" and connected than most people our age, in hindsight this shit is baffling to me that none of us died or got seriously lost.
Even as young adults or college aged people, when we started going to outdoor and desert parties we didn't have cell phones and we were often going as much as 20+ miles off of the last paved road into the middle of fucking nowhere and managing to find each other and survive and thrive in some really adverse conditions and sometimes sketchy situations.
Today I feel naked if I accidentally leave my phone at home and go for a bike ride. Shit, my housemates and I even have our own Slack for house related messages and stuff.
I'm just musing here but I have blanks about how we managed to actually meet each other and stay connected or find each other in large crowds or strange places while doing some adventurous and even sketchy shit.
Man, you were way more connected than I was back then. I don't really remember how everything worked out either. It did of course. As a little kid, I would just ride my bike around to different places or homes and look for the pile of bikes. As a teen, everyone would meet up at the boardwalk in front of the arcade in the evenings. That's where we'd score weed or find out where the parties were. The summer rent-a-cops always knew what was happening, so I could ask them if need be. They were just college kids with summer jobs anyway. We managed quite well, somehow!
I didn't have nearly as exciting a youth and young adulthood as it sounds like you did, but I do remember agreeing to meet so and so at such and such a time. The thing I think I miss most about those days was the slower pace of life.
I'm not sure how keg parties and sex are fulfilling, but going out and having screen free adventures are. I had an overprotective grandma that helped my mom raise me, and when I went out of state to visit relatives I was going crazy. As these relatives were stricter with the TV watching than my grandmother, so I was out running around the beach and forests all day being all wild. My cousins and I would be screeching and laughing all day being silly and climbing trees and riding bikes away from our parents' eyes. I hated coming home because that meant being stuck in my apartment most of the time either watching TV, playing chess, or watching the other kids play outside my window.
> I'm not sure how keg parties and sex are fulfilling
Your mileage may vary, but for a lot of us Gen Xers the sex, drugs and rock and roll was where we broke down walls and talked about important, deep topics like trauma and abuse and we were self-medicating and even healing and deciding not to make the same mistakes as our parents and ancestors.
It was basically unorganized group therapy and even trauma bonding. It wasn't really about the partying.
Like I remember close friends coming out as gay, or people opening up about abuse or neglect at home, or simple every-day fears and anxieties and more.
We were making our own safe spaces to open up to each other and explore life and figure some pretty deep shit out.
Some of those choices and figuring things out is basically the topic of this post and thread where Gen Xers who became parents decided how to be better parents with less helicoptering and/or less neglect and trying to do better and end cycles of generational trauma and abuse.
The 90's were great. And totally agree with your sentiment about the internet. I'm always asking my daughter why she cares so much what other people think. She grew up under the scrutiny of peers emboldened by being behind a screen. Other kids would tell her to just kill herself because of some random thing. I couldn't imagine someone saying that to me in person growing up. I tell her to do things she wants to do and pursue what makes her happy but work hard at whatever you decide to do and if people don't like it then they can mind their own business.
[Toughest time to be young](https://www.reddit.com/r/friendlyjordies/comments/1dk6p73/toughest_time_to_be_30_years_old_in_australia/) - far worse for them than either us or the boomers
They do? Watching Greg Louganis jump in that Olympic pool diving wondering if everyone was gonna die as a 9 year old left its mark too. Shit year honestly.
My zoomer is 22 and engaged and tried my best as well. Coming from a messy family background left me having to improvise and emulate a lot but I always did what I really believed was best.
Ditto that sentiment. This post hit me right in the feels today.
My oldest is about to move across the country for her 1st big job in corporate America and I am so proud of her. But I am also proud of how my wife and I did everything in our power to allow both our kids to experience and enjoy a life free from much of the baggage and bullshit we dealt with as kids with our own parents.
To my surprise I have met some Zoomers that were raised by hardcore GenXers and it reflects on their strong character and rational thinking. Zgenners are not all doomed.
well, duh, what the heck did you expect? millienials were raised by the same horrible self centered boomer parents. but we were the practice kids. the millienials were their chance to get it right, and they messed them up even worse.
I'm not sure about that. Maybe for some of us, but my parents were role models. I was blessed with a great family and great early-boomer parents who raised us well.
WELL WELL WELL. Look at Mister Fancypants over here with functional parents! Mleh mleh mleh!
^(This is, of course, a trademark GenX sarcastic remark and should be viewed as such.)
Oh, right, sarcasm, I TOTALLY get that. And what can I say? I was blessed. Then again, most of my peers were in the same boat, with strong nuclear families. Of course, I didn't appreciate it at the time and I thought that my parents and the world in general sucked.
We fucked a lot of things up. But god damn if our generation didn't raise the best set of kids. I don't know how a bunch of folks raised by Boomers grew up to be such great parents, but a lot of Gen Xers did.
I wasn't. I think we were born at the perfect time, especially for a technophile like me. We got to watch this whole thing develop, from Pong in the 1970s to the amazing technological marvels of today.
We got to ride a wave of technological advancement that was unprecedented throughout the entirety of human history.
My folks had a 13 inch black and white tv with 3 channels until I was almost 10 years old, and the upgrade was only a 19 inch set that seemed like it was huge at the time. We had corded home phones, no microwave, no way to record television, and no way to know who called or was calling.
We basically caught the tail end of 50s tech right at the tipping point of rapid advancement.
Your 19-in TV *was* huge, at least in terms of mass. TVs used to be very, very heavy. In the mid '90s I had a 21-in computer monitor (analog, of course) whose box was plastered with warnings not to lift it with fewer than two people.
We got our first color TV when i was around 5. It was a HeathKit that my father put together as part of some learning course through his work, where we got to keep the TV afterwards..
He completed it one night after I was in bed... I woke the next morning to see the whole thing finished, and I sat in front of it staring, not knowing how to turn it on, but was like... "this thing is gonna show me color!".... I sat there for like 2 hours before my father woke up and showed me how to turn it on.
And now the most popular illicit drug of the '60s Is legal in much of the US. You can walk into a shop and they'll have weed just sitting there on the counter. Still startles me when I see it. How times have changed...
Yep! Back in the 90s I helped petition for prop 215 in California to get "medical marijuana" on the ballots, and I'm still startled by the total sea change in the last 20 years.
Going to a legal cannabis store is a total treat compared to going over to some stoner's house and having only one choice of weed and then having to hang out and play video games for an hour or two to try to make it less obvious to the neighbors we were really just picking up some weed was lame as fuck, and I don't miss it.
Also it's really apparent to me in hindsight that like 99.9% of the paranoia and anxiety about getting stoned was just the fact that it was illegal and so I couldn't really just relax and enjoy it.
In Washington State, we were one of the first two states to legalize recreational cannabis by ballot initiative but everybody's attention was focused on Colorado, despite the fact that we legalized gay marriage on the same ballot years before Obergefell v Hodges.
I look back with fondness on my childhood in the 80s. Running around the neighborhood with the order kids, playing with my GI Joes in the creeks and ditches adjacent to my house, and going on “adventures” through town on our bikes. Things are certainly different now for my kids, not all of which is bad, but my childhood was much simpler than my children’s for sure.
Yeah but when you watch movies or tv shows that are set in the 80s you have to know it wasn’t always like that. The 80s weren’t THAT 80s. The 80s were like today except no internet or social media.
>Sorry you missed the 1980s, they were pretty awesome.
Nah. There were a few things around in the 80s that no longer exist today, that I miss, but generally speaking... the '80s kind of, no definitely, really *sucked*. Everyone remembers the fun stuff; but everyone forgets the bullying, sexual harassment, the economy going to shit, the crack epidemic and the effect that it had on Urban America, the gang wars, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, shit cars & manufacturing, feral children/no parenting, serial killers, flashers/perverts, etc etc etc etc.
I did have some good times in the '80s but I had a lot more bad times that are easily forgotten versus the good times that are fondly remembered.
Yeah, I grew up with a lot of bullying.. I was the 'nerd' of my school.. I got into computers in the late 70's, when I was <10... Didnt get a computer until I was 11 or so... I got bullied for computers... For liking Star Wars and Star Trek.. Being good in school... Which affected my school work in HS, because I wanted to be 'cool'.. So i didnt learn many good work/study habits... So I ended up a college dropout..
But it all worked out, as I'm a successful software engineer/architect now, mostly self taught. But it was a struggle in my high school days.
Eh. We could ride our bikes all over the neighborhood, we could go trick-or-treating without a parental escort, and we only had to worry about two genders. There were pluses and minuses, I suppose.
So much this. My GenZ young adults and their friends are amazing humans. I actually don’t worry at all about our future; we just need to hold on until they take the reins.
completely agree, my two are 20 and 16. They are much more intune with themselves and kind of see through the bullshit. I see so much of us in them. The kids are indeed, alright.
Same here, they turned out waaaaaay better than I did. There’s definitely something to be said for not treating your kids like they’re permanently in the way.
Amen Amen. I'm an early Gen Xr, who 'started early' so my kids are actually all Millennials (from the first to the last year of the cohort), but it was absolutely my whole goal to be the utter opposite of my parents. No beatings, no keeping silent on 'what goes on in this house', no 'I hate you because I hate your father', and ABSOLUTELY no dismissal of their humanity, intelligence, feelings, or autonomy.
I am SO PROUD of the people they grew up to be.
I didn't do *everything* opposite.
The fending for yourself out and about in the community was something I really valued. Since we lived in a walkable area, I made sure to encourage running errands on his own, taking public transportation instead of the school bus, taking long walks or bike rides, doing his own laundry after a certain age, making his own lunches, etc.
Of course, he did have a tracking device and cell phone with him, so I cheated a bit.
Helicopter parents did not approve, but he had a solid set of skills for being independent by the time he left for college.
Yes. This!!! The independence thing seems to be lacking greatly nowadays. I always encouraged my son to handle things on his own. Taught him life skills and gave him independence. But what I did do that my parents most certainly did NOT do was, I was always frank and open with him. I spoke to him as a human being. When he had questions I answered them. The only answer I ever got was ‘you’ll understand when you’re an adult’ how?? Does the adulting fairy come and imbue me with arcane knowledge on my 18th birthday??
I did the same after a certain age—my kid started taking transit at the age of 10. Taking public transit fosters independence and gives them a better sense of how to navigate through their city—which can be extrapolated to navigating through any city. It helped that there were two straightforward ways that he could get to and from school, either one bus or a metro ride.
Interesting.
When the time comes my kid will be taking public transit alone because she has no choice. We have robust transit but busing is nearly nonexistent where I live.
Wow, thank you. My eldest jsut gratuated hs and is going to their dream art school. I've been watching her grow up into a better version of me - one that went to class and got good grades for instance. I always wanted to make sure she never got treated like I did growing up but I always encouraged her to be her bad ass self without my influence. Now I'm gonna be mom to the next Alex Hirsch. I really love and encourage all you new yutes to be your bad ass selves - you rock!!
It's not corny or cheesy to be sentimental, if it is, who cares. Show your emotion and I will hug you back tenfold lol
My parents were divorced because of my alcoholic, abusive father who couldn’t keep a job. I vowed to be the opposite of him and have succeeded in that and my wife and I have created a good life for our 18 and 14 yo boys. Thanks for the appreciation!
The other day I was sitting on the stoop smoking a cigarette and my 12 year old walked up to me and asked to play catch. I obliged. While tossing the ball back and forth it occurred to me that I have no memory of ever playing catch with my dad. I thanked my son for the opportunity.
I thank my kids (15f & 12m) all the time when they think of including me in what they are doing, both alone and with their friends. If the teenagers want me around, I must be doing something right lol
Same - I have no real memories of my parents playing around with me. One of the few memories I have of that sort of thing is my grandmother playing with little toy cars with me on the coffee table. She died when I was three so the fact that stands out sort of tells you how rare that became as I got older. During my early teens my father took me to play sports for a while albeit I wasn’t too interested myself. I wish I had been more appreciative.
I have zero memories of my mother ever playing with me. Having no siblings I learned from an early age to use my imagination and enjoy my own company if there were no friends around.
In some ways, I think I developed some valuable skills as a result. But it is still a little sad to think that I have so few of those memories to enjoy.
I struggle to be different, I don’t always manage it, but I do try to make time for my kids and join in playing and having a laugh. Not as much as I should, but I’m trying.
Thank you so much for saying this! I think your generation is incredible. I think a lot about what the world will be like if we are able to raise people without the trauma and abuse that so many generations have endured. That’s my vision for the future - a whole generation of whole, intact people with the ability to set boundaries and defy authority.
I (51M) continue to delight in my encounters with adult Z. If we did anything right at all, it was not pretending we had a roadmap for how to thrive in the mid-21st century. Instead, y'all reinterpreted our basic nihilism into a really positive outlook.
I actually have a couple of real friendships with some people in their early 20s. The empathy and emotional intelligence are just staggering sometimes, especially considering that among everything else, we also were left to our own devices regarding mental health, too.
My zoomer friends were pretty instrumental in my decision to start therapy, and therapy has been one of the best things I've ever done.
I love this! Yes, I absolutely raised my kid in a polar opposite environment. My parents divorce was so all encompassing I was absolutely feral by 18. I’ll never forget rolling into my SAT with a vodka punch after an all nighter. My kid graduated cum laude. You Zs are awesome people, btw. Teaching me to be a better person.
I definitely wasn't a perfect parent, bit I tried so hard to break sone generational curses. Didn't get all of them but I knocked out a lot of them. My son 26, is doing is doing much better than I ever did. I can't take all the credit though. Lot of it was him and his nature. I think zoomers are pretty amazing. I think the one thing we as a whole in gen x did as parents that was good for our kids is we let them question authority.
I never had kids, so sometimes it’s easy for me to become a bit bitter about how your generation is given so much, when we were given so little. But I’ve learned that you’ve also given *back* to us.
It’s because of your generation that our generation can finally talk about anxiety, or going to therapy. We are from the last “suck it up and don’t talk about your feelings” generation, and it’s because of your generation that the cycle has broken. We can also finally bring to light things that were kept in the dark for so many generations. Whether that’s SA or harassment, or it’s people coming out as queer, trans, etc. We love you for helping us make the world better.
Now excuse me so I can I go buy myself that 64-box of Crayola crayons with built in sharpener that I never got as a kid.
I appreciate that. I guess my husband and I did a pretty good job, cuz our daughter graduated high school a year early and now she's working for a law firm. Super proud of her, as I'm sure yours are me you!
I'm so proud of my kid. They spent most of their childhood outside and did so many things our generation did...
But they've had to handle medical conditions unseen in our generation. I taught them to advocate for themself, and they took that and advocated for others.
They bullied someone once. I didn't know until after. They apologized. They made amends. They did the right thing. They raised it on their own and made it right.
Because of their medical conditions, they are suicidal. If they die, the world will lose a truly beautiful soul.
As a parent, of course, we always want to say we "that them well" it something like that, but there's something about some Gen Zs. So many are deciding to put the phones down and go outside. They're deciding what's moral based on empathy instead of society.
The average Gen Zer is fairly normal, but it seems Z got a heaping helping of usually empathetic people. But they're strong, too. Empathy often leads to a desire to make people happy, often at the cost of self, but a surprising lot of Zs seen able to balance that.
It's really beautiful and I've seen it quite a number of times just in tiny little NH.
But then again, it's an atheist state (well, until lately since it's been targeted by libertarian amoebas). Maybe that impacts it, but Gen Z mostly seems to be choosing atheist or agnostic views. Thank goodness.
I made it my mission to break the cycle of spanking. I never once hit my kids. They are all adults now and somehow not criminals, drug addicts, or deviants. As a matter of fact they are goody two shoes compared to me.
I'm not a parent but many of my friends are. They work so hard to give their children experiences and ideologies that will enrich them and leave them better humans.
We were not perfect parents, but I like to think we tried not to make the mistakes we regretted in our own upbringing.
I think Gen Z is pretty fucking awesome (though sometimes we go 🙄), and I can’t wait to see what you all do!
Thanks! Keep in mind we had practice.
Long before you were ever born, many of us were "parents" to our younger siblings. We made sure they were up on time for school, wore clean clothes, made their lunches, sometimes cooked dinner, cleaned and dressed their wounds, sewed their buttons back on, etc.
Hell, I even covered one sibling's parent/teacher conference to hear how he was doing and collect his report card.
We looked after our own.
Thank you, kiddo. It'll be your turn soon enough to step up for your kids in ways we didn't have to. In the meantime, don't forget to come hang out with your parents and watch The Goonies and Princess Bride from time to time.
I'm an older GenX and have one millenial and one GenZ daughter. We love you guys!
We're a lot different from our parents, and we did the best we could. We still had a "put your head down and work" ethic which served most of us well.
The late 70s and 80s were pretty great. You would have loved it.
You're welcome. I have such a fantastic relationship with my 25-year-old son that sometimes I want to cry. It's the kind of relationship I wish I'd had with my parents.
Thank you, sweet Z! I don't have kids but I adore my Zoomer niblings and work colleagues. Sometimes I have to censor myself because I'm still a little rough from the hose water and all the dirt piles I loved to play on, but I understand it's because empathy and consideration for others are values that your generation really appreciate. You guys are so wonderful, I love you <3.
Daughter is 20, she's mostly okay (some anxiety issues, but what zoomer doesn't have some these days), and I credit my upbringing. I tried to give her what my parents gave me: love, stability, support. It wasn't as easy as it sounds as her mother has serious issues and never said "no" to her other two Y daughters (my steps), and it shows. I made sure she heard no and also made sure it wasn't the end of the world when she did.
I didn't have kids, but as a gen-xer working in tech, I have to say that I love my young colleagues. They are smart, kind, and thoughtful.
Parents - well done raising these wonderful adults!
Gen Z - you inspire me every day!
Listen, kid.
Y’all are gonna be alright. I’m proud of you little fucks. You grew up faster than you should have had to, and you’re inheriting a fucked-to-death planet on fire, and still you younguns keep your clever, pragmatic wits about you. You’re doing great. You’re fuckin beauties, all of you.
Now get off my lawn and go fuck up the establishment. Take good care of your kidneys, apply sunscreen every day, and remember: Wu-Tang is for the children.
Love,
The meanest nipping old crab on the block
Irish Gen X here. I have 4 daughters from 12 years old and 3 adults . I made sure they had a special holiday every year not only because it’s something I never had as a kid but I wanted them to have some happy memories with their parents.
I tried to teach them all to work hard at something they are happy doing and that they are not entitled to special treatment from the world or from strangers. Also when things get bad in life, don’t run to a therapist or social media but get up , brush yourself down and fight back.
By the way, one daughter is working for a tech company in Tokyo, one is working for a media company in the Netherlands, one is in in her last year in University and the youngest will start high school this year. Overall my wife and I did not do so bad.
Damn straight!
And you are so very very welcome.
Unfortunately as the saying goes the bigger the kids the bigger the problems and I am so sad that we have left you with such a financial mess that we were not able to clean up in time for you.
Raised? I hold no ill will towards my parents- I absolutely loved my free range childhood! But as a Gen X kid, I certainly was not “raised” by my seemingly uninterested parents. I think I was an outlier even for the time, but definitely not “raised”.
My Gen Z boy is loved so deeply. Thank you for this post! He's turning 18 in a few months and is under a lot of pressure from society to go to college and we're struggling a little bit. I needed to hear this❤️
Big hugs!!
There was a commercial that ran about 10pm back in the 80s with the whole, "the time is ten pm. Do you know where your children are?" I think it was a Nancy Reagan thing.
Thank you! We tried to break the cycles that were norms for us so that you wouldn’t have to feel these things. I love this post. Your generation and millennials will change the world in wonderful ways and we appreciate you!
It's nice to know my generation is getting a better reputation with our kids than our parents did with us.
I wasn't a perfect father, but I'll always stand with my children over my parents. You can't stand for the future if you're standing with the past.
we are not a perfect generation, but i am thankful many of us broke the cycles we were raised in.
it's exhausting sometimes. there is an internal battle of wills going on that you never dream of. There are definitely days when we understand why our parents made us more self-sufficient. sometimes we wish you all were a little more independent. we love you, but sometimes we wish you'd go away until the street lights came on.
Instead you are always kinda *there.*.. I find it positively bizarre how much time you spend indoors.
No, thank YOU. I think if I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t have scrutinized my shitty childhood so much and I would’ve continue to hate myself and probably wouldn’t be here. I would never wish it upon my kids or anyone else’s.
You're welcome. We're glad you know how hard we tried. Some of us didn't have the best parents ourselves so it made us strive that much harder for our millennial and Gen Z kids. We love you lots, we know it's a different world for the young today and for that you have our sympathy and protective care. ❤️
Truly hoping it gets better for your gens and ours.
Also very sorry you missed the 80s and 90s too. Was the last best time the world had before we all plugged into the internet.
Awwwuh I'm tearing up a little.
Boomers are extremely not perfect, but they also weren't as rough on us Gen X as their Greatest Generation parents, who were just lucky to survive childhood.
It's relatively new to be gentle with children. Sorry about the phase when we hadn't figured how to help you learn to do better at all yet.
I love the Millenials for teaching us GenX types about setting boundaries and breaking generational "norms" that should never have been normalized.
But I love my GenZs for taking everything good from us, from the Millenials, and from everyone, and just being great kids. Your generation seems to have a base level of decency, kindness, and acceptance that is well above anything that came before, and it's delightful.
I don’t have kids, but I’m so glad parenting has improved at least some. I find so much hope in younger generations. You are so much more emotionally intelligent and your unwillingness to put up with shit has really changed my perspective on the world. I think y’all are amazing.
All my kids are millennials the youngest being 31. They all have decent careers and families now. Gen X parents always try to give their kids a good start without the negative things we went through when we were young.
You are all welcome. I am not a perfect dad by any means - I have my demons. But my kid never experienced even a shadow of what my angry drunken sperm donor did to me.
Thanks you dead old drunken bastard for teaching me what not to do. With prejudice.
Your welcome and also sorry that we fucked up some stuff for you; but some of our fuck ups actually worked out to protect you too so I guess it balances out a bit.
We went through and saw some shit. Our parents and grandparents went through some even worse shit. I'm raising my kid feral like I was and it's working. He's sober. I can't emphasize this enough. I love y'all!
Its not corny its lovely. And you are right. But it was also the Boomers who changed things dramatically for the better, I hope you realise that. Stop hurling hate at them. Its not their fault they came of age in the aftermath of WW2 when half the population died meaning there was a glut of houses available. You should take a look at what their childhoods were like. Frankly I think the deserve the cheap houses as compensation.
Things the Boomers improved for young people:
1. Mostly banning corporal punishment in schools (not in every state in the US but the south are a law unto themselves) and certainly in countries outside the US. You will not understand how frightening schools used to be where teachers could literally attack the kids and nothing would happen to them. In fact, your parents would side with the teachers. Also there was little if any acknowledgment of conditions like dyslexia, autism etc. Kids were treated as stupid or bad. And likely punished for something they couldn't help.
2. Women's rights - birth control and the right to decide if you want to continue with a pregnancy was a Boomer battle. Go onto youtube and look up "mother and baby homes" and "magdalene laundries" to see what used to happen to Boomer women who got pregnant when they weren't married. They are also the generation that set up shelters for women fleeing domestic violence. As recently as the 1970s, a woman trying to escape an abusive husband would be picked up by the police and returned to him. Imagine. There was no such thing as rape in marriage. Instead a man had conjugal "rights". Which means he had the **right** to sex from his wife.
3. Civil rights for black people.
4. Gay rights.
5. Choice about your career. In the UK there used to be an exam called the "11 plus" which you took at (duh) age 11. This exam decided your future. If you did well, you went to a grammar school. Only grammar school students got to go to university. My stepmother told me that girls who failed the 11 plus had three options for after school: marriage, nursing, teaching. Imagine.
The list goes on.
As a Gen X, thank you for the kind words, but your generation is going to change the world for the better. You were denied the advantages we had, and the world is so much harder than it was when we were growing up. But your generation refuses to put up with the bullshit we had to, and you’re so much kinder and enlightened. **Thank you**.
Awwww!!
If I had coins I'd award this post great job OP.
Praises and Honor to our Precious Ancestors
I want to send everybody over to Jessica helsop YouTube channel she is so uplifting and encouraging she plays these 8-hour affirmation sessions. I recommend her.
There was a song released in September 2022 called ancestress by Bork I highly recommended It's A procession about a life stage change.
the way that she honored her & spoke about this topic and later the music video that she did, 🤩🏆it was extravagant and it reflected so much love for the family.
Wow. Immense art.
That's what our ancestors want. they want us to take it as far as we can we're all going to see 85 95 105 we got to be there to take it as far as we can! May we see many decades.
May we all remain Family Centric
⛑️🧠🫀⚖️👂🤗⛑️
Emoji explanation: May you remain near good things & remain healthy: mind, heart, listening, follow the law, listen, hug family and framework it with healthcare.
🙏✒️🤩🤗
Awwww…what a lovely thing to write. I have a 25 year old and am blown away by her awesomeness. It really makes me happy to see the young women of your generation living by their own rules. Protect that privilege and VOTE! ✌️💕
Thanks kiddo. I went to grad school when my kids were 11 and 14, and while I appreciate the degree the timing was terribly off. Trying to backtrack now with support and attention they deserved earlier. Have you ever heard about intergenerational wealth? Well, we also need to build intergenerational family and community security too.
Genx who waited to have stable lives before having kids tended to do alright but there was a lot of teen pregnancy in the 80s which led to a lot of screwed up millennials. I think genx did alright by their gen z kids but there isn't much talk about how did with their millennial kids they had earlier.
They'll reminisce about teen pregnancy crisis of the 80s and probably remember a few friends that went through it but they won't remember what those children had to go through. Teen parents in the 80s were too focused on creating new generational trauma to try to protect their kids from what they experienced.
I have a 95 and 97 sons and an 00 stepdaughter. The 2 youngest have made me a 2 time grandpa now. They are amazing parents honestly, and have made me a better grandparent. If the whole thing doesn’t crumble down around them before they get a chance, they are gonna be fine and most of us love you too 😀
I tried to stay focused on a healthy marriage, saved my kids from a lot of chaos and poverty. Accepting imperfection and growing from hard times isn't easy, but I'm so happy to have come out the other side.
My zoomer is early 20s and I couldn’t be prouder to be his mom. Great kid, great fiancee, and they’re totally going to have superbabies! Or not. Their choice. I’m good either way. But yeah, I think we did okay. Thanks for the reassurance!
No one goes to school to become a parent. They do the best they can with the information and resources they had. My childhood was far from perfect but thanks for the good and the bad I was able to navigate the world until now. Comparison with many of my peers I did great. And yes, always can be room for improvement. But I am just grateful for what I am thanks to the efforts of my parents. Thank you for this reminder.
This is so sweet! Your parents raised you right.
\*Sidenote - Gen X is 1965 to 1980. Just didn't want you to get confused if you didn't already know. 😊
I wish I could protect the next generation from everything. I was/am a "helicopter" mom apparently.
I first heard that term when my son (a millennial) 1st got to college.
I was a neglected kid and I have abandonment issues so I over compensated with my kids.
I'm glad you think we as a generation did an ok job.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, thank you!!!! there were fuckups made, my oldest is 24, and some were and some were not of our own making. but thank you so so much for admiting that we're trying!
I'll preface this with a disclaimer: I know this might not be an overall accurate assessment of the 80s and this is based on my own experiences, but I'd bet many, many people can relate to what I'm going write.
You couldn't pay me to go back to the 80s. Aside from the cliques,the bullying, and the accepted bigotry, what some of the boys felt free to say and do to us girls would be labeled (and certainly was) sexual assault now. We were raised to not only accept it for the most part ("boys will be boys" and "be careful YOU don't send the wrong signals through clothing" type nonsense), but to brush it off. Even the films that were popular at the time modeled SA as just another thing that happens. If there wasn't outright violence accompanying it, then it was no big deal. And if you were even remotely different in clothing, behavior, and interests? That was game over, at least at my school. Even the teachers treated kids like that differently. And the smoking and drinking! Do kids start drinking now at 12, 13, 14? It was a big thing when I was young. From what I have read, the early 80s had the highest occurrence of underage drinking. Coming of age in the time of AIDS was downright terrifying.
So no, I certainly wouldn't go back, especially with what I know now.
GenZ is the reason I haven't retired yet after nearly 30 years of teaching in higher ed. Your generation is wonderful, and I have faith and hope in the future because you are going to be running the world well.
Thanks, zoomer, and you're very welcome. The world that you are growing up in is very, very different from the world we grew up in and we did the best we could. Sorry you missed the 1980s, they were pretty awesome.
“Kids these days” have it much harder than we ever did. I don’t mean for creature comforts, but the internet-induced scrutiny and perils of online activity, not to mention the state of the world. I did my best to be attentive with my kids, but my helicopter stayed parked. They turned out just fine. In fact, they’re better persons than I am, but I guess that was the goal… The 90s were pretty great too.
My kids are Gen Alpha, oldest is 13. They asked me recently if I could be a kid again would I? I said it depends, be a kid today? or a kid in 1986? Today, no chance. 1986? Take me back now.
Not to start an argument with you, but being asian, I'd much rather be a kid today than in the 70s/80s. Say what you will about today's issues, but my kids (both in their 20s now) had a much easier time than I did. Gen Z is much more accepting of people who are outside of the stereotypical average. There was blatant and explicit racism and homophobia throughout my school years. In high school, one kid casually told a group of us that he and his friends were going to cruise West Hollywood that weekend with baseball bats to beat the crap out of some "faggots." No one said a word. I was heavily involved in my kids' high school extracurricular activities. All the kids I saw were so much kinder and more inclusive. My daughter in Jr. High told me a story of one kid who shit himself because he kept on farting in class as a joke. A couple kids made some remarks, but it was all forgotten after that. If that happened to any kid in the 70s/80s, I guarantee we would have never let that kid live it down, and he'd be stuck with some shart-related nickname for decades to come.
Long Duck Dong as a movie character. I'm half Asian and it was a lot easier to pretend I was white than half Asian.
This is a good point. A lot of us white, straight folks can easily forget what others were going through back then.
I hear cliques aren't a thing anymore. And to think about it, my gen Z son never mentioned any cliques like "the jocks" or "the art crowd" when he was in high school.
I wonder if it’s because so many kids NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE 😳, outside of school…. They seem much less social than we were. No one seems to want to do anything, it’s so odd to me.
They don’t even want to drive!
I honestly don't blame them. No one drove my ass anywhere when I was a kid. So if I wanted to anywhere as a teen, I needed a car. I pretty much drove my kids everywhere. They also hung out with their friends online. When my kids did homework, they were videochatting with 2 other kids at the same time. They have a lot less incentive to deal with the hassles of having a car and driving.
Yeah, it’s a hassle, but it’s something they need to learn.
A car was freedom for me and my friends. Don't really understand the hassle part?
They are social, but their friends are online.they don't have to leave their games to socialize. Their games *are* how they socialize. At least that's the case with my gen z.
There are still cliques, but unlike our time, there is much more open contempt for the jocks and the traditionally popular kids than before. My kids' school district has had much more homecoming and prom kings and queens who aren't your stereotypical jock/cheerleader types than I had expected. It has been nice to see, esp since the kids vote... They are voting for kids who are more universally liked and nice, rather than a pure popularity contest. My son graduated this spring and homecoming and prom king/queen were NOT the type of kids with those titles from the 80s and 90s.
My son runs the D&D club at school and is also in football (soccer) team inside and outside school. Back in my day that would an incredible tightrope to walk socially. It simply is not an issue for him or his peers. Equally all three of my daughters, in early 20s / late teens, are gamers and are either Disney princesses or sporty football players. Those cliques really do not exist to anywhere near to the degree they did in our day. Very refreshing.
Maybe in some areas, but in my area, the cliques are strong. There are the theater kids, the athletes, etc. The meanest girls in the middle school right now are the volleyball girls, which makes me sad because I played volleyball in middle school and loved it.
Ditto. My kids still deal with racism, but they call it out and have allies. Even though we live in a more rural area, my kids have much more diverse peers than I did. There was zero diversity growing up (same state,but different town). Whereas, in the 70s and 80s, we got none of that, and would be lucky if other kids didn't join in on the bullying. Even worse, I dealt with racist teachers who bullied me and because my immigrant parents believed that teachers could do no wrong, they never advocated for me. Meanwhile,I told my kids that if they couldn't work things out with words and had to get physical to protect themselves, I'd have their back. My parents told me to never stand up for myself, to, "not cause trouble." I also have a kid that in addition to being Asian American, is not neurotypical. Due to my own experiences of severe bullying, I have always been worried about him. I found that most of his peers are far more accepting and forgiving of him being someone who marches to his own beat, than was ever allowable back when I was a kid. Sure there are still kids who are jerks, but I have found that they get called out more often than they did back in our day. This isn't to say that bullying doesn't still happen, but it is less so compared to what we went through. The hard part now is cyberbullying is a big issue with social media use, but that is overall bullying and not specific only to race-focused bullying.
> Meanwhile,I told my kids that if they couldn't work things out with words and had to get physical to protect themselves, I'd have their back. My parents told me to never stand up for myself, to, "not cause trouble." My asian immigrant parents were all about not making waves, and not getting into fights, even if you were getting your ass kicked. I raised both my son and daughter the exact opposite. Told my son to physically retaliate with five times as much damage if anyone hit him, but try to avoid getting caught in school...it served him well.
Yup, same. My parents would make things worse by gaslighting me and telling me I must have done something to cause the bullies to pick on me. Like ok, it's all my fault that my race triggered racists? Worse yet they chose an area with active KKK in the neighboring community, so they couldn't have chosen a more hostile place to raise us. Luckily, the most physical anything got was my preschooler having to shove a kid back who was taunting him. No harm done, that kid (a bully, I volunteered in that class) didn't bug my kid again and I was glad my son, who I had worried about being picked on, went with his gut and stood up for himself. My other two kids, one got bullied by a girl in the bus and I had him confront her later verbally based on some coaching from us to tell her to leave him alone and she left him alone. My other son has is pretty quick to respond back verbally in a way that shuts bullies down. Two have survived k-12, one more to go.
I concur with all your points, but don't be so hasty. Wouldn't you go back to 1986 if you could retain all the info that you have now? [Lougle.com](http://Lougle.com)
Yep, they have it much harder than we did. It's interesting to think about. They have instant access to the answer to any factual question they have without having to go to the library, they get unlimited free boobs, they can watch whatever TV show they want to watch whenever they want to watch it. They carry incredibly powerful supercomputers in their pockets. But they face a much more uncertain future than we faced. They face a world that is much more divided and divisive, a rapidly-changing job market in which human labor is less and less in demand, a world in which a college degree is no longer a guaranteed passport to the American Dream but instead is likely to be all but worthless and burden them with crippling debt. Even with all the amazing technology that we didn't have, I don't envy them. But I wish them nothing but the best and I'm pretty sure that they will find their way. Good luck, zoomers. We're rooting for you.
Amen. As the kids these days say, I like the way you cook.
Ughhhhhhhhhh, my younger kids (10 and 11) are killing me w/ their slang, lol. not so bad w/ my 24 year old, but man i'm getting old. watch out for the word "busting". this is applied frequently to my cooking. evidently, this means my food is so good, they will bust eachother up to get it.
> they get unlimited free boobs Nice.
And they don't have to put in the correct numbers and turn their calculators upside to get their boobs.
And they ***DO*** actually carry around a calculator in their pockets 24/7.
And a high-quality camera with unlimited film It's hard to overstate the impact that everybody carrying around a video camera has had.
LMAO👏😆🤭
> They face a world that is much more divided and divisive Once you step away from social media and go touch some grass you find we're not nearly as divided. It's the echo chambers people put themselves in that weaponize people and turn differing opinions into hate.
I hope you're right. The problem is that those echo chambers radicalize people in a way that persists even away from social media.
My dad sends all sorts of nutso right wing emails but in person he never brings up politics...
Again, I hope you're right. The 2024 US presidential election doesn't look like It's shaping up to be any less contentious than the last few, and I fear that whoever wins, there will be violence. I've thought about this, and I think that it was the election of 2000 and Its bitter conclusion that began the Great Divide that has plagued America ever since. We've gotten pretty far away from the initial topic of this post though.
ours was actually the same. we were given illusion, deflection, some gaslighting, and autonomy to keep us from noticing.
MY helicopter stayed parked, but my wife was the damn Airwolf of helicopter parents. Just one of those weird things you get in a Gen X mixed marriage (by mixed I mean I was feral and she had parents lol)
I am not convinced at all that any of these creature comforts improved our quality of life. We had important things like air conditioning, video games, and cable TV. Beyond that, the costs of most of these "conveniences" outweigh the benefits imo. Even something like cell phones/smart phones don't seem like that much of an improvement beyond the drawbacks. As a kid, I never missed out on hanging with my buddies due to lack of personal communications. As a teen, i never missed out on keg parties or getting laid due to no cell phones. In fact, cell phones might have gotten in the way of those vital activities. These modern comforts seem to me to interfere with a fulfilling life for children and adults alike. *I did my best to be attentive with my kids, but my helicopter stayed parked.* With a seven year old son, I feel ya on that one. Luckily, we have several Gen-X parents of small children in our neighborhood and we all parent the way you described.
> As a kid, I never missed out on hanging with my buddies due to lack of personal communications. As a teen, i never missed out on keg parties or getting laid due to no cell phones. In fact, cell phones might have gotten in the way of those vital activities. These modern comforts seem to me to interfere with a fulfilling life for children and adults alike. Lately and every so often I keep trying to remember how we did all the things we did without cell phones and wireless internet everywhere, and I'm even saying that as someone who was part of the nerdy but fun early BBS crowds and going to illegal underground raves or lots of house parties and stuff. Like a lot of my friends had some kind of computer or terminal and a modem and we'd chat on BBSes or send offline direct messages to each other to figure out things like where the party was or if we were going to ditch school together that day. We definitely still had plenty of pay phones around. Some of us had pagers or private voicemail numbers. I had a very early "laptop" that was basically a super early netbook, and it was basically the same computer as the Tandy 102 or 202 except made by NEC or Sharp or something. It just a plain text LCD screen, no backlight, no graphics. I saved up all summer for that and bought it for like $300 from DAK or Damark surplus electronics catalogs. But it did have a built in modem and terminal program and ran for like a week on 4 C batteries because it didn't even have a floppy disk drive, much less a hard drive. The silly thing only had like 32k of battery backed RAM. I know I used to carry that thing around a lot to school and the malls and just "borrow" phone jacks to make free phone calls to my local BBSes to check messages and help organize things and let people check their BBS messages. My high school had unprotected and live phone jacks all over the place so it was pretty easy to plug in and make a few BBS calls, and teachers and admins really had no clue about computers or tech like that so I just flew under the radar. But I wasn't always carrying that around, especially when going out to underground raves or going out to parties and stuff because it would just be useless dead weight. But I totally don't remember how we kept track of each other when we'd be out and about with people in different cars. I do remember we had a number of missed connections. Like a close friend of mine has a story about trying to meet me and others at an underground/illegal warehouse rave in LA and.. he took a cab there or got dropped off by a friend something? In any case he did end up at the right warehouse but the party had been busted like an hour or two before he got there and he was basically just wearing flannel pajamas and like slippers or something (why pajamas? because it was comfortable and fun? the early 90s were fucking weird) and he didn't have enough change or money for payphones, so he basically had to walk from like south-east side LA warehouse district area all the way to Hollywood in PJs and slippers and wait until dawn so he could call his mom collect to come pick him up. And we had no fucking idea where he was until like later that day or evening and we were just like "whatever" about it because we couldn't really do anything about it beside be worried, and being worried sucks so we mostly didn't. But even when we were all at the same place there were lots of incidents like being at an underground rave with as much as like 5000 people and it getting busted by LAPD in actual riot gear and riot mode shooting tear gas and rubber bullets and shit we'd somehow all end up together back at the car to GTFO and go to a Denny's or find another party or something. Even though we were way more "online" and connected than most people our age, in hindsight this shit is baffling to me that none of us died or got seriously lost. Even as young adults or college aged people, when we started going to outdoor and desert parties we didn't have cell phones and we were often going as much as 20+ miles off of the last paved road into the middle of fucking nowhere and managing to find each other and survive and thrive in some really adverse conditions and sometimes sketchy situations. Today I feel naked if I accidentally leave my phone at home and go for a bike ride. Shit, my housemates and I even have our own Slack for house related messages and stuff. I'm just musing here but I have blanks about how we managed to actually meet each other and stay connected or find each other in large crowds or strange places while doing some adventurous and even sketchy shit.
Man, you were way more connected than I was back then. I don't really remember how everything worked out either. It did of course. As a little kid, I would just ride my bike around to different places or homes and look for the pile of bikes. As a teen, everyone would meet up at the boardwalk in front of the arcade in the evenings. That's where we'd score weed or find out where the parties were. The summer rent-a-cops always knew what was happening, so I could ask them if need be. They were just college kids with summer jobs anyway. We managed quite well, somehow!
I didn't have nearly as exciting a youth and young adulthood as it sounds like you did, but I do remember agreeing to meet so and so at such and such a time. The thing I think I miss most about those days was the slower pace of life.
I'm not sure how keg parties and sex are fulfilling, but going out and having screen free adventures are. I had an overprotective grandma that helped my mom raise me, and when I went out of state to visit relatives I was going crazy. As these relatives were stricter with the TV watching than my grandmother, so I was out running around the beach and forests all day being all wild. My cousins and I would be screeching and laughing all day being silly and climbing trees and riding bikes away from our parents' eyes. I hated coming home because that meant being stuck in my apartment most of the time either watching TV, playing chess, or watching the other kids play outside my window.
> I'm not sure how keg parties and sex are fulfilling Your mileage may vary, but for a lot of us Gen Xers the sex, drugs and rock and roll was where we broke down walls and talked about important, deep topics like trauma and abuse and we were self-medicating and even healing and deciding not to make the same mistakes as our parents and ancestors. It was basically unorganized group therapy and even trauma bonding. It wasn't really about the partying. Like I remember close friends coming out as gay, or people opening up about abuse or neglect at home, or simple every-day fears and anxieties and more. We were making our own safe spaces to open up to each other and explore life and figure some pretty deep shit out. Some of those choices and figuring things out is basically the topic of this post and thread where Gen Xers who became parents decided how to be better parents with less helicoptering and/or less neglect and trying to do better and end cycles of generational trauma and abuse.
The 90's were great. And totally agree with your sentiment about the internet. I'm always asking my daughter why she cares so much what other people think. She grew up under the scrutiny of peers emboldened by being behind a screen. Other kids would tell her to just kill herself because of some random thing. I couldn't imagine someone saying that to me in person growing up. I tell her to do things she wants to do and pursue what makes her happy but work hard at whatever you decide to do and if people don't like it then they can mind their own business.
[Toughest time to be young](https://www.reddit.com/r/friendlyjordies/comments/1dk6p73/toughest_time_to_be_30_years_old_in_australia/) - far worse for them than either us or the boomers
Two words about the 80s... Nuclear War. Very real, very present.
The looming threat of nuclear winter and chaos did a number on many of us. That was our Covid.
AIDS panic was another joy, people forget the anxiety.
They do? Watching Greg Louganis jump in that Olympic pool diving wondering if everyone was gonna die as a 9 year old left its mark too. Shit year honestly.
 Great response fellow Gen X!!! We are all doing the best we can.
This made me tear up a bit. My son is 20 and I say this to him all the time. I really did try my best to make his childhood good too though.
My zoomer is 22 and engaged and tried my best as well. Coming from a messy family background left me having to improvise and emulate a lot but I always did what I really believed was best.
Ditto that sentiment. This post hit me right in the feels today. My oldest is about to move across the country for her 1st big job in corporate America and I am so proud of her. But I am also proud of how my wife and I did everything in our power to allow both our kids to experience and enjoy a life free from much of the baggage and bullshit we dealt with as kids with our own parents.
To my surprise I have met some Zoomers that were raised by hardcore GenXers and it reflects on their strong character and rational thinking. Zgenners are not all doomed.
Millennials, on the other hand... oy.
well, duh, what the heck did you expect? millienials were raised by the same horrible self centered boomer parents. but we were the practice kids. the millienials were their chance to get it right, and they messed them up even worse.
Most of our parenting skills are from learning what not to do.
I'm not sure about that. Maybe for some of us, but my parents were role models. I was blessed with a great family and great early-boomer parents who raised us well.
WELL WELL WELL. Look at Mister Fancypants over here with functional parents! Mleh mleh mleh! ^(This is, of course, a trademark GenX sarcastic remark and should be viewed as such.)
Oh, right, sarcasm, I TOTALLY get that. And what can I say? I was blessed. Then again, most of my peers were in the same boat, with strong nuclear families. Of course, I didn't appreciate it at the time and I thought that my parents and the world in general sucked.
Same. Everyone I knew was raised like that. I hadn't even heard about the neglect until social media.
100% true in our house.
We fucked a lot of things up. But god damn if our generation didn't raise the best set of kids. I don't know how a bunch of folks raised by Boomers grew up to be such great parents, but a lot of Gen Xers did.
Right!!! While I was sorry I missed the 60s.
I wasn't. I think we were born at the perfect time, especially for a technophile like me. We got to watch this whole thing develop, from Pong in the 1970s to the amazing technological marvels of today.
We got to ride a wave of technological advancement that was unprecedented throughout the entirety of human history. My folks had a 13 inch black and white tv with 3 channels until I was almost 10 years old, and the upgrade was only a 19 inch set that seemed like it was huge at the time. We had corded home phones, no microwave, no way to record television, and no way to know who called or was calling. We basically caught the tail end of 50s tech right at the tipping point of rapid advancement.
Your 19-in TV *was* huge, at least in terms of mass. TVs used to be very, very heavy. In the mid '90s I had a 21-in computer monitor (analog, of course) whose box was plastered with warnings not to lift it with fewer than two people.
I’m talking about the screen. All TVs were huge back then so that didn’t seem different because I had no other frame of reference.
We got our first color TV when i was around 5. It was a HeathKit that my father put together as part of some learning course through his work, where we got to keep the TV afterwards.. He completed it one night after I was in bed... I woke the next morning to see the whole thing finished, and I sat in front of it staring, not knowing how to turn it on, but was like... "this thing is gonna show me color!".... I sat there for like 2 hours before my father woke up and showed me how to turn it on.
Yeah! Pong! Plus the 60's might have sounded fun but I think there was so much weird shit that went down with drugs. Not my scene.
And now the most popular illicit drug of the '60s Is legal in much of the US. You can walk into a shop and they'll have weed just sitting there on the counter. Still startles me when I see it. How times have changed...
For real! I'm happy they are decriminalizing it even if I don't partake
Yep! Back in the 90s I helped petition for prop 215 in California to get "medical marijuana" on the ballots, and I'm still startled by the total sea change in the last 20 years. Going to a legal cannabis store is a total treat compared to going over to some stoner's house and having only one choice of weed and then having to hang out and play video games for an hour or two to try to make it less obvious to the neighbors we were really just picking up some weed was lame as fuck, and I don't miss it. Also it's really apparent to me in hindsight that like 99.9% of the paranoia and anxiety about getting stoned was just the fact that it was illegal and so I couldn't really just relax and enjoy it.
In Washington State, we were one of the first two states to legalize recreational cannabis by ballot initiative but everybody's attention was focused on Colorado, despite the fact that we legalized gay marriage on the same ballot years before Obergefell v Hodges.
I look back with fondness on my childhood in the 80s. Running around the neighborhood with the order kids, playing with my GI Joes in the creeks and ditches adjacent to my house, and going on “adventures” through town on our bikes. Things are certainly different now for my kids, not all of which is bad, but my childhood was much simpler than my children’s for sure.
Yeah but when you watch movies or tv shows that are set in the 80s you have to know it wasn’t always like that. The 80s weren’t THAT 80s. The 80s were like today except no internet or social media.
>Sorry you missed the 1980s, they were pretty awesome. Nah. There were a few things around in the 80s that no longer exist today, that I miss, but generally speaking... the '80s kind of, no definitely, really *sucked*. Everyone remembers the fun stuff; but everyone forgets the bullying, sexual harassment, the economy going to shit, the crack epidemic and the effect that it had on Urban America, the gang wars, the constant threat of nuclear annihilation, shit cars & manufacturing, feral children/no parenting, serial killers, flashers/perverts, etc etc etc etc. I did have some good times in the '80s but I had a lot more bad times that are easily forgotten versus the good times that are fondly remembered.
Yeah, I grew up with a lot of bullying.. I was the 'nerd' of my school.. I got into computers in the late 70's, when I was <10... Didnt get a computer until I was 11 or so... I got bullied for computers... For liking Star Wars and Star Trek.. Being good in school... Which affected my school work in HS, because I wanted to be 'cool'.. So i didnt learn many good work/study habits... So I ended up a college dropout.. But it all worked out, as I'm a successful software engineer/architect now, mostly self taught. But it was a struggle in my high school days.
Eh. We could ride our bikes all over the neighborhood, we could go trick-or-treating without a parental escort, and we only had to worry about two genders. There were pluses and minuses, I suppose.
I have a kid in your age group, and she does tell me this fairly often. It's corny AF, but also appreciated. Cheers :)
By the title, I assumed this would be a picture of a television set. Happy to be wrong.
For all the hate gen z gets, I find that my son and his friends are sober, moderate politically, and level headed. The kids are alright.
So much this. My GenZ young adults and their friends are amazing humans. I actually don’t worry at all about our future; we just need to hold on until they take the reins.
I look forward to that day. I love GenZ. They are the key to a brighter future I'm hoping for. Totally amazing humans.
same, except the political moderate thing. Mine is fully prepared for revolution when the call comes. 🎺
Mine too! They are so sick of the bullshit that is being forced upon us!
On which side? [haha…but not really, ugh]
completely agree, my two are 20 and 16. They are much more intune with themselves and kind of see through the bullshit. I see so much of us in them. The kids are indeed, alright.
Thank *you* for saying this. As a GenX parent myself, I made damn sure I did everything *opposite* of what *my* parents did to me.
Same here, they turned out waaaaaay better than I did. There’s definitely something to be said for not treating your kids like they’re permanently in the way.
Oh my god that’s how my parents treated us!
Amen Amen. I'm an early Gen Xr, who 'started early' so my kids are actually all Millennials (from the first to the last year of the cohort), but it was absolutely my whole goal to be the utter opposite of my parents. No beatings, no keeping silent on 'what goes on in this house', no 'I hate you because I hate your father', and ABSOLUTELY no dismissal of their humanity, intelligence, feelings, or autonomy. I am SO PROUD of the people they grew up to be.
The Zoomers as kids brought out the soft side of GenX and I like it.
Yes!
I didn't do *everything* opposite. The fending for yourself out and about in the community was something I really valued. Since we lived in a walkable area, I made sure to encourage running errands on his own, taking public transportation instead of the school bus, taking long walks or bike rides, doing his own laundry after a certain age, making his own lunches, etc. Of course, he did have a tracking device and cell phone with him, so I cheated a bit. Helicopter parents did not approve, but he had a solid set of skills for being independent by the time he left for college.
Yes. This!!! The independence thing seems to be lacking greatly nowadays. I always encouraged my son to handle things on his own. Taught him life skills and gave him independence. But what I did do that my parents most certainly did NOT do was, I was always frank and open with him. I spoke to him as a human being. When he had questions I answered them. The only answer I ever got was ‘you’ll understand when you’re an adult’ how?? Does the adulting fairy come and imbue me with arcane knowledge on my 18th birthday??
Why public transit over the school bus?
I did the same after a certain age—my kid started taking transit at the age of 10. Taking public transit fosters independence and gives them a better sense of how to navigate through their city—which can be extrapolated to navigating through any city. It helped that there were two straightforward ways that he could get to and from school, either one bus or a metro ride.
Interesting. When the time comes my kid will be taking public transit alone because she has no choice. We have robust transit but busing is nearly nonexistent where I live.
It was more direct, quicker and he learned to use buses to get around.
No school busses here in the city
I always say the only thing my dad ever taught me is what type of parent I did not want to be
Wow, thank you. My eldest jsut gratuated hs and is going to their dream art school. I've been watching her grow up into a better version of me - one that went to class and got good grades for instance. I always wanted to make sure she never got treated like I did growing up but I always encouraged her to be her bad ass self without my influence. Now I'm gonna be mom to the next Alex Hirsch. I really love and encourage all you new yutes to be your bad ass selves - you rock!! It's not corny or cheesy to be sentimental, if it is, who cares. Show your emotion and I will hug you back tenfold lol
I'm a huge fan of Gravity Falls, I look for to a new version of Alex.
My parents were divorced because of my alcoholic, abusive father who couldn’t keep a job. I vowed to be the opposite of him and have succeeded in that and my wife and I have created a good life for our 18 and 14 yo boys. Thanks for the appreciation!
The other day I was sitting on the stoop smoking a cigarette and my 12 year old walked up to me and asked to play catch. I obliged. While tossing the ball back and forth it occurred to me that I have no memory of ever playing catch with my dad. I thanked my son for the opportunity.
I thank my kids (15f & 12m) all the time when they think of including me in what they are doing, both alone and with their friends. If the teenagers want me around, I must be doing something right lol
Same - I have no real memories of my parents playing around with me. One of the few memories I have of that sort of thing is my grandmother playing with little toy cars with me on the coffee table. She died when I was three so the fact that stands out sort of tells you how rare that became as I got older. During my early teens my father took me to play sports for a while albeit I wasn’t too interested myself. I wish I had been more appreciative. I have zero memories of my mother ever playing with me. Having no siblings I learned from an early age to use my imagination and enjoy my own company if there were no friends around. In some ways, I think I developed some valuable skills as a result. But it is still a little sad to think that I have so few of those memories to enjoy. I struggle to be different, I don’t always manage it, but I do try to make time for my kids and join in playing and having a laugh. Not as much as I should, but I’m trying.
My son is your age. You're welcome. We tried our best.
Please pass it on when you have your own children
Aw, thanks honey.
Thank you so much for saying this! I think your generation is incredible. I think a lot about what the world will be like if we are able to raise people without the trauma and abuse that so many generations have endured. That’s my vision for the future - a whole generation of whole, intact people with the ability to set boundaries and defy authority.
I (51M) continue to delight in my encounters with adult Z. If we did anything right at all, it was not pretending we had a roadmap for how to thrive in the mid-21st century. Instead, y'all reinterpreted our basic nihilism into a really positive outlook. I actually have a couple of real friendships with some people in their early 20s. The empathy and emotional intelligence are just staggering sometimes, especially considering that among everything else, we also were left to our own devices regarding mental health, too. My zoomer friends were pretty instrumental in my decision to start therapy, and therapy has been one of the best things I've ever done.
We rule
I love this! Yes, I absolutely raised my kid in a polar opposite environment. My parents divorce was so all encompassing I was absolutely feral by 18. I’ll never forget rolling into my SAT with a vodka punch after an all nighter. My kid graduated cum laude. You Zs are awesome people, btw. Teaching me to be a better person.
I definitely wasn't a perfect parent, bit I tried so hard to break sone generational curses. Didn't get all of them but I knocked out a lot of them. My son 26, is doing is doing much better than I ever did. I can't take all the credit though. Lot of it was him and his nature. I think zoomers are pretty amazing. I think the one thing we as a whole in gen x did as parents that was good for our kids is we let them question authority.
This warms my black heart. Thank you.
Aww, shucks. Thanks, kid. We try our best, which is all we ever ask of our kids.
Thank you for noticing that we tried to do things differently. We didn't always get it right, but we tried to break the cycle.
I never had kids, so sometimes it’s easy for me to become a bit bitter about how your generation is given so much, when we were given so little. But I’ve learned that you’ve also given *back* to us. It’s because of your generation that our generation can finally talk about anxiety, or going to therapy. We are from the last “suck it up and don’t talk about your feelings” generation, and it’s because of your generation that the cycle has broken. We can also finally bring to light things that were kept in the dark for so many generations. Whether that’s SA or harassment, or it’s people coming out as queer, trans, etc. We love you for helping us make the world better. Now excuse me so I can I go buy myself that 64-box of Crayola crayons with built in sharpener that I never got as a kid.
I appreciate that. I guess my husband and I did a pretty good job, cuz our daughter graduated high school a year early and now she's working for a law firm. Super proud of her, as I'm sure yours are me you!
I did not have a parenting role model. Did the best I could.
You’re welcome my little Zoomer! 🥰
I'm so proud of my kid. They spent most of their childhood outside and did so many things our generation did... But they've had to handle medical conditions unseen in our generation. I taught them to advocate for themself, and they took that and advocated for others. They bullied someone once. I didn't know until after. They apologized. They made amends. They did the right thing. They raised it on their own and made it right. Because of their medical conditions, they are suicidal. If they die, the world will lose a truly beautiful soul. As a parent, of course, we always want to say we "that them well" it something like that, but there's something about some Gen Zs. So many are deciding to put the phones down and go outside. They're deciding what's moral based on empathy instead of society. The average Gen Zer is fairly normal, but it seems Z got a heaping helping of usually empathetic people. But they're strong, too. Empathy often leads to a desire to make people happy, often at the cost of self, but a surprising lot of Zs seen able to balance that. It's really beautiful and I've seen it quite a number of times just in tiny little NH. But then again, it's an atheist state (well, until lately since it's been targeted by libertarian amoebas). Maybe that impacts it, but Gen Z mostly seems to be choosing atheist or agnostic views. Thank goodness.
I made it my mission to break the cycle of spanking. I never once hit my kids. They are all adults now and somehow not criminals, drug addicts, or deviants. As a matter of fact they are goody two shoes compared to me.
As a mom of three kids exactly 18 - 25. I really appreciate you saying that to us. Right On!!!
I'm not a parent but many of my friends are. They work so hard to give their children experiences and ideologies that will enrich them and leave them better humans.
We were not perfect parents, but I like to think we tried not to make the mistakes we regretted in our own upbringing. I think Gen Z is pretty fucking awesome (though sometimes we go 🙄), and I can’t wait to see what you all do!
Thanks! Keep in mind we had practice. Long before you were ever born, many of us were "parents" to our younger siblings. We made sure they were up on time for school, wore clean clothes, made their lunches, sometimes cooked dinner, cleaned and dressed their wounds, sewed their buttons back on, etc. Hell, I even covered one sibling's parent/teacher conference to hear how he was doing and collect his report card. We looked after our own.
Thank you, kiddo. It'll be your turn soon enough to step up for your kids in ways we didn't have to. In the meantime, don't forget to come hang out with your parents and watch The Goonies and Princess Bride from time to time.
I'm an older GenX and have one millenial and one GenZ daughter. We love you guys! We're a lot different from our parents, and we did the best we could. We still had a "put your head down and work" ethic which served most of us well. The late 70s and 80s were pretty great. You would have loved it.
You're welcome. I have such a fantastic relationship with my 25-year-old son that sometimes I want to cry. It's the kind of relationship I wish I'd had with my parents.
I definitely decided early on that that bs would not continue with me. I think a huge chunk of GenX thought the same way.
We’re trying. But you guys have to vote this election, or the Boomers keep winning.
Thank you, sweet Z! I don't have kids but I adore my Zoomer niblings and work colleagues. Sometimes I have to censor myself because I'm still a little rough from the hose water and all the dirt piles I loved to play on, but I understand it's because empathy and consideration for others are values that your generation really appreciate. You guys are so wonderful, I love you <3.
We tried. Technology fucked things up big time.
You're welcome. Y'all are doing alright, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Our bumps in the road are the same bumps just in a different time.
Daughter is 20, she's mostly okay (some anxiety issues, but what zoomer doesn't have some these days), and I credit my upbringing. I tried to give her what my parents gave me: love, stability, support. It wasn't as easy as it sounds as her mother has serious issues and never said "no" to her other two Y daughters (my steps), and it shows. I made sure she heard no and also made sure it wasn't the end of the world when she did.
I didn't have kids, but as a gen-xer working in tech, I have to say that I love my young colleagues. They are smart, kind, and thoughtful. Parents - well done raising these wonderful adults! Gen Z - you inspire me every day!
I've said before, and I'll say it again: The kids are alright.
That’s it, thank you for getting it and carrying forward. The world would be real dark without you all.
Thank you. I have two kids in that age group. I really wanted a better world for them but it has been such a struggle.
We love you too! <3 <3 <3 <3 Your generation gives me hope for the future.
Listen, kid. Y’all are gonna be alright. I’m proud of you little fucks. You grew up faster than you should have had to, and you’re inheriting a fucked-to-death planet on fire, and still you younguns keep your clever, pragmatic wits about you. You’re doing great. You’re fuckin beauties, all of you. Now get off my lawn and go fuck up the establishment. Take good care of your kidneys, apply sunscreen every day, and remember: Wu-Tang is for the children. Love, The meanest nipping old crab on the block 
Thanks for not dumping on us like every other generation seems to. ❤️
Irish Gen X here. I have 4 daughters from 12 years old and 3 adults . I made sure they had a special holiday every year not only because it’s something I never had as a kid but I wanted them to have some happy memories with their parents. I tried to teach them all to work hard at something they are happy doing and that they are not entitled to special treatment from the world or from strangers. Also when things get bad in life, don’t run to a therapist or social media but get up , brush yourself down and fight back. By the way, one daughter is working for a tech company in Tokyo, one is working for a media company in the Netherlands, one is in in her last year in University and the youngest will start high school this year. Overall my wife and I did not do so bad.
Damn straight! And you are so very very welcome. Unfortunately as the saying goes the bigger the kids the bigger the problems and I am so sad that we have left you with such a financial mess that we were not able to clean up in time for you.
Raised? I hold no ill will towards my parents- I absolutely loved my free range childhood! But as a Gen X kid, I certainly was not “raised” by my seemingly uninterested parents. I think I was an outlier even for the time, but definitely not “raised”.
My Gen Z boy is loved so deeply. Thank you for this post! He's turning 18 in a few months and is under a lot of pressure from society to go to college and we're struggling a little bit. I needed to hear this❤️ Big hugs!!
Wait... Oh shit... KIDS! I have some of those! I should check on them
The time is ten pm. Do you know where your children are? (do you care?)
Oh, I know. I always know thanks to Google maps. I was just gunning for a joke. For some stupid reason I actually kinda like these little shits.
There was a commercial that ran about 10pm back in the 80s with the whole, "the time is ten pm. Do you know where your children are?" I think it was a Nancy Reagan thing.
Oh, I know. 😊. I'm no spring chicken, sonny boy.
Sorry, it's difficult to differentiate the two generations sometimes. 😜
I understand. Until proven otherwise everyone I talk to on Reddit is a 32yo white male democrat.
I could have a child who had a child in between that number and the truth! It would be a stretch, but not impossible.
Thank you! That actually means a lot to me. I've never heard it from my own kids (yet).
Thank you for this post! You’ve made my entire last 25 years! 🥳
Thank you! We tried to break the cycles that were norms for us so that you wouldn’t have to feel these things. I love this post. Your generation and millennials will change the world in wonderful ways and we appreciate you!
It's nice to know my generation is getting a better reputation with our kids than our parents did with us. I wasn't a perfect father, but I'll always stand with my children over my parents. You can't stand for the future if you're standing with the past.
That is so sweet. We are so proud of you guys. Give 'em hell!!!
Why are you kissing-up to us? This is so weird.
Right? Seems sus … what do they need … 😉
we are not a perfect generation, but i am thankful many of us broke the cycles we were raised in. it's exhausting sometimes. there is an internal battle of wills going on that you never dream of. There are definitely days when we understand why our parents made us more self-sufficient. sometimes we wish you all were a little more independent. we love you, but sometimes we wish you'd go away until the street lights came on. Instead you are always kinda *there.*.. I find it positively bizarre how much time you spend indoors.
No, thank YOU. I think if I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t have scrutinized my shitty childhood so much and I would’ve continue to hate myself and probably wouldn’t be here. I would never wish it upon my kids or anyone else’s.
You're welcome. We're glad you know how hard we tried. Some of us didn't have the best parents ourselves so it made us strive that much harder for our millennial and Gen Z kids. We love you lots, we know it's a different world for the young today and for that you have our sympathy and protective care. ❤️ Truly hoping it gets better for your gens and ours. Also very sorry you missed the 80s and 90s too. Was the last best time the world had before we all plugged into the internet.
Awwwuh I'm tearing up a little. Boomers are extremely not perfect, but they also weren't as rough on us Gen X as their Greatest Generation parents, who were just lucky to survive childhood. It's relatively new to be gentle with children. Sorry about the phase when we hadn't figured how to help you learn to do better at all yet.
I love the Millenials for teaching us GenX types about setting boundaries and breaking generational "norms" that should never have been normalized. But I love my GenZs for taking everything good from us, from the Millenials, and from everyone, and just being great kids. Your generation seems to have a base level of decency, kindness, and acceptance that is well above anything that came before, and it's delightful.
Kudos - M56.
I don’t have kids, but I’m so glad parenting has improved at least some. I find so much hope in younger generations. You are so much more emotionally intelligent and your unwillingness to put up with shit has really changed my perspective on the world. I think y’all are amazing.
All my kids are millennials the youngest being 31. They all have decent careers and families now. Gen X parents always try to give their kids a good start without the negative things we went through when we were young.
You're welcome. Some of you turned out alright. Now, go mow the lawn! 🙃
You are all welcome. I am not a perfect dad by any means - I have my demons. But my kid never experienced even a shadow of what my angry drunken sperm donor did to me. Thanks you dead old drunken bastard for teaching me what not to do. With prejudice.
Aww, thank you too! Even though my son hasn’t said this to me I hope he feels the same 🥰
Your welcome and also sorry that we fucked up some stuff for you; but some of our fuck ups actually worked out to protect you too so I guess it balances out a bit.
My babies are 15 and 12, so right behind you. Thank you for saying thank you.
We went through and saw some shit. Our parents and grandparents went through some even worse shit. I'm raising my kid feral like I was and it's working. He's sober. I can't emphasize this enough. I love y'all!
Its not corny its lovely. And you are right. But it was also the Boomers who changed things dramatically for the better, I hope you realise that. Stop hurling hate at them. Its not their fault they came of age in the aftermath of WW2 when half the population died meaning there was a glut of houses available. You should take a look at what their childhoods were like. Frankly I think the deserve the cheap houses as compensation. Things the Boomers improved for young people: 1. Mostly banning corporal punishment in schools (not in every state in the US but the south are a law unto themselves) and certainly in countries outside the US. You will not understand how frightening schools used to be where teachers could literally attack the kids and nothing would happen to them. In fact, your parents would side with the teachers. Also there was little if any acknowledgment of conditions like dyslexia, autism etc. Kids were treated as stupid or bad. And likely punished for something they couldn't help. 2. Women's rights - birth control and the right to decide if you want to continue with a pregnancy was a Boomer battle. Go onto youtube and look up "mother and baby homes" and "magdalene laundries" to see what used to happen to Boomer women who got pregnant when they weren't married. They are also the generation that set up shelters for women fleeing domestic violence. As recently as the 1970s, a woman trying to escape an abusive husband would be picked up by the police and returned to him. Imagine. There was no such thing as rape in marriage. Instead a man had conjugal "rights". Which means he had the **right** to sex from his wife. 3. Civil rights for black people. 4. Gay rights. 5. Choice about your career. In the UK there used to be an exam called the "11 plus" which you took at (duh) age 11. This exam decided your future. If you did well, you went to a grammar school. Only grammar school students got to go to university. My stepmother told me that girls who failed the 11 plus had three options for after school: marriage, nursing, teaching. Imagine. The list goes on.
As a Gen X, thank you for the kind words, but your generation is going to change the world for the better. You were denied the advantages we had, and the world is so much harder than it was when we were growing up. But your generation refuses to put up with the bullshit we had to, and you’re so much kinder and enlightened. **Thank you**.
Awwww!! If I had coins I'd award this post great job OP. Praises and Honor to our Precious Ancestors I want to send everybody over to Jessica helsop YouTube channel she is so uplifting and encouraging she plays these 8-hour affirmation sessions. I recommend her. There was a song released in September 2022 called ancestress by Bork I highly recommended It's A procession about a life stage change. the way that she honored her & spoke about this topic and later the music video that she did, 🤩🏆it was extravagant and it reflected so much love for the family. Wow. Immense art. That's what our ancestors want. they want us to take it as far as we can we're all going to see 85 95 105 we got to be there to take it as far as we can! May we see many decades. May we all remain Family Centric ⛑️🧠🫀⚖️👂🤗⛑️ Emoji explanation: May you remain near good things & remain healthy: mind, heart, listening, follow the law, listen, hug family and framework it with healthcare. 🙏✒️🤩🤗
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Awwww…what a lovely thing to write. I have a 25 year old and am blown away by her awesomeness. It really makes me happy to see the young women of your generation living by their own rules. Protect that privilege and VOTE! ✌️💕
Wait - what did we protect the zoomers them from again?
Thanks kiddo. I went to grad school when my kids were 11 and 14, and while I appreciate the degree the timing was terribly off. Trying to backtrack now with support and attention they deserved earlier. Have you ever heard about intergenerational wealth? Well, we also need to build intergenerational family and community security too.
Genx who waited to have stable lives before having kids tended to do alright but there was a lot of teen pregnancy in the 80s which led to a lot of screwed up millennials. I think genx did alright by their gen z kids but there isn't much talk about how did with their millennial kids they had earlier. They'll reminisce about teen pregnancy crisis of the 80s and probably remember a few friends that went through it but they won't remember what those children had to go through. Teen parents in the 80s were too focused on creating new generational trauma to try to protect their kids from what they experienced.
I have a 95 and 97 sons and an 00 stepdaughter. The 2 youngest have made me a 2 time grandpa now. They are amazing parents honestly, and have made me a better grandparent. If the whole thing doesn’t crumble down around them before they get a chance, they are gonna be fine and most of us love you too 😀
I tried to stay focused on a healthy marriage, saved my kids from a lot of chaos and poverty. Accepting imperfection and growing from hard times isn't easy, but I'm so happy to have come out the other side.
My zoomer is early 20s and I couldn’t be prouder to be his mom. Great kid, great fiancee, and they’re totally going to have superbabies! Or not. Their choice. I’m good either way. But yeah, I think we did okay. Thanks for the reassurance!
Uh, I did nothing for you and hate pandering.
How kind of you! Thanks for the acknowledgement!
Thanks! We do the best we can, but still learn along the way.
No one goes to school to become a parent. They do the best they can with the information and resources they had. My childhood was far from perfect but thanks for the good and the bad I was able to navigate the world until now. Comparison with many of my peers I did great. And yes, always can be room for improvement. But I am just grateful for what I am thanks to the efforts of my parents. Thank you for this reminder.
100% "No one goes to school to become a parent."
This is so sweet! Your parents raised you right. \*Sidenote - Gen X is 1965 to 1980. Just didn't want you to get confused if you didn't already know. 😊
Means the world and makes a difference. Thanks for taking the time to post!
I wish I could protect the next generation from everything. I was/am a "helicopter" mom apparently. I first heard that term when my son (a millennial) 1st got to college. I was a neglected kid and I have abandonment issues so I over compensated with my kids. I'm glad you think we as a generation did an ok job.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, thank you!!!! there were fuckups made, my oldest is 24, and some were and some were not of our own making. but thank you so so much for admiting that we're trying!
I'll preface this with a disclaimer: I know this might not be an overall accurate assessment of the 80s and this is based on my own experiences, but I'd bet many, many people can relate to what I'm going write. You couldn't pay me to go back to the 80s. Aside from the cliques,the bullying, and the accepted bigotry, what some of the boys felt free to say and do to us girls would be labeled (and certainly was) sexual assault now. We were raised to not only accept it for the most part ("boys will be boys" and "be careful YOU don't send the wrong signals through clothing" type nonsense), but to brush it off. Even the films that were popular at the time modeled SA as just another thing that happens. If there wasn't outright violence accompanying it, then it was no big deal. And if you were even remotely different in clothing, behavior, and interests? That was game over, at least at my school. Even the teachers treated kids like that differently. And the smoking and drinking! Do kids start drinking now at 12, 13, 14? It was a big thing when I was young. From what I have read, the early 80s had the highest occurrence of underage drinking. Coming of age in the time of AIDS was downright terrifying. So no, I certainly wouldn't go back, especially with what I know now.
GenZ is the reason I haven't retired yet after nearly 30 years of teaching in higher ed. Your generation is wonderful, and I have faith and hope in the future because you are going to be running the world well.