Something I’ve been wondering about. Maybe it’s just the people I know, or not.
I have friends who are 15 years older than I am, so grew up a generation before me. But age might not be the difference, I’m just not sure.
I go to an activity that is 35 minutes from my house. Everyone who goes takes turn carpooling. One person went until it was her turn to drive and I get a text message, thanks but she’s going to be busy the rest of the season and is not going to go. I never even thought it was about driving but then someone mentioned that she doesn’t like to drive. Her husband drives everywhere except around town. My mil does this and hasn’t driven on the highway for at least 20 years. But my mil is 15 years older than this person.
Another person said to me that her husband finds all the voting records of candidates and then he decides how they should vote. (Never ever happening in my house).
My mom thinks that her housekeeping is a reflection on her. If I’m visiting, she spends literally hours making sure the house is perfect. We were on a family vacation and mom had to keep the rental perfect because what would her sisters think? ( every family had a different condo).
A friend’s husband had an sudden debilitating accident. She knew where nothing financial was located and has no idea how insurance works. Or how to function in ways I thought I found intuitive.
Do you think this thinking is generational? I’m just so different. I drive places and think nothing of it. I make up my own mind on voting, my house is cleanish but I definitely don’t think that it’s a reflection on my character. And I am very aware of our finances and decisions are mutual.
I think this is just musing on my part (and a bit of frustration on my part, honestly). The house cleaning thread made me think about this (although keeping your house clean has nothing to do with this, just the thought that having a dirty house reflects on your person and not all the people in the house)
My H and I are over a decade apart on age but agree on most things. He is a better driver and prefers to drive when it’s just the two of us. I can and DO drive readily and easily as well. When it’s my car, I drive, when it’s his, he drives. When we travel and it’s a rental, mostly he drives because I’m a better navigator.
I do not really obsess about neatness in houses (ours certainly is a work in progress).
I don’t examine voting records in choosing whom to vote for, but can see why someone might choose to do so.
I don’t know about generational. I am in my late 50’s and have pretty much given up driving because I don’t feel like my vision and reflexes are what they used to be. Luckily, H and the 3 boys who still live at home drive me and I work in Manhattan so driving to work isn’t an issue. When I go out with friends, I either walk from the railroad and a friend drives me home or I have H pick me up and/or drop me off. I will drive in an emergency, but I really prefer not to. I will say that I was never someone who drove for pleasure and I pretty happily abdicated to my kids as they got old enough. OTOH, my friend’s mom still drives and she’s in her early 80’s. We are both going to the friend’s house today and H will drive me and the friend’s mom will drive her H and herself and they live further away.
I run the finances in our house but I was talking to my boss the other day (she’s about 3 years older than me) and she said that before her H became ill recently, she had never handled any of the finances! and she runs a law office! When he got sick, she took over and now they fight because she doesn’t want to cede control back and he, being retired, wants to run it all alone.
As for voting, we all work as election inspectors and we discuss the candidates and issues with the kids openly. My opinion is that as long as you vote, it’s all good. Fortunately, lol, my kids have political views that echo my own for the most part. H relies on me to tell him who to vote for in terms of judges.
In the OP’s situation, I would either never have gotten into a car pool and would have had H drive me and pick me up or I would have confessed my fears and had H drive the carpool or offered to cover gas money in lieu of my turn. What I did would depend on how much I trusted the other people involved.
I know exactly what you are talking about. And as someone pretty independent it makes me often drop my mouth or become steamed.
I don’t know if it’s generational or just a personality type. To let go of responsibility, to lose personal identity and I’ll say it - in many cases, to be “ok” or equating these things with “it’s because I"m getting older” - and being ok with it.
Relinquishing to age. Often (certainly not always - some people do have physical limitations) by choice.
The one area I could do better is our finances. H does take care of most of the bills and banking. For the most part I could pick up if I needed to. This has been a trend throughout our marriage.
I generally handle most of our finances but am sure H could if needed. I just pay the bills as they come in and we both discuss our investments. We have a few bills on autopay—electric & water. We have the cpa handle communications with IRS as needed.
I think it might be a combination of personality, generation, and the situation.
Neither of my grandmothers knew how to drive so they always were driven by family members. One, however, became a widow at age 60 and then lived alone for the remaining 24 years of her life. Although some of her relatives lived nearby, she mostly took care of herself (and, in fact, died a day or so after suffering a stroke at home).
My ex-MIL, age 92, was never very independent. She did drive but probably was almost always driven by her husband. If she did not have Alzheimer’s disease, I don’t know if she would have taken on more of the family responsibilities as her husband became more disabled (physically).
My mom, age 90, still lives alone and has been driving until recently. I assume she’ll eventually resume driving after her knee replacement surgery (tomorrow). She quit her job only a month ago. She does her own financial things. My dad did them before he died in 2004 but I don’t think he kept my mom in the dark; he just preferred being the one in charge of that stuff.
I was always involved with the family finances but took over more of it when I realized that my then-husband was possibly not being entirely honest. He usually drove when we went place together, especially when the weather was bad, but I had to drive more, first, when he chose to become his parents’ caregiver (150 miles away) and then after the divorce. I still don’t like driving in bad weather or in the dark but I do it, as I do the other things I don’t enjoy, such as yard work and home maintenance.
Some of it may be generational. Some is genuinely a result of getting older. And some reflects individual situations.
I got my driver’s license the requisite 6 weeks after I turned 16, and I’ve driven extensively ever since – so much so that (as a dermatologist pointed out), the skin on the left side of my face – which is the side exposed to the sun through the driver’s side car window – has much more sun-related damage than the skin on my right side.
Yet now, at 63, I’m dreading winter because I will have to drive in rush-hour traffic in the dark to get home from work, and that kind of driving becomes more and more difficult every year as my vision and reflexes deteriorate with age.
On the other hand, my husband has always handled the family finances, and I’m underinformed – so much so that when there’s something I absolutely must do myself, like moving a 401K from one employer’s plan to another, I have difficulty doing it because of a lack of information that most people probably take for granted.
You’re describing my 27 year old husband in some of these. I finally got around to making a word doc with all of our accounts and bills in case anything ever happens to me. Without it, he’d be clueless. He leaves political decisions to me (we agree on politics all the way down the line) and in the primary, their voting records (if they exist) are important to me. He HATES driving and only does it out of bare necessity. When we go anywhere together, I drive.
The housekeeping thing has always seemed more class-based than generational. I know well off women who aren’t much older than me that have the mindset that their home is a reflection of them. My working-class grandma who is pushing 90 thinks there are better things to do with life than worry about a little dust. She also still drives but with cataracts, she won’t drive more than a short distance anymore. If not for the eyesight though, she’d still be lugging herself around just fine.
OTOH, my parents sound more like you.
My dad is an uber driver. Both of my parents still drive across country without blinking an eye. They’re both political and decide independently how to vote. My mom is neat but doesn’t think her house is a reflection of her.
I’ve known a handful of (older than me) women who won’t drive on freeways. It always seemed odd to me. My 30 year old son doesn’t drive at all, though he had a learner’s permit way back when he never got in enough practice to do a road test. Younger son had to renew the permit before he finally got his license at 25. He bought a car and drove it several hundred miles that week. I think that woman should have asked the husband to carpool the week it was her term, but perhaps she thought he would and he refused.
Both my kids and my husband have asked me who they should vote for - especially for stuff like school board elections.
I used to do the bills, but I didn’t like tackling it every single week and would miss payments so DH took over. I think I can get into the account, but I haven’t tried recently.
I tidy up when people are coming over - though less for my younger brother since they are messier than us.
You would be surprised at the number of people who don’t know much about their own finances - particularly when dealing with something like a 401k. If that’s generational, it’s also situational. Our parents had pensions, now most of our generation has 401k and IRAs. As a tax preparer, every year I have several clients who have liquidated their 401k, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they needed the money, and didn’t want to take a loan against it, but other times it was a change of jobs, and they didn’t understand how to roll it over to another 401k or an IRA. It costs them a lot of money, but aside from the change to their tax return, they don’t seem to care about not having it when they retire. That’s generational in some ways, but not in others - their parents didn’t have the same things to worry about, because they couldn’t “borrow” from their pensions.
Most of the other things I would say not generational. I know plenty of older people who view the world the way the OP does, and plenty of younger people who act like the older people she mentions.
The person who examines the voting record of candidates is a detail person. I’m a general idea person. I get a sense of the person’s character and vote accordingly. No way would I take the time to research the voting record. But a detail person would thrive on that.
My mother was all about “what would they think” and would clean the house thoroughly before entertaining. I think because i observed her getting stressed by this, I never clean before guests come. I make sure the house is neat and orderly, but clean it after they leave. If my guests are noticing the cleanliness of my house, they’re not having a good time.
My book club just agreed to meet afternoons instead of evenings because so many members are having difficulty driving at night.
I have always been hyperaware of the danger inherent in highway driving. I can do it but I don’t like it. I don’t even like being on the highway with a really good driver, like my husband. I handle all the finances but my husband could do it. I am intensely opinionated about how I’m going to vote. I don’t think any of those things is generational.
I think that having a like-minded person do the research on the candidates for less visible positions is useful. I spent some time looking up the histories of the many recent candidates for judge and told my H who he should not vote for and why. But for candidates who are regularly covered in the news, we wouldn’t give each other any advice.
None of those things are generational.
My good friend’s H needed to put their toddler to bed while we went out to a school event. He needed instructions on where pajamas are kept and what kind of bed-time snack was available. That was weird. I think the OP’s post is just about observing that people sure are different from each other.
I think it’s a mixed bag. I have been driving since my 16th birthday (literally) , but have never liked it or felt confident in my driving skills. That said, I live in a major metropolitan area and I drive where I need to go.
I have noticed that a lot of older women (older than me and I’m 61) tend to defer to men’s opinions. My mother and MIL both do this. They were raised in an earlier generation where men were considered to be more knowledgeable about a lot of things and few women held positions of authority.
For nonpartisan offices, that makes sense in many cases.
For partisan offices, older generations may have seen parties that were less defined by ideology or identity than they are now. So the individual candidate (as opposed to his/her party label) mattered more in the general election decades ago than it does now.
But do not dismiss the hazards of city driving, where there are far more encounters with cross traffic and far more speed changes and speed variations.
My mother sounds like the people you described almost right down the line, deb. She did get involved in finances when she started working when I was in second grade. Often agreed with my father politically, but voted differently sometimes and no hard feelings. She absolutely hated driving and only did so when my father gave it up a couple of years before he died in his early 80s.
For husband and me, I’ve been involved with LWV for close to twenty years so he usually asks me what info I’ve heard on candidates. We also have a very politically active son with whom we like to discuss issues – often brings out implications we want to take into account and hadn’t considered. So it’s kind of freewheeling and depends on who’s heard what in our household.
Re our money, I haven’t held paid employment since early in our marriage. DH and I had a divide-and-conquer attitude towards family funds: he handled the longer term investment, and I dealt with the liquid and operating side of the house. He used to say he’d be sitting overdrawn and in the dark if it weren’t for me. Once he approached his military retirement, though, he begged me to get smart about his annuities, 401Ks etc. so I’d know what I wanted to sign away or not – he had me decide whichever option he chose for survivor benefits versus current pay and so on. Since he’s been focusing on his late mother’s trust and estate, I think I currently have a better handle on all our accounts. Interestingly, we divided the labor for MIL’s situation the same way we had done ours: DH did the longer-term investment related decision making, and I took care of operating expenses, kept utilities, taxes, and fees up to date.
Husband was stationed in Europe when we were first married. I needed his signed permission to cash my own paychecks. ETA, that was a “soldier / family member” thing not a “man / woman” thing. Still, most of the soldiers were male . . . and it really left a bad taste in my mouth.
I came of age in the watershed years for women’s lib. Now mid 60’s, retired and moved to current place with plenty for our age and older. I know a couple of ladies who still always prepare a full meal for their husbands every day. They are around 70 plus. Whatever happened to flexibility? I see differences in expectations with just a five year age gap. I hear women not always liking the state of things but dealing with husbands who have routines they don’t mess with. Talking with someone who has to break off the conversation because they need to start dinner so it is on time…
My mom used to say my parents’ votes cancelled each other out- many years later (she died over 30 years ago- early 50’s) I realized it was my father who is the conservative with all three kids, their spouses and the grandkids being a lot more liberal. Personalities strong. Who does what depends on the situation- such as who has the time or interest. H does major finances because I dislike it, I do the shopping because I like it. Balance. Of course I do my own oil change appointments, medical/dental ones and nag H to do his (it doesn’t work).
Growing up things were financially tight and father was alcoholic so vastly different. My father did the bills, my mother made do with little money and both mathematically inclined. She was an indifferent housekeeper and not much of a cook. My father insisted we kids clean things but I noticed that once he was old (and now elderly) and would have had to do things himself the dust piled up. My mother would not defer to my father’s opinions, but his being drunk influenced things (can’t be reasoned with…).
My mother was likely more intelligent than my father but women of her day were discouraged from STEM fields. My father may have had the EE degree (worked sales) but my mother was the one who could and did the household fixing et al. H and I are peers- both physicians. No deference- we each have different strengths (weaknesses).
I think generally generational. I see it more with my parents generation than I do with those in their early 70’s. That age group is more of a mixed bag, as they were the age of women libbers, I think. Sort of a transitional time for women.
