<p>Gosh - sounds like some of us had the same parents. My mom was stay at home as well and was never home. My parents always put their marriage before us kids (there are 5 of us) - they never hesitated to leave us with a babysitter.
They had season tickets to the opera, golf league in the summer and bowling league in the winter. Not to mention dressing up to go out to dinner or a party occassionally.
And the alcohol - I could never drink as much as my parents. My mother would have two drinks ready when my dad walked in the house. The living room was theirs and they would spend time together before dinner.<br>
I don’t remember them coming to school “events” or that it was a big deal at all.</p>
<p>We did have family dinner every night and in the dining room every Sunday afternoon and we did take family vacations.</p>
<p>When the Women’s movement came about and women went into the workforce and kids into daycare - there was a lot of guilt laid on women. The “experts” said they were harming their children and other’s countered with the “quality vs quantity” debate.
This in turn with Dad being required to spend more time with the kids - to help working Mom, has lead to a very increased involvment with their children’s lives.
For the most part - it’s good and healthy.
Sometimes it breaks apart marriages. Sometimes parents go overboard and become helicopter parents and feel like they need to be a part of their kids lives every second.
The pendulum swings.</p>
<p>Interesting comment above about alcohol. We are fortunate not to have alcoholism in our family or culture, but I go through periods when I drink more than other times—such as, say, if work is particularly stressful—and there’s no doubt that I’m less of a parent at those times. And I’m just talking about a couple of beers several nights a week. True alcoholism or a “drinking culture” must be downright crippling to a family.</p>
<p>(I say this like it’s some kind of revelation or something. Of course, it’s common knowledge that alcoholism is bad for families. I just haven’t given it a lot of thought until just now.)</p>
<p>While my parents and their peers were part of a “drinking culture”, my dad was in the service and they spent years in Europe; they were not alcoholics. I never, ever remember seeing them drunk. They certainly never allowed alcohol to affect their behavior in the family unit. They did teach us to drink responsibly.
I never even thought about it until I was of drinking age. I spent so many years pregnant (one kid after another) that I just never drank regularly. I still don’t and I still can’t keep up.</p>
<p>JustAMomOf4, I think I used the term “drinking culture” too loosely. One might say that the French have a drinking culture, but few would say that they raise their children badly as a nation. I probably should have avoided the term altogether, because I’m not exactly sure what it means. Please consider my comments limited to alcoholism.</p>
<p>I think alot of us were brought up in that “Cheever-esque” culture, especially in the Northeast. I didn’t know anyone who wasn’t until I got to college. I remember spending time at a good friend’s house when I was still in grammar school, and vividly recall her mother having to be carried up the stairs to bed by her big brother after a “cocktail party”. I didn’t think twice about it but did mention it to my mother who just sort of rolled her eyes. Socialising with alcohol started at Noon every weekend. I can’t imagine that lifestyle but that’s just the way it was and it basically eliminated kids.</p>
<p>Alcohol is part of many cultures and plays different roles in each.</p>
<p>My comments about alcohol – and I think they were the first in this thread – applied specifically to the United States, and perhaps even more specifically to people who shared my parents’ ethnicity, educational level, and geographic area. </p>
<p>But regardless of the circumstances, a drunk parent can’t parent. At least not until the intoxication and the hangover wear off. And if the parent gets intoxicated often, that means that there’s a lot of time when no parenting is going on. The child may be in a safe situation (if the parent has taken the precaution of turning over child care to someone else on such occasions) or in a dangerous one (if the intoxicated parent is responsible for the child on such occasions), but in either case, the parent is not capable of being effective as a parent.</p>
<p>I grew up in an environment so alcohol-soaked that during my childhood, I believed that what happened to people at puberty was that they grew a second personality. This made sense to me because the kids I knew each had one personality, but the adults had two – one that was pretty much like that of kids except much smarter and more responsible, and one that was irrational, unpredictable, loud, and scary. It wasn’t until I was nearing puberty myself that I realized that the second personality was caused by drinking alcohol and was not an inevitable consequence of growing up. I was surprised (and relieved) to learn that when puberty came, the only thing I was going to grow would be breasts!</p>
<p>In the kind of environment I grew up in (a working-class version of the “Cheever-esque” culture), alcohol definitely interfered with parenting and limited the amount of time that parents and kids spent together.</p>
<p>My parents thought adults who spent time with their children were sort of quaint. They called them “play together, stay togethers” but also thought they were misfits who couldn’t deal with their peers. They were actually pretty outspoken on the subject, but I thought the “play togethers” looked like they were having fun!</p>
<p>I suspect the premise is that people are not fully conscious of the drivers of their motivation and there is a lot of evidence that this is often correct. For example, there is, at least in the Northeast and probably other parts of the country, a mania among kids and parents to go to Ivy League schools. Good parts of CC exemplify this mania. The mania was not nearly so strong 30 or 40 years ago. What has changed? The current nature of our economy places much greater rewards on education than it did 40 years ago. The market for education became national and now global. Brand are more important (including brands of school – Harvard manages its brand very carefully). Parents are somewhat aware of these trends but don’t connect it directly, I would guess, with their push to help their kids get into branded schools or to spend lots of time posting on CC (not all posting on CC is because of this but some clearly is). So, one might not be aware why one is pushing so hard on getting a kid into the high-end schools even when one is doing it.</p>
<p>As a consequence, a non-calculating parent might easily subconsciously decide that kid B is not going to Harvard, Amherst or UTAustin, so I can relax here. I can’t get him into the global brand schools, so much less need to push. And pushing could be correlated with time spent together.</p>
<p>That’s a sensible argument, shawbridge. I’m sure that’s true in at least some, probably many, cases. And one might say that if a parent’s time is spent mostly on pushing the kid toward a good college, then the child may be better off without that parent-child time.</p>
<p>I have to admit that lately more of my conversations with my son start off with me saying, in a faux-casual tone, “Oh, by the way, you got a prospectus from Yalefordton College today. Have you ever consider going there?” This is, of course, a calculated attempt to push him toward a good college.</p>
<p>mantori, the article is a bit of a call to action for me. My son is going to Amherst (was WL at Harvard and did not apply to UT). My daughter, who is a rising junior is getting pretty good grades but is not at the top of her pretty selective private high school. She’s bright but hasn’t been that intellectual. She hasn’t been as ambitious (and may be afraid of putting pressure on herself). She hasn’t been a good test-taker, though neither was my son (and he worked very hard and got 2320’s on his SATs the only time he took the test). However, she has been admitted to private schools my son didn’t get into, so it is hard to tell. My sense I don’t think she’ll be in the top 15/20 schools category that my son was. So I am going to make sure I spend as much time with her as I did with him on college selection/application if she wants it.</p>
<p>I love my kids, fully enjoy being with them, eating dinner together, etc. but they are not my friends. I have adult friends. They are my children. I am somewhat puzzled by adults who have no adult friends.</p>
<p>interesting we called friends to see if they wanted to join for cookout said they needed to wait until their D got out of work to see what she wanted to do. We thougt that was weird but whatever… She is 20</p>
Not single-parent here, though that would have been better than the dysfunctional purgatory I experienced. I stand with BC Eagle: we wanted to do a better job.</p>
<p>Also, my D is one of my most favorite people in the whole world and better yet, she’s that way without me buckling at the knees and spoiling her.</p>
<p>Side note: we’re some of the most emphatic non-TV watchers among those that still own a TV. Live sports, some news programs during election season, and <em>lots</em> of movies via DVD…just re-watched the first five Harry Potter movies as run-up to the new one coming out. Recently just watched all the “Emma Peel” episodes of “The Avengers” for no other reason than I wanted to…heh.</p>
<p>It’s nice when we actuallly LIKE our kids in addition to loving them. We do enjoy the time we spend together tho we give each other a lot of space. I don’t see this as a problem. My folks also spent a considerable amount of time with us as we were growing up & we continue to see them several times/week.</p>
<p>I am more close to my mom now but not my family growing up. just didn’t seem interested. To this day I feel unimportant. Just the generation I think. I never had a plan for my kid and they are smart and talented kids. I wanted well rounded polite, good individuals to contribute to society. People like my kids and I enjoy them. Some of my stress from my D leaving is how the relationship will change as all I have is my family to compare it to. She is very independent, sometimes thinks we are rather silly. I hope she still wants to come home from time to time. I think she will . Her senior shoutout was "MY Wish " by rascall Flatts.</p>
<p>Remember that our parents (fathers, really) were company men. Where they worked for one company until retirement, climbing the ladder. Which meant a lot of socializing, with wives playing the “corporate wife” role. How many of us were taught at the age of 8 how to make the perfect dry martini?</p>