Attitudes in young people

downshifter

Over the past years I know there have been discussions about encouraging our offspring to develop more old style ways to save money, eat more healthily, be more creative etc etc and I must say my 2 are fairly good, one more than the other. However I was talking to someone today who's around mid 40s and was really shocked at her old-style attitudes.

She believes that boys should stay out of the kitchen (she has a 15 yr old and a 20 yr old who works 2 days a week so is at home most of the time) so although she works full time, she cooks, cleans, gardens, does anything that needs doing with the car, paints the house top to bottom every year, goes to school open nights and so on. She doesn't think its right that either they or her husband should do anything in the home. Her husband comes in at night after work, sits down in front of the tv and that's it. Her argument is that it's how she shows her love to them all and anyway, they'd be no good at it and she'd have to redo anything they do. It's how her mum and her gran did things (and my gran too apart from the car!) - but they didn't work outside of the home.

I was horrified - have we not moved on since those of us in the 60s/70s burned our bras and looked for 'New Man' (never found him but still looking!!). I've jokingly asked how her boys are going to manage when they find a partner as most girls won't put up with that, but she just laughs it off.

Obviously it's up to her how she runs her life but I was really disappointed and it set me wondering, are there other young people out there with these old-style attitudes still or is she just a one-off? Maybe there are lots of girls who will partner up with these lads and carry on in the way their mum does and I'm wrong. I'd be interested to know what others think.

DS

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LameWolf

I have one question - how on earth would her husband and sons cope if she was incapacitated for any length of time?

GreyQueen

There's a form of female behaviour (and I'm a 50-something female) which I mentally call being the Queen of the Hearth.

It's about being in total control of the domestic sphere and of the household members who live within in. It oftentimes presents as being admirable, in that the woman is fulfilling all the traditonal roles to the nth degree, plus doing other things, a kind of look-no-hands showing off.

I don't personally rate this kind of control-freakery. Such a woman is leaving hubby and sons with inadequate skills to manage when she gets ill and is setting up her sons for rocky personal relationships.

They will eventually be living outside her influence. With virtually nothing by the way of life-skills. If they're alone, it'll be miserable for them, if they're with housemates or significant others, it'll be misery cubed.

One day, there will probably be young women cursing her ways of bringing up her sons to be useless. She may render her sons undesirable as either flatmates or partners.

Her DiLs will probably hate her guts.

Prinzessilein

downshifter wrote: »

Her argument is that it's how she shows her love to them all and anyway, they'd be no good at it and she'd have to redo anything they do.
DS

My mum showed us she loved us by teaching us all to be independent!

Boys and girls - we all learned to budget...to cook....to sew on buttons..to wash clothes (without a washing machine!).....to wire a plug...to change a washer....

So what if they're not brilliant at it?....she shouldn't do it for them...let them do it again!...that's how they'll learn!

downshifter

If she's ill, her mother would move in - it happened a couple of years ago. The lads were floundering but nobody seemed to think they should do anything.

And GreyQueen - I completely agree with you, though I had no idea she thought like this. I've worked alongside her for years, she's never expressed these views before so doesn't show off about how wonderful she is doing all this, she just seems to accept that's how it is, she's a quiet, unassuming sort of person.

Being bossy as I am, I'd love to change this for the sake of her boys but it's her life I suppose. Is there anything that I could say to alter her views do you think? Even though it's nowt to do with me, I like trying to influence!!!

Rosemary7391

I'm a 25 year old woman. Having done the teaching uni housemates thing already, I'd not consider dating or living with people until they'd learnt these essential life skills. She's actively preventing them from doing so.

Littlefrugalcottage

I kind of have all ways.

My sisters other half is very much from that sort of family, so she does everything and he doesn't lift a finger because it is "how mum used to do it." She complains so so so much!

My other half was brought up this way to, but he appreciates the things I do and understands that I cannot do everything. If I was a stay at home mum I probably would but I'm not so he does the cleaning, sorting out the cars and I do the gardening, cleaning and the cooking because I love cooking. It's lovely to come home to a house which has been hoovered and to have to fire on, knowing I can spend the night knitting not cleaning.

My mum brought me up this way to and well I dream of being a stay at home mum keeping the house but because of the bra burning in the 60s/70s I have to work and every time I say I want to do this I usually get "don't you want more than that, don't you want a higher paid job" ect ect. I don't understand why people today do not think that bringing your children up well is a good enough job!

I think it swings in roundabouts on how you are brought up.

downshifter

I was fortunate in that when mine were born in the 70s we had budgeted and planned for me to give up work until the youngest went to school. However things have changed and families can't afford that luxury, things cost more and people are more aspirational and materialistic often. I was happy to go to the park, grow my allotment, ride my bike and go to Yorkshire once a year for a hol if poss. (and cook, clean etc etc. All with my kids, occasional mother and toddler playgroup but none of the expensive activities that are around now.) Times have changed and for these lads I suspect it is making life hard for them. She did say that if they got girlfriends who were becoming serious she'd put the boys through an intensive training course with her but it wouldn't be so much the tasks, the attitudes will be too well entrenched by then.

This woman isn't very keen on having them fly the nest and be independent anyway, the youngest wants to go to residential college when he's done his GCSEs and while not actively discouraging him, she's making it very clear how sad it will make them all if he goes away. I hope he does, it will be the making of him!

Bringing up children should definitely be a partnership by both parents, not mother teaching them to ride bikes, to swim, going to parents' nights etc alone- it's the most important job in the world, to be done by both parents though.

DS

Ames

Feminists fought (do fight) for women to have choices. If a woman chooses to live her life that way then that's fine.

But she's causing problems for her sons and their future lives. Which isn't fine.

*Margaret*

I think if she wants to do everything for her husband then that's very much her choice - it's their marriage and if they're both happy then that's excellent. But I don't think leaving her sons without any of the life skills they'll need is a good idea, they are unlikely to find women who will be happy to re-create the set up they have at home.

My father is almost 80 and when he was young it was common for men not to be allowed into the kitchen. His Mum had a large family but none of her daughters survived infancy and my Dad was the final baby, the last chance for a daughter. At some point she decided to treat him as if he was a daughter and so she taught him to cook and clean, sew on buttons and so forth. It set him in good stead, meant he could cope on his own which meant he had more choices. He emigrated at 21, which I don't think he'd have done if he'd needed his Mother to sew on his buttons and cook all his meals.

Hopefully this woman's lads will be open to learning how to be adults when they move out!

Pollycat

Ames wrote: »

Feminists fought (do fight) for women to have choices. If a woman chooses to live her life that way then that's fine.

But she's causing problems for her sons and their future lives. Which isn't fine.

Absolutely!

She's making a rod for some poor woman's back sometime in the future.