Very UNeco parenting, grrrr

[Annpan]

On days when I feel miserable I often stick some post-it notes around the house (backs of cupboards, mirror, inside drawers, etc) that read 'you are not your mother'... just reminds me that I can do what I like and stand tall and proud. My mum is... I can't write, on a public forum, what I might want to write about her but it isn't nice...

[Milims]

How sad that so many of us feel negatively about our mothers I wonder if it's something about their generation or ours.

[MrsD'ville mkII]

Overall I feel positively and warmly towards my mum and since I've had children I've understood a great deal more about why she behaved as she did sometimes. However! I do find some, in fact quite a few, of her traits absolutely infuriating. Going against my wishes with DD isn't something she does, to my eternal gratitude, but I do feel her hypochondria and Daily Mail view of the world rubs off on DD sometimes. I'm always quite relaxed about leaving DD with my parents though, just as well as they live just 10 mins from her school and since they moved there in Jan have become quite indispensible! I think it helps that Mum and I share quite a few interests - we've often read the same book, listened to the same play on the radio, heard about the same exhibition etc, so we always have safe territory. However, she is a lost cause when it comes to vegetarian food: she will never understand that you don't need to check that a Quorn sausage isn't still pink in the middle!

[Esther.R]

Well just to balance the thread a little I have to say that my mother is great with Beth, she does everything we do, asks us before she changes any bit of routine or buys anything for her and is generally a very concientious and helpful grandma who looks after her twice a week and does her best to continue everything we do at home and not to interfere

My in-laws are coming to stay next week.....so we'll have to see how that pans out! They are a very different generation (my husband was the late baby of a second marriage) so there could be some issues there......

(eta - cross posted with Mrs D!)

[citizentwiglet]

I think sometimes maybe I'm a bit unfair to my mum and my MIL, to be honest. Sometimes I think I'm quite justified in my frustration, however!

I don't know...it must seem very odd to them.There I am banging on about terry nappies, whereas my mum hated the damned things with a passion and thinks that disposables are a gift from the gods. I tried to breastfeed Ellis, both my mum and MIL just couldn't understand why anyone would possibly do such a thing 'when you're busy and tired enough already'.
To them, formula was an amazing invention which meant anyone could feed the sprog easily. After all, it became popular during WW2 to enable mothers to get back to the munitions factories or back out with a shovel to dig for victory, didn't it? I bet most of our mums and MILs of certain age were formula-fed themselves, in fact, I bet most of us were too...(I certainly was, I was an Ostermilk babe...)

Pureeing fresh vegetables? When you can buy jars?? Madness, I tell you..sheer madness!

They probably feel as though their generation invented all these fantastic things to make our lives easier, and we all want to head back to the Dark Ages. Watch their faces cloud with abject terror if you even mention a home birth - who would want to be in agony and wreck all those sheets and towels when you can wreck the NHS's supply for free, and get free drugs to boot?!

Mind you, this is the same generation that fed us Angel Delight, Vesta curries and fizzy pop with so many additives I'm amazed any of that generation have houses left after being trashed by exuberant, buzzing toddlers....

[Esther.R]

This is where I suspect my MIL is coming from...my mother on the other hand had us in the late 1970s, we were breastfed, carried in slings, brought up with no TV etc etc they were the self sufficientish of the first time around!