How different are you from your parents?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by the thread Is that how your Mom did it? by Indygrrl here in IMHO. It looks like a lot of folks are turning into their parents - how similar are you to your mother or father, and how are you different? Not so much in skills as in looks and personality.

I have similar features to my mother (when I was slimmer, I was a dead ringer) and I have an almost identical voice - similar enough that even long-time friends can’t tell the difference between her and me if I answer her phone. My husband reckons I metamorphose into her occasionally too, giving him ‘one of her looks’ or saying something absolutely identically to her.

On almost every other level though, we’re nothing alike. She’s a gardener, while I have a ‘black thumb’, not a green one. I don’t care if I never see my yard, while she always goes out first thing in the morning to drink her coffee on the back patio and bask in Nature. She is very tidy and clean, while my house most usually looks like it was hit with a small whirlwind. She wouldn’t be seen dead leaving the house without makeup on and her hair styled, where I never wear makeup and keep my hair super-short because otherwise it always looks like I’ve been pulled through a bush backwards.

When visitors come, my mother always makes sure they’ve got a home-cooked meal, and she loves to entertain. She’ll have platters of meats and cheese, and other nibbles set around for people to snack on. This includes for friends she’s had 30 years or more, so it’s not that she’s trying to impress people with how great a hostess she is - she just IS a great hostess naturally. I’m famous for being a well-intentioned but forgetful hostess - my friends luckily think it’s cute and have adapted to the ‘open fridge policy’ so that if I get so caught up in conversation that I forget to feed them, they can go grab something themselves. Also, unless it’s a planned dinner event I don’t cook when friends drop in - if it’s tea time, I’ll collaborate with them as to what kind of takeaway they’d like, and do it that way.

If she’s hosting an event (like Xmas) my mother cooks everything from scratch, and always hugely overcaters. Last year, Xmas was at my place, so for the first time ever I had to cater for an ‘event’. I knew I’d be a nervous wreck if I had to cook everything, so instead I worked out a good range of foods, bought what I could to save time, and then made one or two special things only. (Btw, it was a huge success. Hurrah!)

My mother can scintillate and sparkle and charm a room, whereas I utterly lack charisma. We may look similar, but people tend to think she’s beautiful and I’m plain, and this held true even when I was slim and - as I noted - a dead ringer for her. It’s all in the sparkle, I think. :wink:

On the whole - C-grade cooking and D-grade housework and all - I think I’m considerably easier to live with, though admittedly not as exciting. In many ways I think I’m a more agreeable person than her. I won’t get angry at my husband for not doing something if I woudn’t do it myself (my mother does this a lot with my step-dad, and I think it’s wrong) - I’m don’t believe in double standards. I don’t get bent over shape over trivial stuff. I assume the simplest answer rather than inventing convoluted scenarios which support the theory that I’m being slighted. If someone says they’ll be dropping by and then don’t turn up, I assume they forgot or that something important and unexpected intervened, not that they’re deliberately out to insult me. I don’t hoard up (mostly imagined) hurts and stew over them. I don’t assume the worst of people, but tend to put myself in their position and see how reasonable their actions look from that vantage point.

In personality and talents, we definitely have very little in common. If anything, we’re like alternate sides of a coin.

I’d be interested as to how much people really take after their parents, and how much of it is just superficial.

2

Mom and I are clones.

Dad and I are so different we can barely communicate.

3

Oh boy, let’s see.
My dad is a genius. Also a large man, and in his youth very powerful and intimidating. Now, he’s a broken down old man, but back in the day he was definitely a force to be reckoned with. Very dominating and controlling, he was a very abusive husband and father to the extreme. He also just barely skirted the law with some of his activities. How the man stayed out of jail his whole life I’ll never know. He had many jobs, including courtroom artist, stained-glass artist, cable guy, mechanic, and sheriff’s deputy. He would get bored with whatever he was doing, or cross the line too many times, more like it, and move on to something else. We moved many times during my childhood. He knew absolutely everything and could fix anything. A little girl’s dream of a superhero father if it wasn’t for the abuse thing. He was very outgoing, gregarious, and charismatic. Naturally, I’ve always been quite drawn to this type of man- unfortunately, it seems like most men with the characteristics I’m drawn to also have an abusive aspect to their personality. I’m learning, though.
My mother. Sigh. VERY sensitive, very quiet, always either at work, reading, or sleeping. I remember as a kid thinking of questions to ask her just so she would talk to me. She never did and still doesn’t EVER talk about feelings. She has always been the one with the steady permanent job and has always paid the bills. She goes through what must be a horrible and lonely life, working, working, and keeping the same ditzy grin on her face like nothing is wrong, why whatever would make you think that? She was a beautiful woman, tall and slender with a natural grace and kind nature. She never talked to me about anything more important than what was for dinner, she never disciplined us, she never talked to me about things like bras and periods. My dad took care of us and disciplined us, but when it came to girl things, I was on my own. Now when she makes her yearly visit, we sit and chat about the weather or what we saw on TV last night. I never visit her or call because I cut my dad completely out of my life years ago.
Me, I think I’m a mixture of both of them. I’m also extremely sensitive, very shy, and easy to blush. I love music and reading and need my alone time. But I’m alot like my dad, that’s for sure. I carry with me the important lessons he taught me about life and men and how to be a badass when you need to be to keep yourself and your family safe. He taught me how to assert myself and carry myself. In spite of the sensitivities I have, I’m quite agressive and gregarious. While not a genius, I’m fairly smart. I have to watch myself that I don’t become overly critical or controlling and I have a tendency to let my temper get the better of me. These things are getting alot easier to understand and get a grip on as I get older, thank og. A few years ago I would never have admitted that I share any qualities of my father, but even though I look exactly like my mother, I have more in common with my dad. Sometimes I feel a pang of regret that he never knew me as a grown and emotionally mature woman. I’m sure my mother tells him things about me, but it would have been nice to hear this man, who’s opinions and judgements of me tormented my childhood, finally say that he saw who I was as a woman and respected me.
So, there you have it.

4

I get my intelligence and my tendency toward introspection from my father. I get my temper from my mother. It’s an interesting combination. I don’t take after either one of them physically. I have my mom’s eyes, and my dad’s hair (though mine is lighter), but that’s about it. A few random people swear up and down that I look exactly like my dad, but I just don’t see it, and everyone but those few don’t think I look anything like him. I’ve always thought that was odd.

People also say I have my dad’s voice, but it’s more a matter of syntax, word choice and inflection than actual vocal similarity. Acquaintances can’t tell us apart over the phone, but friends and immediate family have a pretty decent success rate. Still, the first thing I hear upon meeting my dad’s friends is “oh my god, you sound exactly like your father.” It doesn’t bother me; my dad is the single smoothest person I’ve ever met, and if I’ve inherited that ability, so much the better.

I’ve also heard it said that my dad and I give off a similar aura of arrogance from time to time. Of course, I have no idea why they’d say that…

:smiley:

5

I’m completely unlike my mother in personality, although we do share the traits of voluminous curiosity and relaxed housekeeping. My housekeeping, though, gets periodic tune-ups, and then slowly slides back towards chaos, while she lost the battle decades ago. She jumps to conclusions; I don’t. While we both tend to vote conservative, it is for very different reasons. She’s nominally Christian; I’m not.

My father. Heh. In recent years, it’s become apparent that I look very much like him - adopting a similar hairstyle about a decade ago was an accident, but that’s what started bringing out the comparisons. He was a scientist; I’m a scientist. He was atheist, and raised me as such, which I remain.

Both of my parents were fairly outgoing, and I believe I share that trait with them.

But the differences between my father and myself are huge. He was born and grew up as the Canadian son of ethnic Swedish immigrants from Finland whereas I grew up in Texas. He was autocratic, vain, egotistical and downright mean. I don’t believe any of those adjectives would spring to mind when describing me. Enough Dopers have met me, and I’ve certainly posted here amply, that should I be in error about that, someone can call me on it.

As mentioned above, I tend to vote Republican, while he was an ivory-tower pinko.

And lastly, he was an outdoorsman and a gardener. While I’ve enjoyed many a camping and/or fishing trip, I’m really an inner city fellow, and I’ve no use for a lawn or dying flowers.

Interesting thread idea.

6

I find it very interesting to hear people talk about their parents, especially those with whom they have difficult relationships. Thanks for sharing, y’all.

My mom and I are extremely alike in some ways, and radically different in other ways. We look very similar, except that she has struggled with her weight her whole life, while I’m naturally more slender. But our faces, our eyes and hair, and even our hands and arms and skin, are very similar. Recently when I gained a little weight – not a lot, just enough to pad the bones --I noticed that my naked body looks the way I remember hers from when I was a girl.

We also have very similar senses of humor; we can always make each other laugh. We both have similar encyclopedic memories for irrelevant facts (but the facts we’re interested in rarely overlap, so we can keep each other amused with trivia for hours).

However, our outlooks on life are really, really different. When I was a teenager, we were so stridently different that we fought constantly, and moving out of her house was an enormous relief for me.

She’s a huge planner, very cautious, hates surprises. She is compulsively early to everything, and if she goes on a trip anywhere she has to know in advance exactly how she’s going to get there. When I was a kid and we went on car trips, she’d even plan where she’d stop to go to the bathroom. She’s a methodical details person - I’m creative. I’m a lot more freewheeling. I’ll take a road just to see where it goes. I do hate to be late, but I won’t be an hour early to everything like she is.

When I first moved to the Oregon coast, my mom started sending me all these articles about tsunamis and how many people in coastal regions were killed by them. Me, I take sensible precautions but I don’t worry about what I can’t change. I felt sorry that she was worrying about tsunamis, but I refused to join her. I think that irritated her.

I’m getting a bit more persnickety as I get older; but then on the other hand, she’s actually loosening up a lot as the years go by, too. So not only am I turning into her, but she’s also turning into me. It’s kinda cool. :slight_smile:

7

My parents were never married, and I only visited my father from time to time, but, what I knew and remember about him is:

When my father was alive, he loved to watch boxing, and was an avid hunter and fisherman. His job was repairing alternators in big rigs. Actually, the last 10 or years of his life, he seemed to make enough money in drug dealing :frowning: that he hardly ever went to work, yet, for some reason, he never lost his job and could come and go as he pleased (I’m guessing maybe he had some kind of arrangement with his boss). Although when I was younger, I use to be very naive, about a lot of things, and wondered why he always seemed to have $100 bills in his wallet, even though he never went to work :smack: .

As for me, about the only sports I watch on TV is the Summer Olympics, other than a few times when I was with my father, I’ve never been hunting or fishing on my own, or with friends, I couldn’t work on a car, or any automobile, to save my life (gee, I’m making myself sound more and more like a looser, aren’t I :eek: :smiley: ) and I’ve never done, or sold, illegal drugs (the closest I’ve come is being at a New Year’s party with lots of pot smoke in the air and getting a contact high)

My mother is a very devout Roman Catholic, and although I’m Catholic too, I’m not nearly as devout. And although in some ways I think that’s good, as she tends to be somewhat a fundamentalist, and I hate fundamentalism, there are also a few ways in which I’m not a very good Catholic at all.
According to my wife, I’m more easy going than my mother is.
Hmmm, there are a lot of other ways I’m different from my mother, but I’m having a hard time thinking about, and articulating them.

8

Just an additional curious question to consider when you reply: did your parents divorce, and, if so, how old were you at the time?

My parents divorced when I was 22 and out on my own; my two younger sibs were still (18 & 15) dependents.

9

Arghhh! Make those sibs 17 & 14.

10

I have already turned into my parents. I even got caught saying something I swore I never would because

  1. it made no sense and
  2. it still makes no sense today.
    I actually said “Eat your food, people are starving”.
11

I look more like my dad’s side of the family; I have his hair, and look more like his relatives. Dad and I have the same sense of humor and like a lot of the same goofy things. I also take after his relaxed way of doing most things.

Otherwise, I’m practically a clone of my mother. She’s a little more uptight than I am, especially about certain things, but not by much. We are both usually calm and relaxed, and only get upset every once in a while–usually over odd things when the camel’s back gets that last straw, or when we’re too tired. We sound alike, we have very similar interests, heck we have the same career–we’re both librarians. We trade books a lot. She’s a much better gardener than I am; I’m more hit-or-miss, and she’s dedicated. (But then, she doesn’t have two small children!) I’m a better quilter; she’s better at sewing clothes. We have similar food talents, but she can make good pie crust, which I cannot. We both enjoy walking or hiking. We have our differences, but they don’t amount to much, and we get along great.

Oh, and my parents are still happily married.

12

I am as little like either of my parents as I can possibly manage to be. I think that’s what has made me a successful adult. What I witnessed growing up was enough to scare me away from imitating any of their styles or behaviors, permanently. I bear some of the physical traits of my mother’s family. Otherwise, I am not mean or vindictive, manipulative, pious (in a bad way, unrelated to god), perpetually angry, prone to violence or impossible to please. I do not own anyone, I do not lay down rules, I do not shout, I do not insult and I do not fly off the handle. I do not do guilt trips. I do not think I know everything. I am neither devious nor irresponsible nor untrustworthy, and I do not touch alcohol.

Because of the things I learned from my parents, I am never having children. If I heard my father coming out of my mouth, I’d be suicidal. He’s already wrecked several lives. I’m not giving him another chance to do it from the grave.

My mother took the other three kids and moved away in 1976. They never bothered to get a divorce, and now they are both deceased.

It must be nice to be able to talk about your parents with awe and respect. I wish I could do it, too.

13

My mother was a flower child. A hippy who hitch-hiked all over and rode VW bugs across the country to San Francisco. She protested the war, and never even had a bra in which to burn.

I’m a registered Republican, never done drugs, and I’m a soldier in the US Army.

he he he. But I love her!

14

I am tall like my father and am fairly large-framed as he is. My mother is fairly small though not particularly short. I have big feet and hands like Dad does and I seem to look like his mother as much as I look like my own. The color of my eyes is between his blue and her hazel-green and I have thick, wavy (like him) but fine (like her) hair. My voice is quite similar to my mother’s but I use different words much of the time. Both of them have fierce tempers, which I have as well, though I cool down quickly like my dad does, instead of seething like Mom will.

I have my mom’s sense of humor. She can be both goofy and sarcastic. She’s the one who started me dueling with foodstuffs at the table. Her disapproval of me is crushing, and her praise makes me feel as if the world is mine. She is the only human being that I know personally that I have ever been genuinely afraid of. She rarely drinks and doesn’t smoke. He is an alcoholic and has tried many times to quit smoking with little success. He also has taken many different types of drugs in his life. She is a morning person. He is an afternoon/evening person. He is exactly a foot taller than she is.

I drink as rarely as my mother does and except for a short period of smoking a few years ago, I have never used any type of drug. I don’t even like taking painkillers unless I have to. I am a night person and hate mornings. I have an odd puritanical streak but some of the things I have done would shock both my parents. My sister was the blatant favorite when we were growing up, but they’re rather disappointed in her now, so I seem to be the favorite child now.

I am as much like my parents as I am unlike them. One thing I do that my mother refuses to; if I have hurt someone, I am genuinely sorry and I will apologize. She never seems to feel the need.

They are still married, unhappily.

15

As much as I’d rather be like my father, the older I get, the more I think I’m like my mother. Physically, I’m like her - same size, same green eyes, paler skin. My hair is already much more grey than hers is, though, and I’m 43 and she’s 73. We both have a knack for learning, we’re both trivia buffs. She’s not a reader, though, and I am. She’s a gardener, while I just like to look at gardens. She’s a good cook - I don’t cook. We’re both tough at the core, I think. Neither of us talk much about our emotions. My mother holds a grudge, though. And she’s very, very into money. If she gives a gift and it was expensive, we have to like it just because it cost a lot. I don’t like to have financial dealings with her, because it never works out well. I think I have my father’s work ethic and his patience. I wish I had his ability to make friends.

My parents were married nearly fifty years, until my father’s death.

StG

16

OMG, are you my long-lost sister?? :wink: I think we must have had the same mother, from the sound of it! Before we ever got married, I told my husband "If I ever turn into my mother, just shoot me and put me out of everyone’s misery!

I do have my mother’s voice (it’s okay; she’s dead and doesn’t need it anymore) :smiley: . When she was alive and I lived at home, people always thought I was her when I answered the phone. Now my 17-year-old daughter has the same voice. [slight hijack]A couple of months ago, my husband called home from work. I answered the phone, and he said “Where’s your mother?” That really threw me for a second, and I said “Dead?” After a moment, we both realized the mistake, he thought I was the kid!It happened again a couple of weeks later: “Where’s your mother?” “Um, still dead?” He asked me not to do that; said it’s disconcerting. I said it’s pretty damned disconcerting to answer the phone and have someone ask me where my mother is.[/slight hijack]

I got my father’s quick wit, sense of humor, love of reading, beer and coffee. Man, if he was still alive, he’d be a great doper! This is not to say he was flawless; he drank alcoholically until I was 14, when he finally got sober for good. I was 41 when he died, and he was still sober. I also got his creativity. He was a leatherworker by hobby, and loved doing it. I’ve never done leatherwork (though I’d like to, someday), but I’m much more creative than my mother.

I truly believe my mother was bipolar. She never should have had kids (and she had five of them!); I work hard at being the mother she never was.

I don’t look like either of my parents at all. I have two sisters who look like Mom, one sister who looks more and more like Dad with every passing year, but me and one other sister, I dunno; we look like the mail man or something.

This is all very interesting. Great thread!

17

I am physically very similar to my dad except I am an inch or two shorter and more than a few inches wider.

Mentally, I’m a contradictory amalgamation of my mom and dad. If I believed in god, I’d surely believe that he chose all my personality traits to contradict one another because that’s how it seems to have worked out in the end. It’s really quite annoying.

18

Vastly different. As a child, I read a book about a girl who discovered she was adopted by accidentally finding her birth certificate, and after that, I searched for mine every chance I got. I also used to have dreams in which Mom pulled off a mask and I saw she was the devil! She’s actually not so bad, and we get along well, but I still suspect I was switched with some other baby at the hospital.

I’m a reader; she’s a TV person. Reality shows, too!
I dye my hair jet black; she dyes hers lemon yellow.
I was a social reject; she was a cheerleader.
I’m agnostic bordering on atheist; she’s a Baptist.
I was a vegetarian; she was doing Atkins.
I like Kerry; she likes Bush.

I could probably go on, but I think you get it.

19

Mother: Perhaps the greatest difference I have from her is her saintly patience. She hardly ever loses her cool and she can tolerate slow drivers, long lines, etc. much better than I can. She’s not a technophobe, but she often asks for my helps with things like using the Internet. Before on-screen programming, I was always called on to set the VCR timer for her.

Father: I inherited his impatience. In fact, he’s even admitted I must have picked this trait up from him. Unlike me, he’s a technophobe, though my brother-in-law has gotten him up to speed on using MS Word and some other applications. He likes football, which I have no interest in (I;m not into any sports, in fact).

I think most of us will say that our musical tastes are vastly different from what our parents like. My dad likes old-style country/western music (he doesn’t care for thecontemporary stuff) and my Mom likes a lot of the contemporary artists from the 60s and 70s (Fifth Dimension, Carptenters, Captain and Tenille, etc.) I listen to hard rock and I grew up on the 80s heavy-metal era.

As for movies and TV, my dad mostly likes historical dramas and documentaries, while my Mom is into chick-flick and women-oriented movies. Neither of them likes the violent high-action films that I like, though my mom and I both enjoy comedies and some family-oriented movies. My dad mostly watches the news and financial TV programming while my Mom enjoys sitcoms. I don’t watch a lot of TV but I mostly watch Discovery/Science Channel, Cartoon Network/Boomerang, and Comedy Central.

Politically I am similar to my parents in that we all hold Republican views. We’re also pretty much in agreement on religous and spiritual views.

20

I try VERY hard not to be like my parents. My mother is a troll and I’m not just saying that. People think she’ s a man, she dresses in an ugly way, she smokes and chokes her head off and she gets weird and cranky about the darndest things. I have a standing appointment to get cuts and color, I dress simply but not asexually .

I can’t even think of one thing that I do that’s similar to my dad.

Even the ways I’m like my mother are different. We both do yarn craft; I knit, she crochets. She chooses cheap yarn with blah colors and makes afghans, I feel guilty everytime I go to the yarn store because of the prices and I’m all about color and I make hats and bags.

I don’t like to discuss politics because it gets confrontational. They love to, even when it gets hot.

They moved us around a lot; I’m committed to keeping my son in the same school system for the next 12 years.

I never tell my son “We can’t afford it” even if we can’t (he’s only 5 3/4 so it hasn’t come up much because we can afford most of what a kid that age wants). That was their mantra. In fact, I don’t think being dirt poor (like they were) and being parents is acceptable - no offense to any of you dirt poor parents.