People are typically better than their parents

[Sampiro]

I’m 45 (or will be in a month); my mother was born during (and because of) the Depression and my father was a small child when it started, and they were both young adults during the Civil Rights movement.

Neither was a cross burning racist but they were very definitely “from another era” in their views not just of blacks but of foreigners, Jews, gays, even such now quotidian things as divorced people or those who had kids out of wedlock. Their policy was basically courtesy- never intentionally be rude or, above all, mean to anybody who doesn’t deserve it, but at the same point they didn’t really accept them as equal to them.

Most of my friends today, both white and black and from all over the socioeconomic background, laugh at some of the things our parents, most of whom were intelligent people, would say and truly believed. It’s an enigma to us how smart people could have been that provincial. To a person most of us are far more open minded and tolerant of other people’s beliefs and how they live their life and other such stuff, and as I believe- for all it’s use as a buzzword- tolerance is good (m’kay), in that respect we’re better people.

OTOH, almost all of us (myself most certainly included) lack our parents’ work ethic; how my mother and grandparents especially managed to hold down jobs, run a farm, take care of their families, be active in school and church, and not go absolutely nuts from lack of sleep and “me” time is beyond me. We also (me and most of my friends) lack our parents’ knowing-the-neighbors and the hands on charity: for example, if my mother or my grandparents (with one exception) knew that a neighbor was having trouble feeding their kids they would find a way to get food into that house without embarrassing them.

Those of us who are later-baby boomers/Gen X’ers grew up in such a vastly different time than our parents did due to TV and later the Internet and “no holds barred” sexual frankness and the like that it’s almost the difference in the Polish and Italian immigrants who came here in the 1890s and their American born and raised kids. (The term digital immigrants is used to divide the generation that came of age before computers from the digital natives who came of age with them, but in the South (and I would think other areas of the country) there’s at least as big a divide between those who came of age pre Civil Rights movement/post Civil Rights movement in mindset and not just about race.

On the surface we might seem better people but then, “consider the source”. I think we have very different values and priorities but not necessarily greater ones in many regards. We live in a less concrete and absolute age and we’re a lot more accustomed to constant paradigm tremors than they were, but they survived a couple of major quakes.

[Sampiro]

A Nation Building era quote from John Adams that I’ve always liked:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

I think our parents and grandparents were very similar.

[Soliloquy]

I kinda hope this is true. I already know that my son will be smarter than I. I hope he’s smart enough to make better decisions than I’ve made. I want him to be a thousand times better and smarter than his mommy and a hundred thousand times better and smarter than his daddy.

As much as I love what I do, I hope he never tries to follow in my footsteps. He’s better than me.

[Senegoid]

@Frylock

I’ve gone down the list and realized that it’s official: I don’t know a single person (who I know well enough to know this) who isn’t better than their parent(s). In each case, the person I know is more reasonable, more competent, more interesting and more constructively self-aware than those that brought them into the world.

<snip>

Are all these people I know doomed to have kids that are better than them? Are they going to get worse with age, or are their kids just going to be even cooler than they are?

(emphasis added)
Then you don’t know Senegoid!

All the children are better than their parents? Why, you must be a Flatlander! From Chapter 3:

It is a Law of Nature with us that a male child shall have one more side than his, father, so that each generation shall rise (as a rule) one step in the scale of development and nobility. Thus the son of a Square is a Pentagon; the son of a Pentagon, a Hexagon; and so on.

(BTW, for all you Spacelanders: The above link appears to be the full text of the book, although I’m not sure if it’s an abridged text.)

[Wesley_Clark]

I don’t know if they are morally superior, but I’ve never lost a fight to a child. So define better.

[Indistinguishable]

Er, these “children” are adults as well. They just happen, as most adults do, to have (or have had) parents.

[Dereknocue67]

My take on this issue is pretty simple. It’s not that kids are better or worse then their parents, it’s that they’re just different. I believe that parents raise their kids based in part on their own upbringing and try not to repeat what they interpret as mistakes made by their parents. In trying to avoid these mistakes, they make brand new mistakes on their own because they’re human.

When their kids grow up, the cycle continues.

[Nava]

@Sampiro

A Nation Building era quote from John Adams that I’ve always liked:

I think our parents and grandparents were very similar.

Reminds me of an interview with an immigrant couple from China saying “we work like Chinese [as close to 24/7 as possible] so that our children will be able to work like Spaniards”.

I think parents try to raise their kids right, and that often means better off, better educated, better… but it’s evident it doesn’t always work. The elder sister of one of my classmates was in ETA, I’m reasonably sure their parents didn’t set out to raise four kids who are normal, contributing members of society and one who wanted to blow everybody else up.

[Indistinguishable]

@Dereknocue67

My take on this issue is pretty simple. It’s not that kids are better or worse then their parents, it’s that they’re just different. I believe that parents raise their kids based in part on their own upbringing and try not to repeat what they interpret as mistakes made by their parents. In trying to avoid these mistakes, they make brand new mistakes on their own because they’re human.

When their kids grow up, the cycle continues.

For what it’s worth, my personal narrative on how parents (individually and as entire generations) raise their children goes something like this as well (also, sometimes I think the mistakes parents make are specifically overreactions to opposite mistakes their parents made). Nothing scientific about it, just a nice story I tell myself.

But I do also think there is some sense in which later generations do generally eventually become better people, as society learns to get over some of its unfortunate hangups.

[Ken001]

@Indistinguishable

But I do also think there is some sense in which later generations do generally eventually become better people, as society learns to get over some of its unfortunate hangups.

I agree but dammit, then I stop and think:

[ul]
[li]7000 years of rising civilisation brought us these high points: [/li][li]Nazi Germany[/li][li]Stalin’s purges[/li][li]Mao’s purges[/li][li]Pol POt[/li][li]Idi Amin[/li][li]the Rwandan massacres[/li][li]Serbia and Bosnia[/li][/ul]

And those are only in the last 100 years, never mind Napoleon, Genghis Kahn, Saladin, the Crusades…

So I’m not convinced we are on the verge of a golden age of enlightenment. Still, its worth carrying the torch anyway.

[Becky2844]

When I was growing up my grandmother always had a little lamp burning somewhere in her kitchen. It made things look really homey.
In school, I spent the night with a girl once who’s mother, when we got up the next morning, had the radio playing softly in the kitchen. Instead of yells and slaps.
Now, in my kitchen, a small lamp always burns and the radio plays, down low.
I’m still learning.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@Sampiro

I’m 45 (or will be in a month); my mother was born during (and because of) the Depression and my father was a small child when it started, and they were both young adults during the Civil Rights movement.

Neither was a cross burning racist but they were very definitely “from another era” in their views not just of blacks but of foreigners, Jews, gays, even such now quotidian things as divorced people or those who had kids out of wedlock. Their policy was basically courtesy- never intentionally be rude or, above all, mean to anybody who doesn’t deserve it, but at the same point they didn’t really accept them as equal to them.

Most of my friends today, both white and black and from all over the socioeconomic background, laugh at some of the things our parents, most of whom were intelligent people, would say and truly believed. It’s an enigma to us how smart people could have been that provincial. To a person most of us are far more open minded and tolerant of other people’s beliefs and how they live their life and other such stuff, and as I believe- for all it’s use as a buzzword- tolerance is good (m’kay), in that respect we’re better people.

OTOH, almost all of us (myself most certainly included) lack our parents’ work ethic; how my mother and grandparents especially managed to hold down jobs, run a farm, take care of their families, be active in school and church, and not go absolutely nuts from lack of sleep and “me” time is beyond me. We also (me and most of my friends) lack our parents’ knowing-the-neighbors and the hands on charity: for example, if my mother or my grandparents (with one exception) knew that a neighbor was having trouble feeding their kids they would find a way to get food into that house without embarrassing them.

Those of us who are later-baby boomers/Gen X’ers grew up in such a vastly different time than our parents did due to TV and later the Internet and “no holds barred” sexual frankness and the like that it’s almost the difference in the Polish and Italian immigrants who came here in the 1890s and their American born and raised kids. (The term digital immigrants is used to divide the generation that came of age before computers from the digital natives who came of age with them, but in the South (and I would think other areas of the country) there’s at least as big a divide between those who came of age pre Civil Rights movement/post Civil Rights movement in mindset and not just about race.

On the surface we might seem better people but then, “consider the source”. I think we have very different values and priorities but not necessarily greater ones in many regards. We live in a less concrete and absolute age and we’re a lot more accustomed to constant paradigm tremors than they were, but they survived a couple of major quakes.

This expresses very well what I wanted to say, so I’ll just quote it in endorsement. Basically, we see what we consider good and right through a lens tintet by our time, the society we live in, and the values it carries. Our system of values is not that of our parents; indeed, I even think our thinking, the concepts we apply to the understanding of the world, are not precisely the same. Viewed through this lens, then, naturally our peers, our friends and other members of our own ‘in-group’ will come off as just a bit more in line with our own values – and after all, that’s all the metric we have to judge ‘goodness’.

Of course, that doesn’t mean your friends aren’t saddled with some exceptionally rotten parents, or vice-versa, have managed to become good fruit despite growing on a rotten vine; but I do think there’s a case to be made for a sort of ‘generational bias’ in judging the all-around OKness of people.

[Zsofia]

My parents are lovely people. My half brother is a sociopathic pile of shit. I’m a fucking saint, I promise. Perhaps we balance one another out?

[Anaamika]

My uncle was a crochety old guy, but a damn hard worker, and loved me an incredible amount. He had an anger management problem, but he worked hard to keep it under control, and was generous to a fault.

In contrast, his sons are drug abusers and wife beaters and parent beaters. The younger son sold the ceremonial oil from his funeral pyre for drug money.

So, no, it doesn’t always hold.

[Nava]

@Becky2844

When I was growing up my grandmother always had a little lamp burning somewhere in her kitchen. It made things look really homey.
In school, I spent the night with a girl once who’s mother, when we got up the next morning, had the radio playing softly in the kitchen. Instead of yells and slaps.
Now, in my kitchen, a small lamp always burns and the radio plays, down low.
I’m still learning.

That’s pretty, Becky

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Frylock

But all my friends seem so awesome.

Then maybe what you’re seeing is a biased sample + reversion to the mean. Like speculating that people are typically taller than their parents based on looking at your teammates on the basketball team.

Or maybe you’re judging your friends vs. their parents on the values of your generation, whereas if you judged based on the values of the parents’ generation, the parents would come off a lot better.

I’m pretty sure my parents are better people than I am, at least in the sense of making a positive impact on the world. For one thing, they worked hard and sacrificed to raise four good kids, while I haven’t had any of my own.

[Voyager]

@Frylock

I’ve gone down the list and realized that it’s official: I don’t know a single person (who I know well enough to know this) who isn’t better than their parent(s). In each case, the person I know is more reasonable, more competent, more interesting and more constructively self-aware than those that brought them into the world.

(Briefly put, everyone I know well enough to know anything about their parents has parents who do outrageously bitchy and self-centered and relationship-destructive things, both to my friends and to others–yet the friends I’m speaking of simply don’t do these kinds of things. They know how to get along reasonably with people in general. Their folks don’t.)

So, why do you select friends with bad parents?
How old are you? Do you have kids? Are you old enough to realize that parents get smarter as you age? At certain stages of life kids think their parents are horrible, which is good because it helps separation. After separating, and getting some experience in the world, they appreciate them much more. So you may be seeing their parents through the filter of their separation.
I doubt you have any idea of how constructively self aware they are. I never had deep philosophical discussions with my kids’ friends, since that is obnoxious.
I also don’t know how you define better. I’ve gone further than my father did, but that was because I started at a higher level thanks to him. I’ve done different things from my parents and my kids are doing different things also, but it is not better or worse, just different.

[Swords_to_Plowshares]

My grandparents are basically saints. While all of their children were good people and most of their grandchildren were too, it’s hard to top them.

Just curious, for the OP’s data points, how old are we talking? Are all of the parents baby boomers? Older or younger than that?

[Boyo_Jim]

@Thudlow_Boink

…I’m pretty sure my parents are better people than I am, at least in the sense of making a positive impact on the world. For one thing, they worked hard and sacrificed to raise four good kids, while I haven’t had any of my own.

Here’s an example of how totally subjective “better” is. A whole lot of people from younger generations would say that having 4 kids is a bad thing, a drain on the planet’s resources, regardless of whether they turn out to be good citizens.

I don’t have kids either, in part because I decided I didn’t want to be responsible for putting kids through the kind of shit I went through. Does this make me better or worse than my parents? I think of it as better, OTOH if everyone followed my example the species would die out. But there’d still be oil reserves for the dolphin overlords of the future.

[raspberry_hunter]

@Sampiro

Neither was a cross burning racist but they were very definitely “from another era” in their views not just of blacks but of foreigners, Jews, gays, even such now quotidian things as divorced people or those who had kids out of wedlock. Their policy was basically courtesy- never intentionally be rude or, above all, mean to anybody who doesn’t deserve it, but at the same point they didn’t really accept them as equal to them.

Most of my friends today, both white and black and from all over the socioeconomic background, laugh at some of the things our parents, most of whom were intelligent people, would say and truly believed. It’s an enigma to us how smart people could have been that provincial. To a person most of us are far more open minded and tolerant of other people’s beliefs and how they live their life and other such stuff, and as I believe- for all it’s use as a buzzword- tolerance is good (m’kay), in that respect we’re better people.

OTOH, almost all of us (myself most certainly included) lack our parents’ work ethic

I really like this whole post, but I’m quoting the parts that particularly stuck out to me.

In addition to being more tolerant, I think I am more reasonable, interesting, self-aware, rational, and level-headed than my parents, not to mention significantly better at handling relationship conflict. So is my sister. However, I do not have one tenth of the crazy work ethic they did, and I do not think I would do half as well at handling the curve balls life threw them.