Sometimes, the generation gap overwhelms me...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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You were born when I was 36. It’s not an extremely advanced age for motherhood, but it’s far enough above average to make me contemplate the following:

When you were born I already had almost two decades of adulthood behind me. In contrast, when my mother had me she was barely out of her teenage years – and there’s always been a generation gap between us. She hated my hippie and punk styles, and never shared my tastes in music, even though so much of the music I love is as much the music of her youth as it is mine. The year I was born it was still under twenty years since the end of WW2, as recent a memory as the fall of the Berlin wall is for us now.

You are four now, nearly five in fact. When I was four, the world was an entirely different place. Colour television was the next big thing, and it wasn’t till I was about 13 that we finally got our own. Cassette tapes were a new invention. This was the year of the Summer of Love, Sergeant Pepper, Vietnam and the Six Day War. Men had not yet walked on the moon. No one had heard of SUVs, DVDs or MP3s, IPods and CDs.

You don’t know a world without mobile phones, digital cameras, home computers or the internet. People my age can still clearly remember a time when things like these were little more than the wishful fantasies of science fiction.

I went through the entire school and university process without going near a computer. I first started using one – an Amstrad - when I was 25, and that was early compared to many people I know. When I first surfed the net and got onto e-mail (about 1995) I was in my early thirties. At four, like most children your age, you already know how to use a mouse, and we created an e-mail address in your name the week you were born.

When you’re 14, I will be 60. My mother hit 60 the year you were born! What will you be into? Will I be able to handle it if I don’t like it?

What will our particular generation gap be like?

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You will, in all probability, HATE what passes for music at that time. I swore to myself that I would never bitch about what the young people listen to after listening to my parents and their never-ending complaints about the music that I liked (and still do like). I cannot bear to listen to what my high school senior era nephew enjoys.

Why, yes. Yes, I am an old fart.

I’m 55.

3

I’m 43 and I really like the music my teenage daughter listens to. I think this is a good period for popular music, maybe the best since the early '70’s. I love Green Day and Chingy. Even the treacly pop of Kelly Clarkson is better than comparable singers of the past. Music I don’t have a problem with.

For me it is the body art/modification. Piercings seem to be going away, but tattoos continue strong. The percentage of people who look good with a tattoo is tiny, and these people are usually attractive already. I shudder to think of what I might have tattooed on my body at 17.

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My math says you’ll be 50 years old when your daughter turns 14. Does that make you feel any better?

5

Hee, I must be going senile if I got that wrong. 50, yes. It’s my son, BTW. :slight_smile:

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Maybe it won’t be so bad! My granddaughter will turn 14 this summer. She’s constantly borrowing my tapes of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, etc. As to what modern stuff she listens to when I’m not around, I’m clueless.

Since I’m the only other rodeo/equestrian fan in the family and an easy mark for her hints, we frequently travel to such affairs. She always makes sure my case of cassette tapes is in the truck, and never worries me with the radio.

Her dad, on the other hand, back in his day…well, no need to concern you with that. You’ve still got some time. :smiley:

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Heh. My mother was 36 when I was born. We listen to Carol King together, and I’ve stolen all of her Simon and Garfunkel CDs to burn myself copies. My mom doesn’t like the Beatles as much as I do. I still have all my old Elvis cassettes (I had a cassette player! I wonder if that will make me old in your daughter’s eyes.) I did my first Elvis impression when I was eight. (Although that was mostly my dad’s fault. I was Daddy’s little girl, he would have been 61 this year.) The music’s not all that bad, obviously. Just influence her. Play music all the time, and she’ll get used to it. I like my mom’s music not only because of the good vocals and instruments, but because it’s familiar to me. So if it’s music you’re worried about, corrupt her when she’s young.

As for the singers of today, well, most of them are pretty good. I happen not to like a lot of rap, because most of the stuff that’s on TV is demeaning to women, but the rest of my musical tastes are based strictly on talent, and you can’t truly control that.

You do have a heads up on the technology gap. You know how to use a computer. The main activity a lot of older parents can’t do nowadays is use computers. By knowing how to maneuver yourself around the internet, she doesn’t have much of a heads up on you in that area. My mother will never be able to function a computer without my help or extensive training, although my dad was a techno whiz. So she missed a lot of good, pre-technology things. So did her peers. I think the e-mail address at birth is really cute, but unnecessary. I didn’t even get my first e-mail address until I was five, which makes me young but it was to help me learn how to use a computer. Just don’t let her spend all her time on it. Let her learn how nice it is to stay in the sunshine first.

On piercings and tattoos: Stomach piercings are still very popular, and I know a few people, including a teacher or two, who have nose piercings. Other than that, and the traditional ears, you’re likely to get weird looks. Tattoos are cool. Sprry, but I fully look forward to permenantly marring my body with a design of my choice. However, I’m slightly confused with my peers about this. Why do they insist on getting tattoos in places that will sag in twenty or so years? Not me, I’m planning ahead. The tattoo fad was extremely popular in the nineties, so much so that three of my 8th grade teachers, all mid-twenties, had them. So that won’t just be your daughter’s generation.

OTOH, I have an aunt who’s 44 and recently had her first, but returned to work after three months. I pity her. I think the younger you are when you have your child the less sleep you need, and therefore the more physically prepared you are. So while older parents shouldn’t necessarily be worried about the age differences and such, it’s very physically taxing. Most children get a lot better after age five though, if only in how much you have to chase them.

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When I first read that paragraph, I thought you were talking about her first tattoo!

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I was 34 when my son was born, 37 with my daughter. He is 12 now, and is into Queen and similar stuff, as well as Green Day; my 9 year old likes Hillary Duff, but she also borrows and sings along with my John Prine. So far, they think piercings and tattoos are stupid, except that my daughter longs for her ears to be pierced, as long as it is painless and requires no maintenance. When I gave her a detailed description of my experience getting my ears pierced at 16, she decided she could wait a few years. They are old enough now to discuss the culture shock/generation gap stories; they seem to consider us as repositories of history. (You saw Kennedy killed/the moon landings/the fall of the wall etc? Wow!)

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GAH! The Berlin Wall fell YESTERDAY, practically! How can it be history already?!

I am NOT getting old! I am NOT getting old! I am NOT getting old!

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Some encouraging experiences then.

Music-wise, at this early stage we are still able to mould his tastes. Most of the music he chooses to listen to is the Beatles and Santana, to the point of obsessiveness. I’ve played him Coldplay and Dido but he still prefers the oldies.

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Hell, I don’t even like today’s music, and I’m 16! :stuck_out_tongue:

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Just this past week my ex’s 15 y.o. son stopped by while I was playing the piano. So I played “I Want To Hold Your Hand” by The Beatles for him. He said he never heard it before. My jaw dropped. Then I realized the song is 41 years old.

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OK - a question for those of you who have bridged the generation gap - was this achieved by not trying too hard or was there anything you did?

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I’m 17 (well on the 26th I will be :wink: ) and I have to admit that not only do I have a metal bar through my navel but I have a tattoo on my hip. It is my sons name but nevertheless.

As for music, my favourites don’t include The Beatles or The BeeGees or anything under the rap genre…but I write this I am listening to a mixture of Stevie Wright, Daddy Cool, Metallica, Gwen Stefani, The Eagles and Disturbed.

Two movies that I loathe are The Blob and Miss Congeniality 2. Two movies that I absolutely love are Breakfast At Tiffany’s and Underworld.

Mt clothes really aren’t that different to my mothers. She is 43 and we constantly borrow each others clothes, shoes, bags…anything really…I keep her informed on the trends, she buys the items I love but can’t afford and i borrow them later.

I visualise the gap as more of a line graph…

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I think I’ll add in there that my mum and I are both size 8’s and she looks more like 23 than 43…

17

My kids are 15 and 12. We all like the same music; i.e, we listen to Linkin Park, Metallica, Audioslave, Pearl Jam, Stevie Ray Vaughan, the Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, and so forth. We’ve taught them to appreciate the older as well as new music. While they don’t always appreciate some of the older stuff, they like most of it. I also taught my kids to appreciate the old blues and classical music. Again, they don’t always like all of the songs, but there are many they like.

I have to say, it freaked my then 10 yr old son out when I asked to borrow his Linkin Park CD. Now he asks to borrow our CDs and vice versa.

I’ll be 41 this month and my husband will be 42 in September. I don’t think of the “gap” being as large as between us and our kids as it was between my mother and I. It’s pretty much the same with our friends who have kids our age. I don’t know, maybe times are different; or maybe because we are constantly bombarded with information we seem to be more “up” on things. I can’t explain it.

I guess I’m glad that our kids appreciate the same things as us. I didn’t ever want to be one of those parent who screamed “turn that trash down”, and I can proudly say I’m not.

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As far as music goes, it can go both ways - my dad listens to absolute dreck that I can’t stand, but I still love oldies. He thinks the pinnacle of music, in any time period, is the BeeGees. I think he listens to trash.

My mom listens to trash, too. When I have to go anywhere with her I always have to change it from Soft Rock!!! to more traditional Mexican folk music. Again, they all listen to trash.

(FTR, I am a music snob and my mom had me when she was 37. I am now 17.)

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My mom and dad were 38 and 36, respectively, when I was born. There’s a decent amount of overlap in the music we like (meaning I’m also into some older stuff). Mostly, this is the product of them raising me to be an Angry Young Liberal, as they were when they were young. I dig Old Hippy Music.

And because I’m a young arrogant punk, I’ve got to do this just for jayjay: I’m in college, and don’t remember the Berlin wall as anything but in history books. :smiley:

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sob