They’re Leaving the Table
Yesterday I spent my day writing a post. Today I need to rethink it.
Sunday, I spent over two hours talking with my younger brother. It was about our family, and then it morphed into family in general.
I’ve spent time thinking about the days of the past, and I’m realizing as I gather my thoughts that the days of the past weren’t so good for everyone.
I’m a product of my parents, and the boomer generation. My parents lived in a simpler time and yet were closely connected to two world wars and the Depression. This affected how parents raised their children. While others I knew got cars, and credit cards, I didn’t have that experience. I grew up in a middle-class home and lived a simple life with little travel. But we never went without the essentials.
My parents had talked before they married about the option of my mother working versus staying home full time. They chose the one-income option. This turned out to be the choice that enabled my mother to be at home with my younger sister, who had cardiac issues. It was the right choice.
It also meant that we learned things that other children didn’t get a chance to learn in the same way.
I learned to dress up, go out to eat, and display proper table manners in public, and my mother didn’t have to deal with her kids having a meltdown in a store. It was a different time. It was a time during which there was more social and familial civility. We gathered for family dinner and ate what was served up. That was the plus side.
When I think about the not-so-good-days of the past, I think about all the suppression that was occurring in so many homes. The song “Saturday Morning Confusion,” recorded by Bobby Russell, keeps going through my head. This wasn’t my family; it was many families. This thought causes me to return to all the secrets that were held by my generation and older generations: the physical, emotional, sexual, and other abuse that got hidden because bad things didn’t happen to good children, or in nice families like yours and mine. Oh, what lies were told! The reality of it all is that the family isn’t what it once was. My generation, like my parents and those before, didn’t tell the secrets of that past, and so they festered until the 1980s rolled around. What good old days?
Let’s face it. As the above song speaks of it, Daddy tells his children that Daddy is ill after going out for a beer with the boys—a beer that went into several beers—and now he’s dealing with a hangover instead of enjoying the kids he loves. Meanwhile, Mom is trying to make it all good. It wasn’t good then, and the kids had to deal with the issue of Dad drinking, even though he knew he shouldn’t have gone out with the guys. The confusion of Saturday is that kids were forced into dealing with dysfunctional parenting, and the show was the break from reality.
How it Worked
There was a time when conversations happened around a dining room table, and we’d learn to hold differing points of view and remain civil with each other.
Children learned to listen, and to explore differing viewpoints, and while it might have gotten heated, it would remain civil (well, in mostly functional families). People held respect for each other (well, for the most part—like I said, in families that understood healthy boundaries).
Children can’t be guaranteed that their parents will have the tools to raise them to think and to become peacemakers and tolerant. We’ve lost the ability to communicate with each other and to hold differing views.
Researcher Jonathan Haidt nails the issues down in his multiple books that cover the effects of social media and the smartphone on Western societies’ children and adults.
Families have left the dinner table for life in cars as they run from lesson to lesson to create the child that might look good on paper for the application that will hopefully get them into higher education. But the child is rude and spoiled, as well as anxious. The result is a child who has little respect for others, or the ability to manage themselves in life.
OK, we’re not sweeping the issues that were once swept under the carpet or tossed into pretty box concealers to not be discussed anymore. We’re not holding conversations.
Now the concealment is all about a different type of neglect, and the old abuses are still present because we haven’t wiped them out. I think Bobby Russell needs to add some verses to that piece of music.
We’ve become connected to devices and disconnected from each other.
Did the damage of Covid and children being cut off from each other help or hinder? Did it help our families?
My point is that the family is dismantling itself, and that means society is coming apart because we’re not able to hold conversations like we once could.
If we can’t talk in our homes, and learn to hold civil discussions at the dinner table, how will we do it in classrooms or boardrooms? How will we come together as we must to grapple with society’s need to come together? We scream for world peace, and yet we can’t set our smartphones down to smile and engage with the person next to us while out and about. Children might be texted to come to the table rather than being a part of getting things on the table—if that even happens.
Let Op!
At this point in time, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had close calls at a train station because someone is not watching when they’re out and about. If I get bumped, my white cane that should serve as a warning is disregarded. I’ve stopped being polite. “Let op!” means watch out or look out or pay attention—you get the English idea of the Dutch term. “Let op!” is now my response to rude travellers glued to phones. More confusion, and this is why I’m not able to be sure I’ll be safe in a train station.
This is about two things: parenting a generation and setting some common-sense boundaries, as well as manners for people.
As a therapist, I shouldn’t take things too far. As a member of society, I’m excused.
As a therapist, I hear the sad tales of families that don’t work, people seeking a healthy relationship and hoping to get it all fixed. The solution is conversation on all levels. It begins with one person saying hello and smiling at someone they don’t know. Maybe, just maybe, we can get to less confusion.
