“LOOK,” I protested,“ I can’t write about that stuff. There’s no empirical or statistical evidence for your claims. It’s too general; I’m sorry, but this is just mothers complaining about grown-up offspring! We can’t, like, just give the thumbs down to an entire generation!”
Afterwards, though, I reconsidered.
Hang on, I thought. These were mothers who’d usually cut their own throats rather than criticise their offspring in public. Something really had them riled.
Maybe there could be an article here, if I made it clear the stated concerns were based purely on anecdotal personal experiences in the family setting and behind the closed doors of the home.
I googled the issue online. I felt a twinge of surprise. Oddly, it seemed the mams’ complaints had traction. Certainly they were not that unusual.
They didn’t seem to be alone in the belief that many young adults - in this context, 20- and 30-somethings - and we’re speaking generally here and acknowledging there must of course be many exceptions - are the most entitled, obnoxious, selfish, callous, self-absorbed, self-serving and self-suiting generation that has ever lived.
So, for what it’s worth, 20- and 30-somethings, here is what a lot of your mothers think of you.
Let’s begin with a quote from a particularly disillusioned mother with several grown-up offspring: “I think individuals born in the ’90s onwards have a sense of entitlement. “They take credit for all they have achieved and blame their parents, families and schools for their failures or faults. They have an innate lack of any sense of responsibility and are totally blind when it comes to themselves.”
Ouch. So here goes:
What Your Mothers Secretly Think of You
1.You are self-absorbed, unhelpful and ruthlessly selfish
When a parent needs help or advice about something you can assist with, for example phone or IT problems, you are patronising and impatient.
You lightly accept what they do for you, but when you are called on to help them, you do it brusquely and with poor grace, making it clear how busy you are. You make a bit of a deal of it, don’t you? As a result the parents who did so much for you can find themselves reluctant to ask for your help with, well, anything.
2. You are mean with your money
You spend generously on yourselves when it comes to gifts, clothes, holidays and nights out. You expect nice gifts from your parents, yet when it’s your turn to buy… well, mothers report they are routinely disappointed, not to say embarrassed.
Don’t you understand that your mothers have been out in the world and know quality? Don’t you know that miserly offerings are a window into a miserly heart?
It happens to fathers too, the mothers report, although the fathers, they say, would sooner cut their own hearts out of their chests than admit to the hurt.
And, by the way, are you saving?
3. You are dismissive, disrespectful and often quite rude to your mothers
Don’t assume for one moment they don’t notice, don’t understand or are not offended by this behaviour.
They do and they are.
Unlike you, though, your mother still cares, so she will usually say nothing in case she ends up saying something you’d both regret.
4. You don’t listen
You wait impatiently for your mother to stop talking because you believe she has nothing of value to say. Believe it or not, it’s quite easy (even for mothers) to tell when an adult child is not listening. They say that you listen to nothing they say, and automatically dismiss whatever you cannot avoid hearing.
5. You don’t know everything
Patronising, speaking over or impatiently interrupting your mother is not on. This woman has already lived a good bit more of life than you and your bad manners merely serve to spotlight how rude you are and how much you don’t know. Accept there is a lot you still have to learn - some of it from your parents.
6. You don’t make them dinner!
These women cooked for you most days of your lives. Now you have your own home and kitchen, ask yourself: how often does your mother eat a meal at your table that you’ve cooked?
7. You don’t spend time with your parents unless you’re looking for something
Now you’ve effectively squeezed everything you can out of them, you treat them as superfluous, boring, and not worth your time. Can this really be true?
8. You lack gratitude for what your parents did for you
You believe it’s their job… that their job is giving and that yours is taking. How convenient. You therefore never feel the need to give back.
9. You make way for nobody
Not even the old lady with the walking stick trying to cross the road as your car approaches. You come first. Always. So keep driving at her - there you go!
10. You are rude
You are surly. You are ineffective at social interaction or basic day-to-day communication. This is because you spend so much time on your phone and so little time talking to actual people. It’s truly shocking how self-absorbed and unhelpful some of you appear to customers at the business coal-face.
11.You have no real sense of responsibility towards anyone or anything but yourself
(a) Your word is your bond - until something more pressing, more convenient or more fun turns up. Then your promises are thrown under the bus. This happens regularly.
(b) When you’re ill you expect to be at the centre of maternal care and attention, even remotely. Oddly, though, when Mam or Dad become ill, you may not check in to see how they are, let alone offer to collect prescriptions or get their groceries. In many cases, I’m told, they’d be lucky to get a text from you.
12. You overestimate your own abilities
This leads to the mistaken belief that you don’t need to make an effort at anything, not even your job.
Here’s some relevant information on this topic. It’s increasingly believed that rearing a child in an atmosphere of constant praise, catering to their every whinge and whim and allowing them to make the choices does not, in fact, result in a well-rounded individual with healthy self-esteem. It results in a narcissist. Are you one? If you truly want to be good at what you do, be humble, work hard and practice. Then be humble, work hard and practice some more. Success at nearly everything mostly comes down to hard work and effort.
13. Believe it or not, you do not constitute the red-hot centre of the universe
Stop putting yourself first all the time. Get to work on time and work hard. You are not there as a favour to your employer. Learn to take a joke and accept reasonable, constructive criticism from a boss or colleague without immediately running off to ring mammy or file a dignity-in-the-workplace claim. God almighty. Grow up. Make way for other people, at least some of the time.
14. Your general knowledge can be appalling
Your grasp of your own history, heritage, culture and lineage is often almost non-existent, because you’ve given up reading and all you know is what you look at on global social media platforms.
Social media snippets, celebrity posts, podcasts and snapshot news summaries are certainly ways to pick up bits of information, but they will never replace reading as a way to learn and know things that will come in useful someday. Try picking up a book or reading a newspaper. You might learn something.
******
So 20- and 30-somethings of today, is this you? This is what many of your mothers think.
Being mothers, they are the first to declare that it’s all or partly their fault because they did too much for you and made too much of you.
However, they also feel it’s beyond time you all got over yourselves and grew up.
Note: The other thing is that this perception of your generation is not restricted to a small bunch of disenchanted Irish mammies.
There is a strong perception out there that the 20- and 30-somethings of today are - generally speaking and with inevitable exceptions - the most entitled, obnoxious, selfish, unhelpful, callous, self-absorbed and self-serving generation that has ever lived.
Take a good look at yourselves.
Is this really you?
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