Boomers Never Learn

Don't expect them to modify their behavior

A woman discovers that her solipsistic Boomer mother is as unwilling to protect her granddaughters as she was to defend her daughter:

We were on a family holiday in Marbella when yet again it hit me: I can’t trust my own mother – ever. She’d offered to look after my seven-year-old daughter so I could visit the local market with my teenager. But when I got back to the villa, to my horror, Mum wasn’t there.

Instead, she had left Lily with her Spanish boyfriend, someone I’d only met a handful of times. Even worse, this was despite me repeatedly telling Mum not to leave Lily alone with him.

Aged 48, I felt a familiar surge of rage coursing through my body. Yet again, she had ignored my wishes.

Any good parent would be riled by this. It goes against every basic safeguarding rule to leave a child alone with someone you barely know, in particular a man. There are many mothers who don’t even trust their offspring with male carers in a professional setting such as a nursery.

But my fury was driven by far more than a single blip.

It stemmed from my own childhood, when for five years – from age seven to 12 – I was regularly abused by a man my mother left me alone with (a fact she was fully aware of when she decided to leave Lily with a virtual stranger)…

I never took that risk again. That day, Josh and I made a pact never to take even the slightest chance by letting my mother babysit.

There was another incident after that holiday, too.

When we organised a pool party for my 13-year-old and friends she’d made, I explained in advance that I had a safeguarding duty to all the guests, so photography of the girls in their swimsuits was banned.

To my horror, Mum flew into a vicious rage, yelling at me: ‘What do you think we are? Some kind of perverts?! You can’t do anything these days!’

Despite everything that happened, she still didn’t respect my point of view.

Now, if a Boomer won’t adjust her behavior in response to the abuse of her own daughter, what do you think the chances are that a Boomer is going to do so on the basis of a mere presentation of the facts?

I never waste any time even thinking about them. They’re fully-programmed NPCs with absolutely no capacity for reprogramming or reorienting. They’re not creatures of the world in which we live, they’re still living in one that has been gone for decades, as if they were material ghosts with political influence. Once you understand that, and more importantly, accept that, it’s much easier to deal with them.

Don’t trust them, don’t expect help from them, don’t ask for anything from them, and occasionally, they’ll surprise you to the upside. Which is great and all, but should never be taken as evidence that now, at long last, you can finally rely upon them.

This is the reality my generation has lived with for five decades. If the grandmother’s behavior surprises you in the least, then you simply haven’t been paying attention.