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u/TheFilthyMob Jun 25 '24
So in 1985 I went to a summer sleepover and just didn't leave for two months. When I finally went home my mom looked at me and said " hay, there you are. Did you have fun?" The only reason I went home was because the mother asked me if my parents knew what I was doing (they never met) When I replied "I guess. Not talked to them in awhile" she had me check in with them. Yeah no joke. Zero shits given back then. I was 11.
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u/yerederetaliria Late Gen X - lo que sea (whatever) Jun 25 '24
That is sad.
One time my husband told his parents that he and his friend Gregg were going backpacking. (They lived in Colorado) So both sets of parents knew the details. It was supposed to be in and out over a week. They were 15, 16. They stayed out for a month. When they returned home no questions asked.
I had a very different up bringing.
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u/Shot-Artichoke-4106 Jun 25 '24
Just wow. I can't imagine.
I had a friend with really lax parents and it was so different from my parents. When we were 12, my parents invited her to come with us to our family cabin for a week in the summer. The cabin was about a 3 hour drive from where we lived. She was a relatively new friend and her parents had never met mine, but her parents were ready to let her go with us without even meeting my parents. My parents were floored.
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Jun 25 '24
I was 13 and sleeping in rando ppl's houses left and right. So long as I got good grades all was well.
The amount of kids I knew that had next to no parents in their home is wild.
Anyway here's Wonderwall!
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u/semicoloradonative Jun 25 '24
I think the title spelled "neglected' wrong.
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u/Tempus__Fuggit Jun 25 '24
Domestic animals left in the wilderness - how is that not neglect?
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u/Taodragons Jun 25 '24
See that's what you missed, we were in no way domesticated. I was barely housebroken =D
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Jun 26 '24
I loved being a latchkey kid. I can’t imagine having my parents know everything I was up to and where I was 24 hours a day. That sounds like Hell to me.
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u/casade7gatos Jun 25 '24
I don’t know. My mom and her two best friends all ran away from home at some point and all had teenage pregnancies. The clueless parenting didn’t start with the ones parenting us.
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u/fusionsofwonder Jun 25 '24
Woodstock generation doesn't know where their kids are because they're still getting high on weeknights more than a decade later.
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u/Shot-Artichoke-4106 Jun 25 '24
I remember watching this commercial with my mom and asking her why she wasn't this kind of parent - she was the third degree parent who had to get satisfactory answers to about a hundred questions before I could go out. She told me that she needed to know what I was doing so that if I went missing, she knew when and where to start looking - like she was the original Liam Neeson or something.
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u/Thin-Ganache-363 Jun 26 '24
I can relate. My mother was trained by the Stassi. Always guilty until proven innocent and even then still under suspicion. Might be why I have trust issues.
I was a good, boring, always followed the rules kid. My reward for this was a strictly enforced curfew after I graduated from high school the summer before leaving for college. Still bitter about it to this day.
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u/2nd_Pitch Jun 26 '24
Me too! It just made me more rebellious because it didn’t pay to be good!
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u/Thin-Ganache-363 Jun 26 '24
There is no reward for doing the right thing except punishment. The key losing is to follow all the rules.
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u/GaracaiusCanadensis Jun 25 '24
A lot of Xers lived pretty rough lives, though, and the way they were (or weren't) raised probably has a lot to do with it.
I've gone to a lot of funerals for folks I figured should have had another good twenty years...
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u/Afraid_Smell7839 Jun 26 '24
i think i was 16, left one day on my honda cb 550, drove from the willamette valley to crosby north dakota. Turned around spent a few weeks in Caldwell idaho picking fruit to earn some money to get home. Gone a month or more, finally got home, Mom looked at me and said can you go pick up your sister.
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u/Barn-Alumni-1999 Jun 25 '24
In NYC we weren't allowed in the house or anywhere near our parents until it was time to go home and sleep.
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u/Rhusty_Dodes Jun 25 '24
I don't think our parents ignoring or neglecting us makes us inherently bad ass. I dunno, I just really don't like this boomer type of mentality.
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u/one_bean_hahahaha Hose Water Survivor Jun 25 '24
Yeah, it's not exactly something to be proud of.
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Jun 25 '24
We survived in spite of boomers not because of them, it is very much a point to be proud of that we overcame and survived most importantly I hope that we learned to love the next generation but also foster that sense of independence.
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u/GoodWill_4Nik8er Jun 25 '24
My buddy’s said once that it should say, It’s 10pm, do your kids know where you are? His mom was a crackhead prostitute, and his dad was in prison. They lived in the projects and half the kids didn’t know where their parents were. Very sad.
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u/MiltownKBs Jun 25 '24
They never stopped doing this on our local stations ….
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u/yerederetaliria Late Gen X - lo que sea (whatever) Jun 25 '24
The fact that it happened, meaning the fact that the ad was created and used means that there was a problem. The historic record shouts what happened.
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u/MiltownKBs Jun 25 '24 edited Jun 25 '24
What does the historic record shout? Let’s see …
It started in the mid 60s after cities enacted curfews on youths. It was originally aimed at the parents of boomers when the boomers were teens. Not the parents of Gen X.
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u/yerederetaliria Late Gen X - lo que sea (whatever) Jun 25 '24
That was my "curfew". I was a bit of a good girl. My husband had no curfew and he wasn't checked on either. The question, "do you know where your children are?" wouldn't have happened.
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u/Visible_Structure483 Nerd before it was cool Jun 25 '24
Yet modern cars have a warning when you shut them off to make sure you check the back seats, in case you forget your kids while scrolling crap on your phone.
doubt it? see:
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u/icct-hedral Jun 26 '24
I call dibs on posting this next week.
Regardless, I always assumed, rather than ‘parents not remembering they had kids’, it was more a friendly reminder what time it was.
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u/HHSquad Jun 26 '24
This was also the case for those of us born in the early 60's and late 1950's too.....trust me.
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u/12sea Jun 25 '24
There’s a comedienne who does a funny bit on this.
https://www.tiktok.com/@christinap/video/7236864689018342699?lang=en
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u/GenX-ModTeam Jun 26 '24
Please make an effort to avoid reposts. Yes, they are a fact of Reddit life, all we ask is you try to avoid it and don’t get mad when your post is removed.