Are your grandparents and parents nice or tolerant people?

flicker , 1 month ago

My Dad died almost 20 years ago and I went NC with my abusive mother at about the same time. I never knew my grandparents.

I wanted to add my data to the set, even if it doesn’t help much.

PrincessLeiasCat , 1 month ago

I’m sorry, OP. I come from a family like this and the best decision I made was to go away for University and make friends whose views and values aligned better with mine.

Same thing when I found a job. I “made” my own (non-biological) family, if that makes sense. I see my blood relatives at holidays and other events, say the required hellos and goodbyes, and leave when I’m ready.

I don’t have time for that shit. And I know it’s hard to see people you love behave this way, but you obviously turned out differently and that means that you can do better…and maybe even inspire some of the younger folks in your family in the process.

snek_boi , 1 month ago

Check out Christian Welzel’s work on how values have changed over time. The world is becoming more secular and more democratic. Secular in this context means that religion plays less and less of a role in every day life. Democratic in this context means that they believe everyone should be able to pursue their interests and we should have a system that increases all of our capabilities to pursue our interests.

An implication of adopting democratic values is that you understand that your identity is not defined by “white”, “able-bodied”, or whatever, but by the fact that we are aware. By doing this, you’re not giving special treatment to your in-group (whichever it may be), but you’re considering all of humanity (and all aware beings) as equals and as a group that you belong to. Cosmopolitanism is an example of this stance.

Something else that is happening is that the world is becoming more reflexive. Check out Anthony Giddens’ texts on this.

But, to answer your question directly, yes, grandparents and parents are generally less welcoming and less tolerant.

Don_Dickle , 1 month ago

Well my dad was chill until he would see a nazi because he is a ww2 vet or know a person beating their wives or anything similar. He always felt since he fought for the world that it was his so called destiny to make society better. Don’t know if that is chill or not but I can say that while he may yell and stuff he would never do anything. It was always mom who spanked us with a belt when we fucked up.

sharkfucker420 , 1 month ago

None of them are obviously bigoted but all of them are complacent at the very least and some of them are certainly internally bigoted and it seeps out

30p87 , 1 month ago

My dad couldn’t be cooler. My grandmother and all her friends are very chill too. My grandfather is sometimes grumpy and weird about stuff, but shuts up or changes his mind about it pretty quickly. My mother, and probably that whole part of the family, is pretty conservative-right. Not very nice.

dependencyinjection OP , 1 month ago

I wish I had a cool grandad and I am happy yours are cool.

vfreire85 , 1 month ago

more or less. my grandparents are already dead, but as far as i remember the last one living of them which i had contact with (my mother’s mother) was ok with lgbtq+ people (as far as defending their right to marriage) and quite concerned with the rights of disabled, but was somehow racist towards black and indigenous people, and could not stand demonstrations of social movements (i.e. sit-ins from landless workers and squatters, strikes and the like). my parents go about the same, but my mom is much less racist.

RBWells , 1 month ago

Mine are old, but I have in-law and ex-out-law old people around and it’s a mixed bag. Certainly nobody who would complain about the mix of Olympic athletes, but ex MOL will complain about welfare queens even though she herself got welfare to get through nursing school and has to know that statistically that’s how most people use it. And they will gather and whine.

I think my kids see me as progressive, their dad as actively and harmfully regressive, their stepdad (my husband) as old and not able to keep up with change, too conservative but not hateful.

Fondots , 1 month ago

My mom is nice and tolerant, she’s pretty much the archetypal mom, she’s friends with everyone, caring, etc. she doesn’t always “get” some of the more modern “woke” ideas like trans gender identities, institutional racism, etc. but she makes an effort to understand them and generally keeps an open mind, and probably most importantly understands that she doesn’t necessarily need to “get” something to be accepting of it. As an example, one of my sister’s best friends since childhood is some sort of nonbinary, and my mom had a really hard time wrapping her head around they/them pronouns, and just kind of generally didn’t understand it. That said, she still makes an honest attempt to use the correct pronouns, and understands that regardless of how they refer to themselves, what they look like, etc. it’s still the same person my sister has been hanging out with since preschool, who is always welcome in our home and is essentially regarded as her 3rd child, and that’s really the important thing.

My dad, in general, I’d say is somewhat begrudgingly tolerant. I suspect that if he wasn’t stuck with my mom, my sister, and me he probably would have gotten sucked down some alt right Fox news rabbit hole, but since we’ve all been around he’s kind of accepted that he’s wrong, but hasn’t necessarily gone so far as to try to be right. He’s kind of the picture of “old-person racist” he doesn’t outright dislike people of different races, but he doesn’t try very hard to see past stereotypes either. As far as being nice, in general he’s awkward, not unpleasant but not really someone who’s oodles of fun to talk to, but when he gets a bug up his ass about something he’s an asshole.

My grandfather on my mother’s side died before I was born, everything I’ve ever heard about him makes him sound like a fun, nice guy, though people often don’t like to talk ill of the dead, so hard to say. As far as how tolerant he was or wasn’t, I can’t really say, the two data points I have are that

1. He’d loudly complain about the “dagos” when the local Italian church had their feast because people would come in from out of town and just kind of have picnics on any open patch of grass including their front lawn and leave a bunch of trash behind, and really while the slur was unnecessary, I can totally get why that would upset him. He didn’t have animosity towards Italians in general, it just happened that the out of towners littering on his lawn were Italian.
2. My mom played with black kids growing up, and was kind of surprised when she got older that the civil rights movement was a big deal because she lived through it and she never remembered there being any fuss about the black people in town, so at the very least my grandparents weren’t outwardly racist in her youth.

Beyond that it’s kind of hard to say.

My grandmother on that side I wouldn’t exactly say was nice, she was a loud, cranky busybody, and by most accounts was pretty much all her life. I may be a little unfair to her because her personality and mine just didn’t jive very well, but still I think most people could agree that she was a little extra. She also got a bit racist in her old age, and it’s hard to say if it was just the dementia talking or not. She did live a pretty interesting life, traveled a bit, and had a pretty active social life, so at least some people found her pleasant to be around.

On my dad’s side, my grandmother died when I was a kid. She was always very nice, I can’t say how tolerant she was, that just never really came up. That said, she had been a drinker for much of her life, and from what I understand her kids from different marriages got treated pretty differently, and she was pretty nasty to one of my dad’s half sisters, doted on another, and my dad was kind of somewhere in the middle, and some of that favoritism kind of spilled over to my generation, she never treated my sister or I badly, but I can see now that she favored my cousins over us a bit.

My grandfather is probably the most interesting case here. He was very much one of God’s own prototypes. He had a lot of personality, and was never one to shy away from a fight or argument, so if he was nice kind of depended on if he liked you or not. He was a bit of a womanizer, so on one hand he could be at least superficially nice when he wanted to be, but also didn’t necessarily respect women the way he should have, though he was never violent or abusive to them.

As far as tolerance goes, there were plenty of people out there of all colors, creeds, and classes that he didn’t like for a great many reasons, some good, some not so good, but I never once heard him make a disparaging remark about someone’s race. Having served in the Pacific in WWII, he did have sort of a weird grudge against Japan that he never let go of, but it was more against the county of Japan itself, not of japanese people, not of japanese countries, and certainly not against japanese Americans. Terms like “colored” or “jap” never quite left his vocabulary, but they were never said with any malice, they were just a holdover from a time when those words were more acceptable.

He worked as a bus driver for most of his life. On one of his routes, there was a stop near a business that employed a lot of black women. There are still some older black women in the area who remember him for driving the bus because he was the only driver who would wait at that stop to make sure they could catch the bus when they got off work because the bus came at the same time they would be leaving, other drivers would just keep driving if they weren’t there when the bus came.

I doubt he ever thought too deeply about this, but given his age, he would have started driving a bus at around the same time the civil rights movement was really picking up steam and when bus boycotts and freedom riders and such were happening in other parts of the country (were from the north and the local buses had never been segregated in our area.) which is kind of wild to think about.

He ended up in a nursing home in his last years, had a black roommate for a while that he got along great with, there was a lot of black staff there that he spoke highly of and they all seemed to get a kick out of him (he was probably one of the more cognitively with-it, and certainly one of the most ambulatory patients there, coupled with his naturally big personality he was kind of a novelty, and he honestly kind of thrived in a nursing home environment, he didn’t have to worry about cooking or cleaning and he thought that was pretty much the best thing ever)

intensely_human , 1 month ago

If your grandma grew up post WW2 then she did not grow up during Nazi Germany.

I know that’s just one detail but you got it wrong and it makes me wonder if you aren’t highly motivated to misinterpret what she says.

Have you tried directly telling her how you’re hearing what she’s saying, instead of going straight to the sarcasm?

southsamurai , 1 month ago

Mine are dead

Maeve , 1 month ago

hug

shinigamiookamiryuu , 1 month ago

Mother: Had a very old timey demeanor, perhaps due to her age when it all happened. Was nice but also had that obligatory TV Land level of strictness/sternness. Surprisingly understanding of issues of race, religion, disability, etc. but I had to come out of the closet several times since she didn’t really understand asexuality, which I guess based on her upbringing in the world’s most interesting place is understandable. She also remarked some of the traditions I picked up pieces of later in life seemed convoluted, though did not elaborate on this commentary.

Father: Very different from my mum aside from being from a different part of the same area. He was carefree and I guess nice, but, for technical reasons, also distant from me. It was a very “implied love” type of dynamic. He was tolerant of almost everyone, but if someone were to call our family “all that and a bag of chips”, he consistently considered me the bag of chips, and the weird salt and vinegar kind, to use an analogy. He also showed signs of being annoyed with my special needs.

Grandfather: Most considerate person ever. He gets a perfect score in love and tolerance, even if he seemed quietly upset at my less-than-worldly habits.

Other grandparents: Never knew them that well, if at all.

Vanth , 1 month ago

Asking for things to be like when she was younger, to which I asked if she was a fan of Nazi Germany as she grew up post WWII.

Uh, what? Why the hell would you equate growing up in Germany after WWII with Nazis?

I guess I am wondering how can I come from a family that seemingly has no compassion for anybody and even less empathy for anybody different than them.

Maybe start with yourself? Recognize change is difficult, nostalgia is comfortable, and for someone who grew up pre-internet by several decades, the current world is probably overwhelming at times.

Your family’s comments on the number of black athletes and on paralympics sound sus, but you don’t exactly present yourself as a beacon of inclusivity either.

Self-reflection is a great place to start to grow empathy and understanding of others. Or to discover for oneself when it’s time to cut losses.

dependencyinjection OP , 1 month ago

So the Nazi comment wasn’t so much Germany, but the fact that she thinks the world is broken now because we like to be inclusive and recognise our failings. I was merely pointing out that her era tried to kill all Jewish people.

I don’t think being inclusive should extend to hate speech against people of colour of disabled people, if that makes me exclusionary then I guess I am happy to exclude those antiquated views.

Self reflection is kinda why I made this post. To see how other people might handle these situations better than I clearly do.

Vanth , 1 month ago

“Her era” didn’t try to kill all Jewish people though. She was a child at a point in time after WWII. You’re trying to explain her entire personality with a falsehood. Why?

Non-Nazis can be racist. Sounds like she may be one such person. Still doesn’t mean she’s a Nazi.

dependencyinjection OP , 1 month ago

I think there is some confusion here and that’s on me for not being clearer.

I wasn’t referencing Nazis for any reason other than to show that things are not as bad as they were when she was growing up.

Trying to stop them reminiscing over a time that was much worse than it is now. Like if they want to complain that just stop oil protestors are horrible people and they didn’t have them in her era, I just wanted to remind that she grew up in a bombed out shell of a country just to hatred against one group of people.

ulkesh , 1 month ago

My mom is. That’s about it. My grandparents are all passed now, but they were mostly either racist, or highly opinionated with little regard for evidence.

AceFuzzLord , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I don’t have any living ones, but at least on my mom’s side they seem to have been pretty nice people. Can’t say much about my grandpa in his elderly age since he died when I was fairly young, but my grandma was sweet, whether she was just at home or out and about.

Can’t say much for my grandpa on my dad’s side since I don’t remember him, but from what I’ve heard from stories from my parents, he may not have been the nicest person in general. Definitely glad I didn’t grow up with him because I remember a story my dad told of him breaking a dish at his house and then hiding in a closet, not knowing how he’d react to the broken dish or something like that. Something like that. Thankfully my dad is absolutely nothing like how his dad sounded. And my grandma on his side didn’t seem much better, considering when my mom was pregnant with my oldest brother she tried to get my dad to ditch her.

Edit:

I’ve been told before that my mom absolutely wouldn’t let me or my older brothers be alone with my grandpa on my dad’s side.

Edit Edit:

As for tolerant, I can’t speak for any of them that much, but I at least know my grandpa on my dad’s side had to have some degree of tolerance considering he was gay and at one point had a partner. I assume being married to my grandma was more of one of those societal pressures back then. Just getting married in general, even if it ends in a divorce like their marriage did.