When did it become culturally alright to air a family's dirty laundry to the general public? I've had a habit of blaming the copious amounts of Jane Austen movies I watched as a child for my deeply ingrained habit of segregating the worlds of my family and my friends. If something’s happening in my family life that upsets me, I never share it with any friend, no matter how much like family they might seem themselves. I have a strong sense of loyalty to the privacy my family deserves and take my responsibility to maintain that privacy very seriously. I doubt more and more the reason for my reservations to share personal stories, but my actions remain steadfast.
Today, a friend of mine who has, many times, complained to me of her mothers behavior, posted on facebook that "after a long screaming and crying battle with my mother in which she called me a "bitch," a "worthless piece of shit," a "whore," the "worlds worst daughter" and told me to "f***ing back off" i won. i am now officially signed up for an online drivers course." While I can't imagine my mother calling me any of those things, I would never consider sharing it with anyone, particularly in such a public format. When reading the post, I cringed with embarrassment for my friend that she would publicly make her mother look bad, although I'm sure I'm one of few who cares, a theory reinforced by the comment: "ahhaha i love your family." Another friend of mine frequently refers to her mother as a Nazi. Her mother is a wonderful, reasonable person, but my friend simply cannot see her as anything but tyrannical.
It's impossible to know if my friend is paranoid or her mother is crazy behind closed doors, but the fact that she regularly insults her mother and calls her names behind her back makes me incredibly uncomfortable for her in the same way the guests of a dinner party would silently squirm if one among them suddenly began to eat their salad with their hands. It's a sheer awkwardness out of a breach of social decorum.
But my friends aren't just rude to their parents to me, their insulting to their own parents. A different friend habitually calls his parents "Bitch." I'm certainly not stilted and Victorian with my parents, but I couldn't imagine ever using vulgarity with them. My peers simply don't limit how they talk to their parents. This and disappearance of the what-is-apporpriate filter make a more familiar, but sadly unstructured culture. Maybe it's just furthering the idea that we're all equal, but I like the inequalities. I appreciate seeing my parents and others I respect and speak to with deference as role models. I don't know how this shift between, the "Yes, mother I'll run along and play" of 50 years ago and the "Hey bitch, will you come pick me up?" of my peers. Maybe the middle ground I'm trying to stand on is unnecessary, but I'm not willing to sacrifice the propriety of older social structures.
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