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Comment by ipv6ipv4 | Hacker News Reader

Often, traumatized individuals traumatize their children. So it’s at least a somewhat self perpetuating phenomenon that may not decay away over generations. As a result, it seems reasonable to assume that different groups could have different prevalences of traumatized individuals.

How does the prevalence of traumatized individuals characterize a society as a whole? For example, it seems that a society where the majority are traumatized should be fundamentally different from a society where a minority are traumatized.

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My mom keeps talking about how much she wants grandchildren. My brother decided the trauma stops with him, so until he's sure he wouldn't repeat any of dad's harmful behaviors, he doesn't want to have kids. I'm only just now getting to a point where I've done enough work that anyone wouldn't be crazy to want to date me, but I'm doing it at an age where biological kids are less and less likely.

So I guess that's one thing that might characterize society: Lots of frustrated would-be grandparents.

> So I guess that's one thing that might characterize society: Lots of frustrated would-be grandparents.

Perhaps also many alienated grandparents, confused, hurt, and angry that their children don't want them involved in their grandchildren's lives.

https://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20230620/dealing-with-a...

https://www.alienatedgrandparentsanonymous.com/

The list of "Reasons for Estrangement" in that first article is sorely lacking in anything that acknowledges the parent might be at fault.

It really does seem like the sort of article an estranged parent would find extremely satisfying to read. Remember, it's someone else turning your child against you!

Estranged parents seem to think everything was fine and then suddenly changed, and usually "for no reason."

I had four friends, separately, individually, reach out to me and say, "I know this isn't actually my business, and I wonder whether I should even say anything, but why does your dad think it's OK to talk to you like he does?"

I then spent three more years telling him each time he belittled me or spoke to me like a child that he could either speak to me with the common decency every single person deserves just by virtue of being human, or I would prevent him from speaking to me altogether.

It was never fine, but growing up in his house, I never knew any different was possible. I thought that was just how I deserved to be treated.

It took other people to tell me it wasn't OK, and had never been OK, but I guarantee if you ask him, he will tell you he has no idea what happened, and will certainly blame anyone but himself.

I think there's a lot of self-selection going on with the cathegory of estranged parents who blame their kids. If you're the sort of person to reflect on your behaviour, take responsibility and change it because you realise you're hurting others, you're a lot less likely to end up with estranged kids in the first place.

If it does happen anyway, you're probably also less likely to be self-soothing with listicles about how it's definitely the fault of your ungrateful kids and whoever turned them against you.

I hope you're in a better spot now, and I'm glad you found the strength to demand better.

There wouldn't be any way to collect this data, but if you could, I guarantee the overwhelming majority of "apologies" from parent to child over the course of these relationships would start with, "I'm sorry you..." rather than, "I'm sorry I..."

I'd be pleasantly surprised to find out sincere apologies ever happened.

I would probably try talking to my parents again if they actually gave me an apology for something they did and left it at a straight owning of their error.

In my family of origin apologies usually started by owning something the apologizer did, but invariably moved on to a "but" that made the recipient the butt of the apology.

This is the reason I have a relationship with my mom and not my dad. She did eventually try to understand why she thought the things she did were OK at the time she did them (and that's actually been helpful for me to understand over time), but she began by apologizing and saying anything that affected me the way it did was wrong for her to do, even if she didn't realize it at the time.

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