Money knows no faces

@chaski Said

All my money has faces on it.

@Eaglebauer Said

I always hate it when people who don't have children pontificate on what it's like to have children and raise them. Regardless of how well you do for yourself, if you have children and are a normal parent, you absolutely want them to do better than you did. You clearly have no actual, personal concept of that and that isn't an insult...it's true of anyone without children of their own. It just isn't something you can understand unless you are actually a parent and it's more than a wish...there are both emotional and biological compulsions attached to it that you simply cannot experience unless you're a father or mother.

Anyway...that said...not everyone who has those compulsions has the means to "invest in themselves early on."

My mother grew up in a house that didn't have indoor plumbing and every year got a new dress and an orange for Christmas. She left home at 17 and swore things would be better for her children and you know what? Not only did it pay off for me, it paid off in huge dividends for her as well because she's extremely happy knowing she played a large hand in my life being better than the one she had.

It's also a little odd to chide someone for actually wanting to plan for the future and be responsible about the life they will provide for a family. Sure, you can spend all your money on you. Then you have children and nothing saved to provide for them. But boy are you ever living comfortably before then, right? Meanwhile your kids will go without because they're kids and actually need someone else to provide for them. But sure...that will be a good way to keep the family together and not be "oppressive" or "parochial." Those things have nothing to do with each other and honestly, you have no idea at all what you're talking about. I'd wager if you looked that most homes that end up broken as you describe it here are homes in which the parents don't have as much of those aspirations for their own children as others do. You "assure" us that your ideas will lead to fewer broken homes...where are you getting this information from?

Your shortsightedness is sometimes forgivable, but with this it's actually quite insulting, I'd imagine to more than a few people.

@DiscordTiger Said

I’ve done better than both my parents academically. It’s not that they didn’t bother to do better. They actually worked their a** off to make sure I had the opportunity. Including moving a couple times to get in better school districts. And they have always been encouraging even though they don’t quite have the college or grad school experience to know what it’s really like.


There is a struggle being the first generation to go to college. We see it in retainment statistics, but it’s complicated and not something easily addressed as lazy selfish parents. If it was colleges could have “fixed” it by now.

@Conflict Said

I don't need to have my own children to know what I'm referring to. I can relate to the topic in financial terms that are absolutely credible.

Let's take someone who leaves school early for instance. Later on, if he or she goes through the adult education system, said person can attain a level of excellence similar to, or better than his or her children. Then, he or she can have kids, and together, both parents and children will be able to bond well. I don't know this sadly, as more than one person whose parents were not on their level has told me that their parents did not encourage them during their post secondary school studies.

That is what I meant by oppressive or parochial. I have seen what pain can do to people who are not encouraged. It is a consequence of the parents not being able to value what their children are doing due to not having the sensibility to admire academic things, because they can't meet their children on their level. Imagine how this must have made those young people feel.

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Parents and children must be even, or at the very least, there shouldn't be a gulf between them idea in terms of cerebral or moral development. There is no excuse for not bettering your finnancial situation before you have kids. The time to do it can be made and I feel that it must be, to avoid a conflict between parents and their children.

Quote:

And even if trouble doesn't arise between parents and their children, to be of a certain standard, even if the children do better than their parents will eliminate the concept of one generation outdoing the other because the previous one couldn't be bothered to do more for itself.

@Conflict Said

This makes a positive difference to what I experienced. I wish you had ben there to help me bring back down to earth a girl I once saw crying because of the generation gap. I managed to stop her crying, but she wouldn't tell me what the cause of the problem was, which suggests that it was very intimate. Not always, but usually it has to do with family. She asked me if I thought she was stupid and I told her that I thought she wasn't. My biggest regret is not pushing harder to discover the crook of the problem, but she was a sensitive person and I didn't want to go too far. A friend of hers soon came along and they left the cantine together to work the issue out. That brought her back to normal and I never saw her in such agony again.

Alternatively, if her parents had been like yours, even if they didn't have the experience to know what you'd accomolished was really like, the person I remember fifteen years ago wouldn't have gotten so upset. She might have been saddened by something else, but nothing nearly as bad as the deep personal scorn she must have gotten from someone close to her.

It's nice to know that people like you were fortunate enough to avoid this.

@Eaglebauer Said

Well...then you're talking about parents relating to their children out of shared experience and encouraging them in their endeavors. Yeah...that's pretty basic common sense and not really breaking any new ground.

But you made your first post about spending money which is something entirely different. Investing time and experience is not the same thing and doesn't have to have anything at all to do with money.



This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that people who don't have children do not know what they're talking about when they talk about having children. There, by necessity, absolutely is a gulf between parents and children in cerebral and moral development. Because a parent is an adult and child is a child who is dependent on that adult to foster and foment that cerebral and moral development. And hopefully, that parent wants the child to become at least his or her intellectual, moral equal, but it absolutely cannot, by design be that way until the child is also an adult. If a child likes his or her parents all the time, the parents are not doing their jobs correctly. Sometimes, actually yes, the parents in fact do know what's best for the child and have to teach the child in ways that the child will not like. It's an act of selfish cruelty to do otherwise all the time.

I'm sorry, you're just wrong on that. And it's not just me saying so, pretty much the entirety of modern psychology vehemently disagrees with you.

I agree you should better your financial situation before you have kids, which is why I have a problem with you saying people should spend money all on themselves while they can instead of planning for a better life for their children. That is, after all, what you said in your first post. You're all over the place here. So which is it?



I have no idea what you're trying to say here. I will say though that trouble absolutely, most certainly, undoubtedly, without fail, invariably WILL arise between parents and their children. It's not just certain, it's certain for a reason. Because it's healthy and necessary.