When my wife and I had our first baby, my wife suffered from postpartum depression. A counselor was visiting our home and went through a questionnaire with her. Like statements ‘I am able to laugh and enjoy things’, and ‘I look forward with enjoyment to things’ - she had to rate how strongly she agreed with each. She didn’t agree with much at the time (luckily only lasted a month or two). My mom was visiting at the time and could apparently overhear this. Afterward my mom commented to me ‘even I knew the right answers to those questions’. It hit me then that her generation were just as fucked up but the mentality for them was to just fake it and never admit any problems. The ‘correct’ answer was always to sound like everything was fine.
I’ve always wondered if humanity had been fucked up like that for generations and we’re just now getting better. Or if it was boomers specifically traumatized by their parents and grandparents living through world wars.
That’s true although I was more just making a cheeky joke than anything else.
I’m no anthropologist or psychologist or anything but I’d venture a guess people used to be even more aloof in their love of their children. It has to be harder to form those bonds when you expect to just have some of your kids die by virtue of simply existing before modern medicine.
Seems to be only recently humans have really developed this societal belief in “childhood” and really even concerning ourselves with mental health as a concept.
Wars used to be very common, the peace that large parts of europe have enjoyed since WW2 is an outlier. USA did have the vietnam war in more recent memory, it wasn’t fought on home soil but it definitely had a bigger impact on the home population than the kosovo or irak wars.
When my wife and I had our first baby, my wife suffered from postpartum depression. A counselor was visiting our home and went through a questionnaire with her. Like statements ‘I am able to laugh and enjoy things’, and ‘I look forward with enjoyment to things’ - she had to rate how strongly she agreed with each. She didn’t agree with much at the time (luckily only lasted a month or two). My mom was visiting at the time and could apparently overhear this. Afterward my mom commented to me ‘even I knew the right answers to those questions’. It hit me then that her generation were just as fucked up but the mentality for them was to just fake it and never admit any problems. The ‘correct’ answer was always to sound like everything was fine.
I’ve always wondered if humanity had been fucked up like that for generations and we’re just now getting better. Or if it was boomers specifically traumatized by their parents and grandparents living through world wars.
Spend some time studying history. Doesn’t matter when or where, you’ll see that humans have always been fucked up in spectacular and amazing ways.
It’s simultaneously depressing as hell and a bit of a relief.
Yeah but history doesn’t really ever seem to cover if generations of parents had the emotional capacity to love their children.
That’s true although I was more just making a cheeky joke than anything else.
I’m no anthropologist or psychologist or anything but I’d venture a guess people used to be even more aloof in their love of their children. It has to be harder to form those bonds when you expect to just have some of your kids die by virtue of simply existing before modern medicine.
Seems to be only recently humans have really developed this societal belief in “childhood” and really even concerning ourselves with mental health as a concept.
Wars used to be very common, the peace that large parts of europe have enjoyed since WW2 is an outlier. USA did have the vietnam war in more recent memory, it wasn’t fought on home soil but it definitely had a bigger impact on the home population than the kosovo or irak wars.