I somewhat expected my post would generate this type of attack and then lead to my parenting style is better than years, my kids are more successful than yours, my kids are happier to visit us than you, ad nauseam.

Parenting is hard and there are multiple approaches that lead to successful outcomes. Your approach worked and I am happy for you. Congratulations on your successful approach.

▲ HildeHolden 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future.

This heavily implies that the children of other "modern" parents are dysfunctional adults. As they say "to throw the stone and hide the hand". The funnier thing is that your parenting style is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon.

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diskzero 9 hours ago | parent [-]

There is no implication here. It is clearly stated as "Our primary goal", not your primary goal. You are reading way too much into this.

I agree it is a modern post-WW2 phenomenon, but not sure what is funny about it. Societies and systems constantly change and evolve. This is part of progress, and yes, can also cause setbacks.

My use of the term "conflict" might be what is triggering. Maybe "bucks the trend" or "not in line with" would be better.

Many approaches to parenting are successful. I presented my approach. Others work.

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pessimizer 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Now you're characterizing what you've done as progress, to defend characterizing it as opposed to modern parenting, and you anticipated attacks from other people. I'll tell you why I think you anticipated attacks after I tell you a reason why I disagree.

I agree that it has been a generational thing. It was called the "Me Generation." Me, me, me. In the animal kingdom, parents abandoning their children to be completely independent is mostly common among insects, lizards, and amphibians, and is associated with large litters and a massive death rate among them. It's not modern, it's a feature of creatures that are lower than mammals.

What's triggering is the fact that you've decided to brag about your superior parenting in public, and claim the evidence of that is that you have told your children that you're done with them. Nobody asked you, and you're aware that normal people don't do that to people that they are close to (hence the need to lecture.) Everybody raises their children to have the ability to be completely independent and self-sufficient. You just think you're uniquely successful at that, and that it somehow would be the child's fault if you've failed.

Your kids didn't ask to be born, and if you don't rescue them from their failure (at least initially), it will be a reflection on you. If we are in the same social circles, and I know about this, I will judge you. Even hearing you explain it, and your feigned confusion (I guarantee you have this conversation all the time), would make me wary of hiring you into a management position.

I'm not a lizard. I want everybody I care about to be self-sufficient, and I also don't want them to try to be unless they actually have to be. They have resources available to them that are not always being fully utilized, and when those resources can give them an advantage in any context, I would be angry if they weren't used.

There are always limits to self-sufficiency, because there are massive advantages to abandoning it: that's what we call civilization.

	▲	diskzero 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Very good points. Thanks for the insight and critique. There is a reason I don't wade into social topics and usually only comment on technical things I have worked on and this is helping me understand why!

▲ qlte 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

  > I somewhat expected my post would generate this type of attack

It may not have been your intention but your post had a combination of a somewhat smug, lecturing tone and patting oneself on the back which is a bit off-putting. And implicitly made a lot of assumptions about other parents' intentions/lived experience raising their children based on a single factor that's pretty insignificant like # of sq ft of child's belongings kept in the family home.

Also, for all you knew at the time you replied, OP could've still had stuff in their parents' attic because they joined the Marines at 18 and was even more independent than your own kids. There was a lot of projection onto a trivial story.

Plus "must be a generational issue" just sounds like more of the same "my generation was responsible/good/normal unlike kids these days" meme that gets repeated by every generation as they age and is tiresome to hear as an explanation for everything.

	▲	diskzero 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, I can see this now. Thanks for the insight.