34 Millennials Share The Reality About How Mean Their Parents Have Become

I think people in that age bracket just suppressed their feelings and never delt with them. Now that their body is more fragile due to age they can't handle it and become grouchy and bitter.  Combined with the 24 hour news cycle and cellphones allowing unlimited unregulated access to the news cycle they never take a moment to unplug and relax, which blows the repressed feelings up. 

Funny enough, my parents started off nasty and have mellowed out with age and economic stabilty.

My dad is your classic boomer narcissist but dementia has made him outright pleasant to be around. Its like he forgets to be an a*****e.

It’s because they were never good and kind people to begin with. These are the folks that complain about “political correctness” when it really means just regulating your emotions and behaviors so that you’re not a s****y person. Now that it’s socially acceptable to be less “polite”, the mask is off. 

My Mom has gotten sweeter, my Dad on the other hand, yeah, he fits this bill.

The dude used to be able to make friends with anyone and everyone regardless of religious or political beliefs. Now? He has no friends. He even cut off his own brother over a perceived slight. The smallest error or flaw and he is completely done with that person (for example, the guy at their local deli stopped giving free samples because the store changed the policy during COVID, so now if my Dad sees him at the store, he completely ignores him even though it wasn't even his decision). Now he wants to move to another state, but my mom still has dozens of friends and doesn't want to uproot just because he has burned every bridge he has had.

They maybe pretty resentful their retirement isn't working out how they hoped it would. Maybe they didn't plan it well financially. That kind of stress comes out in many different situations.

Up until the last year or so, I thought my parents became nasty. But now?

I think they’re just tired. They regularly babysit my niece and nephew in another state despite their parents making more than enough (at least, I think) to cover the expenses of a good babysitter…. Or to have one parent stay home.

But more tiring is the fact that I’ve been floundering around for a few years. Gotta suck having your adult child living with you and not making tangible forward and upward (and outward) progress

Something similar has happened/is happening to my parents, my wife’s parents, and almost all of my friend’s parents. Whenever the topic of parents comes up, I always ask my friends if their parents have started going crazy, and the answer is almost always yes. It seems to hit in the late 50s. The worst thing is that I remember having a conversation with my mother when I was a teenager about how her mother was getting really rude and nasty to people.

My dad just complains all the time and it’s embarassing. He’s not *mean* but he is embarrassingly cantankerous.

We went to a restaurant that I’ve been going to since HS where the owner knows all of his customers by name. My dad insisted that there was a senior discount. The owner’s kid said they didn’t have that. My dad had to argue. They finally just brought him the $2 and change to make him shut up.

I kinda wanna not go out with him when I visit but then I’d have to do the cooking.

Honestly.

I think they just didn't deal with their s**t over decades and it eats them alive. The mask slips get harder to cover 

We're seeing them as they always were, just through the lense of ourselves being adults.

I would be wary OP, you'll be next on their s**t list eventually. 

As once they push away all their past friends they will want to cannibalise their young.

My mom started becoming unhinged and constantly livid with everything at about 45.  

She’s an analytical chemist with multiple degrees that specialized in HPLC work for pharmaceutical companies.  

She never had friends.  My entire childhood was listening to her rant and rave for hours while throwing s**t and chain smoking.  All her coworkers were horrible people that were in a conspiracy to undermine and fire her.  I was also trying to destroy her life in elementary-junior high school and working in conjunction with them.

 She’s 74 now and made of nothing but hate and rage. 

 That’s why she’s dying homeless on the streets.

My parents were literally always nasty but yeah it's gotten worse. My dad was jailed for domestic violence against my mom two years ago he's in his 60s.

My two uncles got into a brawl not too long ago, late/mid 50s.

Fun times lol

I think some in the older generation have never recovered from the social isolation and stress of the pandemic years.

My mom is 60 and my dad is 70 and I haven't noticed either getting mean. If anything my mom is less mean. She was often very typical self centered boomer, gotta get mine type. I don't think her mentality has changed, but I think she's learned to be quiet sometimes. However, I have noticed other undesirable personality changes - heightened anxiety, easily frustrated, really poor communication and then being confused/frustrated I can't read her mind. I wonder if it has something to do with their generation's reluctance towards therapy? Having a toddler makes me see the similarities between the boomer generation and my child younger than 2. There's a level of emotional immaturity in my parents and in laws that is similar to my child. They never learned to work through their "big feelings" and seem to have the viewpoint that you often see in teenagers that their feelings of discomfort are a result of someone else.

I still have a grandparent and honestly she's had a similar trajectory to my mom. Lashed out a bit here and there as life got uncomfortable (I imagine the way the world changes is very uncomfortable) but realized it would negatively impact her personal relationships and walked it back.

In defense of the boomers a bit, I get grumpy sometimes too when I'm out of my comfort zone. I just think at 35 a lot more of the world is set up to be inside of my comfort zone. Last week I went to Disney with my kid and felt like everyone else knew a foreign language that I didn't speak. I spent the morning saying Disney is stupid and this place sucks before I realized it's a me problem and I'm acting like a teenager. So I get where they are coming from sometimes, I think everyone feels the impulse sometimes. It's just whether people have the coping mechanisms to ground themselves when they are spiraling. Which is where I come back to that generation's reluctance towards therapy - if they needed help figuring out coping mechanisms, most of them never got that help

My old man has one friend that he spends time with outside of work.Most of his downtime is spent watching hockey or movies.He’s only in his early 60’s,but I think I found where I got my shut-in introvert side from. He’s actually more chill with us grown kids that he was when we were growing up.