The Saturday Evening Post » parents

50 Years Ago: ‘Don’t Blame Your Parents’

Jeff Nilsson — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 13:00:32 +0000

(Also from this 1962 issue, see ads and cartoons featuring the crisp, new custom look of the Chrysler ’63 and Christmas gifts for the home.)

These days, it seems, a growing number of people are encouraged to attribute their parents as the source of their problems.

However, the blame game was well under way 50 years ago when Dr. Vincent Lathbury wrote “Don’t Blame Your Parents” (November 17, 1962) for the Post. His concerns sound surprisingly modern.

Read an excerpt below, or get the full story here.

Excerpted from “Don’t Blame Your Parents” by Dr. Vincent Lathbury:

It is a popular delusion that whatever disasters we make of our lives, our parents are ultimately to blame.

We live today in a restless period where there is little time to establish responsibility, especially our own responsibility. Our political and sociological structures have been established to “do things” for us, to relieve us of responsibility. We want to be cared for, and we want to be secure in the knowledge that our emotional malfunctioning is not of our own making.

While no sinister motivation lies in the modern concept of socialistic paternalism, with all its split-level generosity and wall-to-wall emotional harmony, the fact is that we are being offered a mirage, because responsibility cannot be abdicated. Yet the temptation to blame our parents or society or the Government for our own failures is almost irresistible.

A popular comedian, talking about marriage, exhorts the men in his audience to get married. “Every man needs a wife,” he thunders, “because a lot of things go wrong that can’t be blamed on the Government.” It doesn’t really matter where the blame falls, as long as it falls on someone else.

If an adult does not like the way he feels his parents have made him, then he should make himself over in a more acceptable image; and if he isn’t willing to make the necessary effort, then he should cease blaming his parents.

Regardless of how well or badly our parents prepared us for life, the chances are that they did the best they knew how. Although a reversal of the roles is difficult to imagine, remember that parents were once children too. And they weren’t perfect ones either.

Which calls to mind that quote from Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years.”

Ads and Cartoons Published 50 Years Ago

From the crisp, new custom look of the Chrysler ’63 to Christmas gifts for the home. (Click gallery images to enlarge.)

50 Years Ago: ‘Don’t Blame Your Parents’ The Saturday Evening Post

The New American Super-Family

Doug Donaldson — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 17:30:17 +0000

Cast of NBC's Parenthood (Photo courtesy NBC).

Amanda Gentle and millions like her are proving Thomas Wolfe wrong. You can go home again.

Like so many other Americans, Gentle was hit hard as the financial dominoes fell in 2008. The value of her house dropped while property taxes soared. When she was laid off from her job as director of marketing and sales for a small publishing company, she could no longer keep up. The bank eventually foreclosed on her Indianapolis home.

So, at 35 years old, Gentle did what numerous other 20- and 30-somethings are doing: She moved back in with her parents.

“It was difficult,” Gentle readily admits. “I had a successful career, and I went from being on my own, in a good place, to basically starting over.”

Gentle is not alone. Adult children of boomers— famously overeducated and underemployed—have created a moving-back-home tsunami. The driving force behind this trend is financial pressure, particularly rising housing costs, health insurance premiums, and college debt. About 8.7 million young adults ages 25 to 34 became part of multigenerational households in 2009, an increase of 13 million over 2007. Now, more than one in five young adults lives in multigenerational households.

But it’s not just the young who are coming home to roost. Many elderly parents of boomers are moving in with their children as well. All told, the number of multi-gen households grew about 30 percent during the past decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And a Pew Research Center report found that 51 million Americans lived in homes of two or more adult generations in 2009, compared with 42 million in 2000. That’s a 21 percent increase in less than a decade, but more importantly it reflects a turning back to what used to be, well, normal.

“We had a 50-year experiment of thinking of families as two parents and two kids,” says John Graham, co-author of Together Again: A Creative Guide to Successful Multigenerational Living. “What’s happening right now is that the 50-year nuclear family experiment is ending.”

So you want to live under one roof? To successfully blend multiple generations into one household, here’s a checklist from Nancy K. Schlossberg, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and author of Revitalizing Retirement: Reshaping Your Identity, Relationships, and Purpose.

Click image to enlarge checklist.

Not everyone is moving back home. Some never left. Dan, a 25-year-old healthcare consultant, lives with his parents on the northeast side of Philadelphia. While going to college, he stayed at home, and after graduating, Dan gave independence some thought, then decided to stick around. The primary reason is the money he’ll be saving. “When I move out, I’d like to be able to make a down payment on a decent place, not some hole in the wall,” Dan says. “The best way to save money is to spend wisely and right now, that means living at home.”

Dan, who requested that we not use his last name, considers the decision to stay put a no-brainer. Apartments in his neighborhood cost upward of $1,100 a month, and with a $15-an-hour job, his budget would have been stretched to the absolute limit. “I didn’t want to move out on a whim,” he says.

Whatever the circumstances, being an adult in your parents’ home is different from being a teen there. Before Gentle moved in with her parents this past January, the family sat down in the living room and discussed expectations, including chores, financial responsibilities, and how long she would stay. This phase of basically resetting her GPS could have turned into an ugly high school flashback. Instead, having new structure in her life was soothing. “After all the stress of being laid off and losing my house, it was very comforting to be with my family,” Gentle says. “I’m used to being very self-sufficient and independent, but it was nice to take a deep breath for a moment and get back on my feet.”

Gentle has found a job and plans to move out again soon, but author Graham sees multi-gen living as the wave of the future. “The boomerang kids’ experience is spring training for the long season of baby boomer retirement,” he says. “They’re learning how to live together. That’s vital, because in the next 10 years, boomers will start moving in with their children.”

He’s undoubtedly correct, but the trend of elderly parents rejoining their children has already begun. When Hurricane Irene raked the Eastern Seaboard this past summer, 79-year-old Lois Bechtel grew uneasy as the winds increased and the rain pounded her Stamford, Connecticut, home. Instead of weathering the storm alone, the retired executive secretary describes how she dashed a few steps into the adjoining house to be with her daughter’s family, safe and secure. “If I lived on my own, I’d be by myself in storms or other emergencies,” Bechtel says. “Now I know that if I get sick, they’re close by. It’s a comfort.”

Bechtel lives in an attached, “in-law” apartment that allows her privacy when she wishes. According to a 2010 Coldwell Banker trend survey, home builders are on the multi-gen bandwagon, increasingly incorporating in-law apartments and adding other features for extended family members, such as separate entries, multiple kitchens, and second master bedrooms.

The New American Super-Family The Saturday Evening Post

“Father of the Year”

Charles Osgood — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:00:14 +0000

Because Jean and I have five kids, one of whom now has three little boys of her own, we take more than a passing interest in Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. One year, when my kids were younger, the National Father’s Day Committee actually called to advise me that I was being named one of their “Fathers of the Year.” I wrote a poem about it, which went like this:

I confess to a certain pride
That I won’t attempt to hide.
I’ll admit that it delighted me to hear
That the Father’s Day Committee,
Which is based in New York City,
Has named me one of the Fathers of the Year.

No, it’s not the least bit bad
To be honored as a dad.
Although, you may wonder what I did to win it.
If you ask how I do it,
I will say there’s nothing to it.
To explain it now will only take a minute.

It is absolutely true
That there’s nothing that I do
To make the Father’s Day Committee name me.
It all has to do with Jean
And five kids named Kathleen,
Winston, Annie, Emily, and Jamie.

Three lasses and two laddies,
I’m the luckiest of daddies.
They are wonderful as any kids could be.
And though often I’m not there,
They can hear me on the air
And also see me there on the TV.

I’m sure Jean was pleased to hear
That I’m Father of the Year.
It must thrill her as she goes about her life
To be informed that I am such a splendid guy—
And she’s the Father of the Year’s wife.

Every morning she gets up
To a day that never lets up
To pack lunches for the kids to take to school.
She does that every day,
Although I am far away.
I’m long gone to work by that time,
As a rule.

Yes, it must seem really keen.
I’m sure it must to Jean.
It must fill her with satisfying cheer
To hear that in the city
The Father’s Day Committee
Has picked me as a father of the year.

When she drives them all to school,
Trying hard to keep her cool,
As the rush hour traffic slowly moves along,
She must give a little smile
At this little daily trial
And wonder if she’s doing something wrong.

She tends to them when they’re sick;
When they’re hurt comes running quick.
It is she who helps them with the violin.
I would do it if I could,
I am certain that I would,
Were it not that I am very seldom in.

It is Jean who drives them places,
And makes sure they wash their faces,
And finds their missing jackets and their shoes.
It is she who does it all,
While yours truly has the gall
To be off somewhere gathering some news.

Jean breaks up each fight,
Reads stories every night,
And when they have troubles, takes time to hear.
She does that, truth to tell,
And she does it all so well.
That’s why they named me Father of the Year.

I eagerly await, any day now, a call from the National Grandfather’s Day Committee. Jean will be so pleased.

“Father of the Year” The Saturday Evening Post