Last week, Fox News Network released sociological data from across the United States, showing that by the age of 32, most young adults find themselves behaving like their own mother and father, despite their best attempts to be as opposite as possible.
Growing up, it’s easy to look at your parents and grandparents and see them as outdated. You listen to their nuggets of wisdom, sit back, and watch how they handle things, thinking they are doing it ALL WRONG! In fact, most of us make premature claims like, “When I have kids, I will never do x, y, and z like mom and dad do.” Or, “When I have my own house, I will never make people take their shoes off before coming inside.” Or, “When I grow up, I will spend my money on vacations to enjoy life, rather than put it in savings for a rainy day.”
Then, one day, you wake up, walk outside in your bathrobe to get the newspaper (just like your dad did), and realize you’ve turned into your parents. Turns out that good ol’ mom and dad weren’t so dumb after all. In fact, now that they are getting older and enjoying retirement, you realize they actually knew what they were talking about when it came to life.
It’s inevitable, really. As children and young adults, it’s impossible to see the advice and life lessons being taught by our elders as important or even noteworthy. Every younger generation always believes they have it worse, thinking no one who grew up decades ago could understand what it’s like to be a young person in this ‘new world.’ Younger generations always see themselves as more adept, smarter, and more advanced. And yet, the threads of human existence that bind us together are timeless.
The Inevitable Influence of Parents
Now that you’re an adult with a job, a home, and kids of your own, you begin to understand some of the things your mother did. You appreciate the fact that she patched her own clothing (even if it did embarrass you in public) so she could spend more money on you. You understand the constant pleas from your parents during your youth to “close the door, because you aren’t air-conditioning the outdoors,” especially when you receive your own electric bill. You, too, get irritated with your children when they waste food, and you find yourself spending a lot of wasted breath trying to teach them the things you’ve learned throughout your own life.
Biological research shows that personality and temperament are clearly linked to our DNA. Even more interesting is the fact that our socio-economic and educational upbringing plays a massive role in shaping our lives. The vast majority of people end up in a social class that is either equal to or above the one their parents lived in. Essentially, the parental influence in our lives, no matter how much we wish to ignore it, is one of the most accurate predictors of our own lives in nearly every aspect. In fact, children of divorced parents have a 75% higher chance of getting divorced themselves. The same tendencies are true when it comes to being a smoker, an alcoholic, or a victim of abuse. According to studies, your values in life will also closely align with those set forth by your family.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you don’t have free will to live your own life. You do. But chances are, you’ll do things in a very similar way to how your parents did. Even if you take a different course, your parents have influenced your belief systems so deeply that eventually, you’ll find yourself seeing eye-to-eye with the way they did things when you were young.
Just because we grow up in a different time period than our parents doesn’t necessarily mean their values and beliefs are outdated. In fact, every generation, despite advances in certain areas of life, faces the same core set of life problems, values, and ethics. For instance, bullying is by no means a “new age” problem—it has always existed. While the variations of bullying today have changed with social media, the concept remains exactly the same. The same can be said for nearly every “new age” issue we face today.
There is no shame in becoming like your parents. While it may make you feel old or perhaps regretful that you spent so much time trying to be the polar opposite of your parents, only to find yourself wearing your dad’s robe, it’s a reality we all face. So, by all means, call your folks and let them know that maybe they knew a little more back in the day than you ever gave them credit for!