Baby Boomers Got A Rough Deal - No Doubt

[missbliss]

I still can't put any emotion into my writing. it's all pretty much cut and dry. I wanted to just put out there that there are those among us who were born during the 50's who got a very rough deal especially. A few of us were chosen to be part of some larger experimentation deal. What it was - I dont really care that much about names, What I do know is that all of a sudden mothers were told not to breastfeed their babies, to let them cry it out, to ignore them, children should be seen and not heard, lest they become *spoiled*, they were given unnecessary medications when they were frantically trying to connect in love to their caregiver, but the caregiver was also going crazy trying to keep up with the Joneses or the Levys or the wtfevers. And so - the baby could have been medicated just so the *parents* could get some rest. The baby would zonk out, exhausted and unfulfilled emotionally - hence the EMPTINESS that so many of us feel. That ole hole in the soul. Just empty space where love could have entered.

Then the vaccinations, then the toughen up, don't cry or i'll give you something to cry about, or psychological tactics employed in torture chambers such as silent treatment, ignoring - basically not responding to a child in distress, Without going into many details here - my feeling is that I was part of some kind of experiment, as was my mother, My father was the handler. My siblings were all psychopaths and narcissists. I rebelled from the get go and wasn;t *cooperative* - also my mother fell apart psychologically which I think was the saving grace in that they let us off the hook and out of the program. But then I had to deal with her one on one. And that's a whole other chapter.

 

[Philippa]

It goes back a bit further than the 50's.

The punishment and reward system has been the parenting style since the middle ages, as I was just watching on a fascinating you tube video about emotional connection and how to wake up to our emotions that have, for the most part, been invalidated for centuries.

Dulling down, or numbing out childrens emotions in the 50's was the start of the whole ritalin fad for keeping "good little boys and girls" good, and it didn't stop with the kids. Mothers, it is now known, were doped up to the eyeballs on tranquilizers, so the stereotype of the smiling housewife, loving her life and looking good for hubby, making sure all the cookies and baking were done and the dinner was hot and ready for him when he got home, give a slightly different idea of how 'happy' women were back then.

Baby boomers are now being blamed for the prevailing narcissism that has plagued so many generation x,y, and millenials today...but it's not hard to see how they came to be like that. I've been thinking along the same lines lately, in regards to my own mother. They learned these tactics and behaviours from somewhere. Interesting thread.

 

[missbliss]

That's right. The medical/pharmaceutical industries were giving out downers/uppers/diet pills and speed like it was candy. And it was ALL about appearances and being programmed with the dream of ad makers on Madison avenue. And in other countries they didn't have the benefit of being programmed by TV, it was all about newspapers and if it said it was ok in the ad in the paper, it must be ok. Including being exposed to radiation, smoking and working for the war machine. It all narrowed to down to pride. From the flag to your undershirt and the jello from miss Betty Crocker who was the guru of the plastic food and formica of the day. No emotions. No feelings. No reality. It was like they said - a dream.

 

[StarChild]

Sorry, no clue what you're talking about @missbliss... What has all this (especially your 2nd post) to do, that in your opinion, the baby boomer's got a rough deal? Could you please explain this more specifically, and not that over generalized? Thank you in advance.

 

[nursenurse]

I'm a boomer. No rough deal here. Same with my friends. This borders on the feeling sorry for oneself, and I for one do not buy it. You may have PTSD, but to blame it on all of the above, while possibly some individual points may have contributed to the abusive person's behaviour or given them a quick fix to opt out of full parenting responsibilities is ludicrous and a huge general insult for the bulk of us folks living in the world today.

 

[missbliss]

well you'd have to be on the East Coast during the 50's to understand and be effected. You can google human experimentation during the 50's if you like. It's all there - from lobotomies to electric shock, to isolation of babies, to trauma-based mind control - the whole entire nine yards. I speak in generality because that's how it will come out. In very general terms. Seems like the self and its autonomy were an obstacle to control of the masses - and so out it went.

 

[scout86]

Mothers, it is now known, were doped up to the eyeballs on tranquilizers,

I read this and thought it might have been a "good" thing, in my family! :banghead:

Um, I was born in the 50's too. My first thought was "Want a little whine with your cheese?" but, maybe not.

I think each and every era has it's challenges. My mom wouldn't have picked me up, with or without all the bad advice. Nice moms probably did all the "wrong" things anyway, just because they couldn't resist.

Sorry you had a rough childhood! What matters, at least to me, is not so much how I got here as "How do I get to where I'd really like to be?"

 

[missbliss]

I'm a survivor as many of us are. Throw toxic crap and electronic warfare my way, I just get stronger. One thing I gleaned from all this - that I would never be anyone's victim. I'd probably wipe the floor with them before that would or could ever happen. So yeah - another war, another day in the life and in the end we all get to go Home. The ride there is the whole point of being here. Some got it rough, some got it easy. And it's all perfect.

 

[Anarchy]

Hi,
I think it came in b4 the 50's.
I asked my mother about my first couple of years, and part of her reply was that her mother had been told in the mid 1930s that "babies stomachs need a rest" which by the time I was born in the 60s had become the state employed "health visitor" and others spouting crap like "babies need routines".

I've worked in Africa, and I know full well that babies are in a sling on their mothers as the mothers go about their work, that until the past century even in the most developed parts of the world, there was no where safe to lay an infant down, predators,scavangers , vermin, insects or the heat or cold would get it, even in the home. So either mother or another woman or girl was constantly with the child.

In those first months, a child is learning things like the simple eleme nts of cause and effect, and the very basics of communication with mum. As an example, a smart young mum in China a few years back, was chatting to my mum after she'd asked if she could photograph her and her little baby. Baby was in a split crotch outfit, and had learned very early to communicate when it wanted to go. It never fouled ltself or wet itself.

What were we learning implicitly at that age?

That calling for help never works

That people leave us in vulnerable positions, and take us into painful situations (vaccinations etc) that we literally and metaphorically get left in the shite.

Do I think that gave me PTSD?

I think it probably helped set me up for it.

The 20th century was also a century of the worst wars and theworst mass murders in human history with the late professor Rummel at university of Hawaii documenting a minimum fig of 220,000,000 murders of civilians by governments during "peace time" there were a lot of traumatized parents and siblings in that century, ready to pass on the trauma by their acting out.

Now add in some of the busy work that doctors found themselves. Circumcision was a big deal in the English speaking world, but is soley a minority religious practice in continental Europe, and interestingly the health outcomes claimed for circumcision are supposed to actually be better for the European places where it wasn't widely practiced.

An interesting bit of speculation for the English speakers love affair with male genital mutilation, is the religious aspect. Its start coincided with the post millenialist Christian revival. Post mils believe that humans must eradicate sin before Christ will return to reward them with the day of judgement... Post mils were prominent in politics at the start of the "Progressive era" at the beginning of the 20th century, and their religiously inspired fingerprints are allover such political attempts to eradicate such sins as alcohol, drugs, non wasp schools and cultures... I gather that there is some evidence suggesting that little boys with foreskins might have been another of the areas where the post mil progressives found sins that even their god himself seemed to have overlooked.

Is that last bit relevant to the thread?

Look at the most belligerent and imperialistic parts of the world since 1900: Britain, America, Israel and the wider middle east . all widely practice d genital mutilation on their sons. All busy causing trauma to their own and other populations. Perhaps it's mere coincidence, there are other possible explanations too, but it certain ly makes me wonder.

PS. No criticism of individuals in any of those places implied!

 

[nursenurse]

Looks like the CDC is advocating for male circumcisions, and done correctly need not be traumatic or painful. I could honestly pick apart so much in the above posts, but i do believe there is a lot of cheese needed for the whine. You have just written off the very folks that also try to help those who are affected by whatever they are affected by. You cannot generalize in that way. Man kind is a work in progress. Now before I say something that may get me banned, I am bowing out. If you know everything that caused you to be the way you are, then you are in a position to help fix yourself. But stop blaming the world.

 

[Anarchy]

Re CDC, institutional capture by vested interest groups is a valid area of academic study, with a large published body of literature.

I don't know whether that is the case for that example, but the CDC has shown itself capable of crying wolf over flu viruses for what was admitted later as the wider political purpose of encouraging "collective action"

Cite the relevant papers and I'll happily look through them, rather than accepting the authority of a source which has previously shown itself to be far from objective in other areas.

I don't see anyone here blaming the world,

With regard to a stress cup analogy, there can presumably be a series of factors filling that cup and predisposing the individual to succome to larger traumas, that without a full stress cup, they'd have perhaps shrugged off.

As an adult, if someone tried to mutilate my genitals, I'd defend myself with whatever force was necessary,

If an adult touches a child's genitals for the adults benefit, that is classed as sexual assault. A cancer specialist from Cambridge (the UK one) was jailed for just that last week.

If an adult feels that they would benefit from having their own genitals mutilated, and the most enervated parts (the ridged bands inside the foreskin and the frenulum) destroyed, and that having only half the skin coverage that a human penis evolved to have, won't cause their partner more soreness due to rubbing, more cystitis, and they're willing to accept the discomfort and loss of protection from future injury that a foreskin provided.

Good luck to them

If an adult has no right to touch a child's genitals, or even look at a picture of them for pleasure, wtf do they think gives them the right mutilate them? And I'm applying that to both individuals and to institutions composed of individuals.

Just for info, in my own case, no it wasn't done "properly" (whatever that might mean)

Some incompetent fool first attempted to stretch the opening of my foreskin with forceps and without any pain control the received wisdom at the time was that pain control was not needed for babies (that fallacy goes back to Descartes), they tore the tissue, including the dartos muscle, that wouldhave left me wiith a foreskin that couldnever have been retracted. Nice work,quack!

That didn't Stopthe harmless inflation of my foreskin whieni urinated, if anything, and notsurprisingly, the damage and swelling exacerbated it, so, several days later, my foreskin was cut to allow a plastibell type device to be fitted, even that was messed up, catching skin on the shaft of my penis and leaving me with a series of loops of skin that used to snag on clothing and elsewhere, and get infected (i eventually cut two of them off myself, i still have some that i wouldbe able to wear studs through if i was into that sort of thing. Im not) and it left me with additional trapped sebaceous glands that fill up with gunge and get infected too.

The metel ulcer from the glance rubbing in my daiper results in my urethral opening being approx half the size it would have been without the scar tissue. A later injury tore the corona, and causes continuing pain, especially during sex. With a forekin that later injury would not have occurred.

When I was a child, I used to wonder why I got funny hot feelings in my head, why I seemed to go back inside my skull and the outside world went all fuzzy and strange whenever anyone mentioned circumcision. Feelings that I now understand as triggering and dissociation. That suggests to me that circumcision is part of the complex that got me here to this forum

If that constitutes whining, so be it. Call me a whiner.

I call it crappy 1960's advice, and surgical abuse. Plenty more crap followed - Like bullying that left me fastened to a hospital bed for over a month, but yep i think I got an early start, with some bad advice.

 

[Anarchy]

OK, last post looks like a bit much info from me. I'm on the. Road typing on a little tablet screen with big fingers. I don't know how to cut and paste with it, but I have started a new stub in medical trauma for anything that addresses what I've written, rather than @missbliss original thread topic of crappy advice .