Gen X is getting dragged on social media for being the so-called “worst grandparents,” and a lot of them actually agree. Not because they hate their families, but because they’re just plain exhausted.
The debate blew up when a video called Gen X out for not wanting to help with their grandkids. It hit a nerve, and a bunch of Millennials started chiming in with stories of being let down by their Gen X parents who now seem just as uninterested in being active grandparents.
One woman, Kylie Muse, posted a video saying: “It’s quite a common theme for Gen X parents to be neglectful in some capacity and it’s just crazy to me how more of them haven’t learned from the past 20 to 30 years, instead of these grandparents seeing their kids having kids as an opportunity to restore the health in their relationships with their kids by showing up and helping them during the hardest transition of their lives, they would rather double down and compromise their relationship with that next generation. All for the sake of hyper-individualism and pride.”
Gen X didn’t stay quiet. They started responding in force, and you could tell they were ready to explain themselves. A man named John S. Blake gave his take and said: “As a Gen X who’s been on this earth long enough to have some hindsight I can tell you this, being independent at a young age is not a flex, what it actually means is capitalism is so brutal that our parents were forced to neglect their own children to stay alive. My generation was struggling so much that we had to leave our children unattended in order to produce enough so that we could afford to exist.”
Another response came from an older Millennial named Amazing Dea, who said: “Being as though you look like you might be a younger Millennial, let me go ahead and enlighten you. Generation X and older Millennials had to live through more than just this pandemic. We had the crack epidemic, we had the AIDS epidemic and let me tell you something, it was scary as f***.”
Dea described growing up around addiction and how entire apartment complexes burned because people were afraid of residents who had AIDS. People would spiral from normal to strung out on crack in just weeks, and many kids had to grow up way too fast.
Another woman explained the disconnect by saying: “We grew up in a different time, first of all. A lot of us, meaning me, Gen X, I was raised by boomers. A lot of us did not get raised by our grandparents. We were like the feral kids, like by 7 and 9 years old we were actually babysitting our brothers and sisters, alright.”
She went on to say Gen X isn’t refusing to be involved, but they’re not signing up to be full-time babysitters either. There’s a difference, and it matters.
Most of the Gen X replies came with love for their kids and grandkids, but also a clear line in the sand. They want to enjoy the freedom they didn’t have as kids and be respected as people, not seen as backup childcare.