Ugh.

[conuly]

Twit number one is arguing with me that people should disclose all of their past marriages (even if said marriages are clearly never going to affect anything in the future) to their children. I disagree, but what I *really* don't like is her going "I don't want to be like that person downthread who found out in her father's obituary!"

Yeah. That person's me. And about the only thing I took away from that obit was "Wow. My dad's wedding had the Grateful Dead playing - live!" I wasn't shocked, traumatized, left feeling awkward, weirded out, or disturbed by this revelation. Might have been if I had half-siblings somewhere, but as I don't I can't imagine why anybody would care. If you're gonna use my comment as an example, use it to agree with me, you doofus.

Twit number two says: You want your kids to grow up thinking that you fall in love, marry, and live happily ever after and you're living with a prime example of the fact that that doesn't always happen.

Do people really want their kids to think that? Why? It strikes me as one of the stupidest things I've ever read in P101, and that's saying a whole heck of a lot. It's right up there with "If I had sex with him, that means I love him so it's all right because we're in love". It's just STUPID - more so if you happen to know from personal experience that it's just not true. Then it's stupid and lying. Great job of talking to your impressionable children.

And several other people are piping up that if you don't explicitly share information, you're somehow keeping it secret. They're wrong, but I'd be glad to keep secrets if it'd spare us all boring and pointless conversations that run:

Mom: Julia, just so you know, I was married before I met your dad.
Julia: What?
Mom: I was married before I met your dad!
Julia: Why are you telling me this????
Mom: No reason, I just thought you ought to know so you wouldn't feel awkward and weird!
Julia: Well, I certainly feel awkward and weird NOW. Do I have brothers and sisters I don't know about???
Mom: Nope, nothing like that!
Julia: DO I KNOW THIS GUY? IS IT MY MATH TEACHER?
Mom: No, silly! I don't know why you're getting worked up about it, I'm just telling you.
Julia: But why???
Mom: Because!
Julia: Well, thanks. So there's no reason?
Mom: Nope.
Julia: Wow. This conversation was a complete waste of time. Thanks, Mom.
Mom: You're welcome! Also, in high school I slept with the chess team on a dare, and in kindergarten I ate paste.
Julia: MOM!
Mom: Full disclosure, you're bound to find out sooner or later, I thought you should know!

Yeah. I think I'll pass. I do wish my mother had fessed up about her secret boyfriend, admittedly, but that's something that at least happened within my own lifetime, and I stumbled upon it in a really embarrassing way. Unless you're storing your homemade porn from your ex in your dresser drawer, it's not likely to ever come up in that fashion, is it?

Comments

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

And you're the type of person who deals well with that. I'm not. And I'm not the type to ask about things I think I already know. It felt like a secret, even though he was completely open and honest about it to other people. What do you do when a friend says, "Oh, yeah, your dad tells us all kinds of stories, like about his first marriage..." and that's the first you've heard of it?

It's such a weird balancing act, and of course it comes down to 'depends on the kid' because everything does. Some kids will be really hurt because their parents lied to them for years, and might still be lying. Some kids won't care about meaningless things that happened before they were born because they don't matter at all.

I kind of want to draw parallels between this whole pattern and race issues and homophobia. The existence of gay people never came up in my childhood. I never suspected that anyone wouldn't be straight-- only straight people existed, period. Gay rights had nothing whatsoever to do with my life. It was still wrong for my parents not to bring that sort of thing up.

Like I said, this is a pattern with my parents. It's hard for me to react to one part of it without reacting to the entire thing. I hope I'm not getting carried away with it.

[conuly]

That's a different situation, and kinda a weird one. Still, you can hardly say they were keeping secrets or lying (as was repeatedly implied over on P101, that by not telling your child the only thing you could otherwise be doing is keeping secrets) as they told the whole world while you were alive and never actively said "Nope, we never were married before you!" Maybe they thought you already knew?

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I think they thought I picked it up, but seriously, family, I don't pick things up. Baby Sister found out because she was looking through Dad's college yearbooks or he was packing them to send to First Wife or something-- she was the first to know. I think it came up naturally with my brother.

I guess I kind of feel like you can wait for it to come up, but at some point, you have to take matters into your own hands, not because the kid needs to know but because it doesn't feel okay to me for the fourteen-year-old kid to be the only person in art class who's never heard the story.

We were very different kids; everyone else knowing something about me remains kind of a nightmare. I guess my main objection to not telling isn't anything to do with my quality of life or my parents' privacy, but how much the revelations of various Not Actually Secrets, We Just Never Told Yous upset me.

[gingembre.livejournal.com]

I can't comment on the situation with your parents at all, but I can say with Connie that a) she was 10, so it may just not have come up in conversation yet and b) I am pretty sure *I* knew, from casual conversation (not a big We Have Something To Tell You talk or anything) before my father's death, so I can say with a fair amount of certainty that it likely WAS discussed around Connie but she simply wasn't tuned into the conversation at the time (something I think she will verify happens a decent amount of the time, and particularly when she was a young child and people were talking about things that were "adult stuff" and probably didn't interest her any...or, she could have been reading.)