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"The look on his face made it seem like I told him I had 24 hours to live."
Image is representative, not actual subjects.
A dad throws his daughter in the air illustrative of the single father and his daughter at a younger age.
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My dad thinks I’m 'not working' because I refused to keep working 6 days a week.
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"I love my dad. He was a single parent who sacrificed everything to make sure my sisters and I had what we needed."
Image is representative, not actual subjects.
A well-intended father with a steadfast worldview on work and careers.
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The daughter in this story describes a conflict with her father after choosing to reduce her work schedule from six days a week to five. While she respects her father’s history as a hardworking single parent who worked multiple jobs, she explains feeling burned out after months of nonstop work, moving house, and managing mental health.
Despite sharing positive news about a raise and career progress, the daughter's father reacted negatively, interpreting the reduced schedule as a lack of work ethic. She felt frustrated that her need for rest and sustainability was dismissed, especially when her employer agreed that a five-day workweek was healthier. The situation highlighted a generational divide in attitudes toward work and personal well-being.
“It’s that internal struggle of respecting the bridge they built for us while refusing to live under it.” Melly1265, the daughter, went on to say. “It’s frustrating when you're clearly doing more than the bare minimum, yet it still doesn't feel like 'enough' in their eyes. Comparison truly is the thief of joy, we should be allowed to enjoy the balance they sacrificed to give us without feeling guilty for not being in constant survival mode like they were.” -
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Image is representative, not actual subjects.
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The truth of the matter is that as you get older, you and your parents probably will see things more at eye level. As they soften with age and you come to terms with the fact that they are only people too, as imperfect as you are, and who were doing the best that they could with what they had to work with amid the changeability and uncertainty that is life as an adult.
They, too, will likely have a growing awareness of their shortcomings as parents, that they did not have all the answers, that much of what they did was shaped by pressure, circumstance, and limited choices. And that you, too, are allowed your imperfections and are not merely a cut-and-paste extension of them.
Still, whether differences in cultural environment, upbringing, or just the plain old changing of the times, there will always be things that even the most growth-minded parents and their children will never see eye to eye on.
These are the people who shaped your early understanding of the world, who taught you what effort looks like, what responsibility means, and how to keep going when things get difficult. And still, the foundational parts of their core understandings of life and the best way to survive and see things through that are just… different.
But it feels all too often like, again, that exposed and shared vulnerability comes right back around like a boomerang, only to be used against you later on to win an argument or to prove some point they're trying to make. "Well, remember when you told me [insert personal vulnerability here] that one time?"
And our parents know us so well, too. They know exactly what to say in the worst moment to cut us the deepest and make us feel like a powerless kid again.
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There will always be a difference in perspective. Especially when it comes to those differences in generational values. And the reality is that when it comes to work and careers our approach to work is different because the workplace itself has changed.
My grandfather worked for the same company his entire life. Worked hard and from nothing owned a house out of high school, supported 7 children, and retired before 60 with a full pension.
My father did, largely, the same, owning property later in his 20s, supporting 2 kids, and retiring at 64.
My generation will be lucky if we can afford a house in our 30s or 40s, supporting only 1 or 2 children (or no), and who the heck knows when we'll be able to retire. Company-funded pensions and lifelong careers working for the same employers be dashed.
The point is, the entire way that we approach our work is different the situation we find ourselves in is different, the world has transformed into something rather unlike what it was 50, 40, 30, and even 20 years ago.
Previous generations often worked for a single employer; often, it was (one of) the only major employers in the town where they grew up, or where they moved just after leaving school. Our working lives are much more fractured and uncertain; companies are no longer dedicated to their long-term employees in the way they were before, and we, as employees, also don't need to worry about upsetting the only employer in town.
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