I was there for it. It was a lot like mine, but more optimistic

My dad was my age in 1989. He was a pretty horrible person, but was actually doing alright. My mom’s father had retired and bequeathed a plumbing company onto him a few years prior, which my parents had managed to grow quite a bit. But he was an alcoholic, smoked a lot of pot, and did enough coke to be considered an addict. I’m pretty sure this happened when he was 40 - I was 6 at the time, I think. I remember he took me to the store with his girlfriend to get cigarettes. Mom was at work - this was before they divorced. He had me in the bed of his truck, and he swerved off the road to drive up ‘the back way’ to our house. I wasn’t braced for the sudden maneuver, and I slid and hit my face, getting a nose bleed. A moment later, a police officer pulled into our driveway and saw him standing over me (who was crying), and said they’d followed him from the convenience store - I assume because he was drunk and had a kid in the back of his truck. He got so belligerent that by the end of it, 6 cops showed up and beat him in our driveway before arresting him. His girlfriend slunk off, and my mom had to spring him from jail. After my parents divorced, he lived in a trailer park with a new woman who seemed nice, and he died a few years later of a suspected heart attack in his sleep. I’ve got about 2 1/2 years before I’m older than he was.

My mom was 40 in ‘92. She had divorced my dad, and she told us a lot of things that we probably should have been shielded from. The plumbing business failed - a lot of equipment ‘went missing’ and some of the vehicles started having random maintenance issues. Our own family minivan stopped running after the fuel was tampered with. And a bunch of our pets started dying or disappearing (cats and dogs disappeared, rabbits just had broken necks in the coop, one horse was shot, another poisoned with antifreeze in their water). She had also began using drugs, or at least, was using them at a level where her addiction was obvious. She got a job halfway across the country, and we moved. We were living in a small farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, and she moved her boyfriend in, who happened to be her drug dealer. And then one day she was gone. The school truancy officer managed to contact family, who arranged to have us rescued before we wound up in foster care. About a year later, she reappeared in a battered women’s shelter, in rehab, and we moved in with her at the shelter.
What I now know - after having gone through her things a few years ago, after her death - is that she got pregnant, ran away, brought the child (a boy) to term, and gave the kid up for adoption before reappearing and keeping this secret from her family the rest of her life.

So, you know. Fun times all around.
(I’m fine, just a bit weird.)

My father was a wage slave like me (working most of his waking week away, working OT on weekends) but at least they already owned a house for twenty years by this age whereas his profiteering generation made sure I’d never own one.

I outlived my dad. He committed suicide at the age I was two years ago.

My mom spent age 32-63 paralyzed in a nursing home, so I think I’ve surpassed her life accomplishments at my current age as well.

Pretty much everything, since I knew them back then.

i know that if they worked hard they could get by.

By worked hard that meant my father, without a college degree, was able to afford:

• A small 3 bedroom house with a yard.
• 2 cars.
• 3rd kid on the way.
• Wife that was nearly bedridden because of said kid.

I don’t think that’s even remotely possible today.

I was a small child at the time. They had a comfortable quality of life on a single income, owned a house, were putting kids through parochial $chool, were religious, were conservative (based on what was called conservative in the 1980s/90s), had minimal social life outside activities related to kids.

So very little in common with my life at the same age; I am not married/financially intertwined with my person and we have no kids.

I am older now then my mom was when she had me, and I’m a significantly younger of 2 children. I know that my mother was already deeply unhappy in her relationship with my dad, but at the time still believed in trying to salvage it. That’s why I was born, after all

Mom was a leftist for the time, free spirit, rebellious woman who made the mistake of getting impregnated by a conservative and traditionally macho man in a catholic, Latin American country, and found herself marrying because out-of-wedlock pregnancies would be the absolute literal worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone ever, apparently

By the time she was my current age, she had been domesticated (partially through some mid-tier abuse, but also because she did have my sister and I to raise) and worked an entry-level job in a country where her degree didn’t mean shit and she could barely communicate. My dad also worked, having a better-paying job, but also a second weekend job. We grew up poor, my sister basically raised me, and my mom regrets that she couldn’t be there. She also deeply regrets how much of her own personal joys she gave up for my father specifically, joining him for all of his hobbies, while never being able to indulge in any of hers because he didn’t let her. She don’t give a fuck now, though

I have a lot of negative things to say about my parents, but boy did they fucking work their asses off

They owned a home, car, boat and had two children on one income and no degree. Their health insurance covered everything 100% for the whole family. They went out every weekend and living in Florida, theme parks were the norm.

I bought and moved into an RV after the realization that a house is complete fantasy. I never wanted kids but even if I did it’s out of the question. I silently stress out every time my gf wants us to go to a restaurant because a $15 meal feels like an awful lot right now. My cat is pretty awesome though.

I was still living with them, actually it was nice, they bought a houst just a coupple of years prior and my dad bought his first Mercedes Benz. They were traveling also, even though not as much and far as me now.

My older half brother was recently born. Dad was recently a horse farmer studying to be an engineer and mom was a recent HS grad (big age gap). Dad cheated on his ex wife to be with my mom. Unfortunately, there was a lot of violence in central America at this time so they decided to uproot and flee to live in Texas. They lived in a house with 4 families. My brother and I are born. Mom was a bus driver and a house maid, dad washed dishes and delivered newspapers. They only ate top ramen and soup to save every penny they can get to send money back to central america. Family gets involved with MS13, they have to move again and change identity. Luckily they saved enough to live in small town in Arizona. They recently started taking ESL classes so they can fit in but they only spoke spanish. Mom opens up small business selling novelty goods, dad gets good job at a newspaper. For them, everything was work or family at this time of their life. They never went on vacations or went to amusement parks or any of that. They barely ate out. They kept life minimal.

I feel like I have an okay understanding of their life and situation at this age. Everyone here is making stories to show how it’s not possible to live the same life for some reason. My parents story is like the same as every Hispanic immigrant.

I know infinitely more about my mom than my dad. I know seemingly everything from her job to the places she’d go. Apparently she frequented the Andaman Islands around this time, not an area of the world you’d expect to trace someone to.

I’m going to assume you mean when they were young. (As I am not a young person anymore)

Ever read or watched ‘Christiane F: Wir Kinder Auf Bahnhoff Zoo’?

That was pretty much my moms life when she was young.

Well, I’m almost 50, so I was an adult fully my the time my dad hit that mark, and my mom is seven years younger than him.

I actually know a shit ton about both of them at that age, more than they realize. Small town, and the nearest bigger towns are places I’ve worked, and I know a lot of people in the nearest city. So they got up to some things that they don’t know I know lol.

They were divorced by that time range, though my mom didn’t move out immediately. I had moved back in at that point as well, and tended to not be home much just to avoid each other more. This was before I bought the house (family home going back a good ways), and my mom moved out not long after she hit 50, to take care of her aunt in her late stage Alzheimer’s.

Anyway, the area we live in is pretty rural, fairly low population. You really can’t stay in the county and hope to keep things private. With me having been all over the tri-county area between working in home health, and bouncing in the city at some surprising places they didn’t know about, I would hear stories within a day or two. Maybe not the nitty gritty details of all of it, but enough.

Thing is, for similar reasons (everyone knowing everyone in the area), I’ve always had a fairly good idea of what my parents were like at various ages. My dad’s stint in the Army is a section that I only know about from what he’s said, and my mom’s teenage years were a bit murky because she was a navy brat and stayed off the radar of her parents, so all I have is her stories and my aunt’s.

But the rest? I was either there, or know someone that was lol.

I outlived my mother almost seven now (meaning that she died at the age I was seven years ago).

My dad was a hot shot lawyer for very questionable clients with a lot of money, but I never really had a relationship with him. Barely know him.