A Leftwing Mother Seeks Advice About Her Leftwing Children from the Leftwing Atlantic

As you will soon see, leftism makes one thrive and prosper.

Dear Therapist: Should I Give My Adult Children More Money?

They're both angry at me, and I want to mend our relationship.

Dear Therapist,

My husband and I are both successful professionals. He's an attorney and I'm a nurse practitioner. Each of us came from a fairly lower-middle-class background and worked hard to get where we are. Our families helped us as much as they could, but for the most part we are self-made.

The hard part is our kids. Our son struggled with some mental-health issues in high school. He was a national merit scholar and eventually graduated from college. He's now obese, working for minimum wage, and living with his polyamorous nonbinary partner of 11 years. He's angry at us. We say nothing much of consequence to him and see them often and have a pleasant enough time.

Our daughter is also angry at us. She excelled in everything she did in high school and college, but had a serious rift with her sorority senior year and an abusive boyfriend; she moved to Seattle to be a barista and declared herself pansexual. She spends eight hours a day on Twitter railing at our homophobia and our control of her life.

The Atlantic Therapist's advice is simple: It's the parents' fault for being so transphobic.

And fatphobic.

[I] have a feeling that right now your children have a deep, unfulfilled need to be embraced and understood by their parents, and that's why they're angry. You know that both children are angry with you and your husband, but do you know why they have so much anger, and if so, how have you responded? For example, if your daughter says she feels that you try to control her life, or that you judge her for her sexual orientation, are you curious to learn more? Or do you defend yourself in a way that dismisses her complaints with something like "I'm not trying to control you--I'm trying to help you get your life on track" or "I'm not homophobic--I just think this is a reaction to what happened with your boyfriend and not really who you are'?

Your daughter probably takes to Twitter to express her anger because she feels that when she goes directly to you, she isn't being heard. Similarly, your perception that you "say nothing of consequence" when you see your son yet "have a pleasant-enough time" might indicate that you aren't aware of how he's truly feeling either. With so much anger (on his part) and anxiety (on yours and your husband's) roiling beneath the surface, these interactions sound at best hollow and superficial, and at worst emotionally torturous. Is time spent together really "pleasant enough" when he knows that you're disappointed with his career, his partner, and his weight, and find his life to be sad?

Leftism is a viral mental illness and we're about to start reaping a grim harvest of suicides and parent-shootings by an entire generation driven insane by this sickness.

posted by Ace at 12:29 PM

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