Boomer Mom Tells Her 'Spoiled' Millennial Son 'We Don't Want You Anymore' After He Refuses To Get Up Early On His Vacation
She saw nothing wrong with effectively disowning her child for something so petty.
blvdone / Shutterstock Estrangements between boomer parents and millennial and Gen Z children have been skyrocketing in recent years, and a recent Reddit post from a Baby Boomer mom is a perfect example of how some of them happen.
Not only did the mom retaliate for the smallest, pettiest offense in a way that left many commenters shocked, she seemed to have no awareness whatsoever why what she did was wrong — and refused to listen when it was explained to her.
The boomer mom disowned her 'spoiled' millennial son because he wanted to sleep in on vacation.
A study by Cornell University professor Karl Pillemer found that parental estrangement affects roughly 1 in 10 parent-child relationships at any one time and that some 25% of us will experience it at some point in our lives. What exactly is causing this surge?
Psychologists say the most common reasons are shifting political and religious mores, differing expectations, and emotional abuse. Many have agreed that the latter is a perfect description of what went down between this boomer mom and her millennial son during his recent visit.
"On paper, he’s a perfect son," she writes in her Reddit post. "Did well in school, never got into trouble, visits often, sends flowers on my birthday / Mother’s Day. He even pays for a lot now that he’s working."
Their relationship has grown increasingly distant as her son has become an adult.
"I admit we spoiled [him]," the mom continued. "We gave him everything - food, birthdays, paid for every activity and vacation."
And she seems to be holding this over his head even now that he's 31. "He’s always acted extremely ungrateful considering all we’ve done for him," she wrote.
What exactly does he do to show this ingratitude? "I can tell he keeps me at a distance—calls maybe once a week at most, doesn’t share very much about his life when he does," she wrote. She went on to say that he also asks them to turn the TV down if he's working or studying on visits, "not realizing this is OUR place, not his."
The last straw was when he refused to get up at 6 a.m. She gathered up his baby pictures and told him she didn't want him as a son anymore.
If you're the child of a boomer, this story will all sound instantly familiar to you — the insistence by parents that they are owed something for having raised their children, regarding even the most basic, petty assertions of our autonomy and adulthood as a disrespectful offense.
But this mom took things to a whole new, absurd, and cruel level on her son's most recent visit. "For starters, he slept in EVERY morning," she wrote. "He’s a medical resident, and so I get that he works a lot of hours, but it still seemed very selfish." Or maybe he's just exhausted from working 80-hour weeks?
When his father woke him at 6 a.m. to see his new workplace and the son refused, that was the last straw. "I was furious. He can’t even do this one thing for his dad, who is proud of his new job?..."
"...I got so angry that I went upstairs and got all his birth photos together and gave them to him in a plastic bag, saying that I don’t want a son who is so ungrateful and can’t do the bare minimum for us."
Her 'spoiled' millennial son was shocked by this act of aggression and has responded in kind. After the blow-up they had about this incident, he has barely spoken to her since.
"It’s been a month now, and he’s still barely responding," she writes, which is, in the end, exactly what she asked for. But she doesn't see what the problem is. "All I did was give him his birth photos," she wrote.
People on Reddit were appalled by her story and called her emotionally abusive. But she would not listen and only doubled down.
As many, many children of boomers will tell you, this blow-up is pretty much textbook when it comes to reasons for parent-child estrangement. Over the past decade, several studies on the matter have found similar dynamics among study subjects.
Estranged children are most likely to report some form of abuse, hurtful or disrespectful behaviors by their parents, or a lack of support — you could argue for all of the above in this case.
Parents, meanwhile, are more likely to blame estrangements on anything but themselves, including their child's perceived sense of entitlement.
That's pretty much what happened here, as is the aftermath — a boomer parent who not only refuses to listen, but doubles down on their own rectitude even when confronted.
"You didn’t try to give him his birth photos," one Redditor wrote. "You tried to shame, manipulate, and gaslight…" They added, "Don’t expect that child to fall at your feet and thank you for allowing him to grace the Earth… You should be thanking him for indulging your selfish behavior this long."
None of that seemed to register with the mom. "I am VERY surprised by the responses so far," she wrote in an update. "Maybe I overreacted in telling him I was disowning him this time," she said in an absurd understatement. "But I still think the MAJORITY of you did not understand the situation."
If there are any older parents reading this, listen up: It is absolutely inexcusable, under any circumstances, to use disowning your child as a cudgel with which to get your way. That is emotional abuse.
And when you deliberately lash out in the most hurtful way possible, then refuse to own up to your mistake and make amends, you give the relationship nowhere to go — unless your child is willing to lay down and accept your abuse with no pushback.
Your child owes you no such thing, and it is not their job to repair the aftermath of your choices. Grow up, take responsibility for your actions, and learn to handle conflict like an adult instead of the entitled child you accuse your children of being. If you do, you may just find they're more willing to forgive you.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.