In Spite of Everything

In Spite of Everything: a memoir/Susan Gregory Thomas 223 pgs.

This is billed as the "damn near definitive" field guide to the beat-up, busted heart of the Gen X generation. Well gosh, I'm not sure my heart feels like either of those descriptions but maybe I'm just not aware of it since I'm so beaten down. Plus, this book was billed as "funny" which is always a plus. Well, turns out the hypothesis is we are all unable to have satisfying love lives because we (Gen X'ers) are the children of divorced, selfish, baby boomers who neglected us and didn't give us the support and love that we needed. All of that seems to be true for the author and it certainly does describe the situation of some people that are my age but perhaps not quite so many as the blurb implies. SGT had a pretty good life in the early years until her alcoholic father just up and left when she was 12 and her brother 8...when her mother was out of town. Yes, he packed up and left his kids alone for days. But this type of behavior was then repeated over and over and he basically abandoned his kids physically and emotionally in between times when he set them up for disappointments by not showing up when he said he would or being drunk when he did. Yea, I can see that really sucking.

Her mother, on the other hand, was never overly maternal and pretty much broke down when her husband left making her not a much better parent for the formative teen years. At least later in life, the author and her mother reconciled and got along well.

We haven't even got to the authors marriage and divorce yet but suffice it to say, most of the bad stuff can be blamed on being on the receiving end of bad parenting. This is also blamed for the "helicopter parent" phenomenon wherein parents are currently treating their kids as fragile little beings that need non stop protection and to be advocated for at every turn. Parents today are trying to be SURE their kids aren't neglected like they were as children.

I'm not sure I'm buying all this but I have to say I'm happy that *my* parents did not abandon me and I'm sure that is why I'm the well grounded impressive success that I've turned out to be ;-)