This happened because your parents put out “bait” that implies it’s possible for you to get their good opinion (e.g. by being like your sister). Your brain thinks, “ah, so if I do what they want, maybe they’ll give it to me.”
This may be how people think when they do that thought experiment, but I ran into a rather chilling example in the real world. I know some people who talk disparagingly of their daughter. When the daughter worked for me and did quite a good job, I told her mother so, and the mother invented reasons why the daughter’s motivations weren’t good enough.
I think that when someone is defined as being of low status, the people who were enforcing the low status will have to admit they were wrong if they change their minds, and people generally aren’t willing to admit they were wrong about that sort of thing.
I think that when someone is defined as being of low status, the people who were enforcing the low status will have to admit they were wrong if they change their minds, and people generally aren’t willing to admit they were wrong about that sort of thing.
That’s way too generous an interpretation, as it requires the parent to actually think of the child as a person in the first place. The simpler explanations for that kind of parent-child behavior are usually:
Narcissism (i.e., caring more about how the situation reflects on them, than the child’s well-being) and/or
A sincere belief that positive treatment of a child will result in horrible outcomes
It’s possible for a parent to have both, but neither one has anything to do with status per se. Notably, narcissistic parents cannot conceive of their children as entities having a status. (And if they cared about their children’s opinion, they’d tell them what that opinion should be!)
To the narcissist, his/her child is not actually an independent individual. They’re a possession, sort of like a little robot that happens to be annoyingly unpredictable and independent, and is viewed as defective whenever it doesn’t conform to their whims… preferably without them needing to go to the trouble of communicating in advance what those whims are. The child should Just Know or Should Have Known what the right thing to do was, and is viewed as obstreperous, obnoxious, and willfully disobedient for failing to intuit the correct behavior and perform accordingly.
At least, that’s my personal experience, from being on the receiving end of that sort of thing. ;-)
Anyway, given that sort of viewpoint, there’s no way that the woman’s daughter being helpful to you would raise her opinion of her daughter. Instead, a narcissist would simply view that as further evidence of how annoying her daughter is. After all, she might be helping you, but she’s only being obnoxious and disobedient at home (by the narcissist’s messed-up standards, as described above).
So, in the mother’s eyes, your praise of the daughter just means that the daughter can be helpful, and is therefore refusing to be helpful to her mother. The daughter must be helping you because of some ulterior motive, some selfish reason that doesn’t involve her mother at all… which just proves how bad the daughter really is, not thinking about her mother at all. Instead of being merely a defective robot, she’s now a rebellious robot, a traitor who is supporting an outsider (you) and putting her own childish goals, thoughts, and feelings ahead of those of her own mother.
[Shudder]
Sorry, flashback moment there. ;-) Anyway… yes, there are people like this, and yes, they are unfortunately allowed to raise children, utterly helpless children who will love them absolutely and believe everything they say, at least for the first several years of their life.
(Which, of course, is why they have the children in the first place...)
I agree with your last paragraph, but also there are a number of cultural factors that might be in play with this sort of thing.
E.g., in many cultures parents will disparage their children in a humble-brag sort of way, like “oh, you’re lucky your children are so well-behaved! Joannie is so difficult to deal with, I try to get her to do her chores but all she wants to do is study calculus!” as a way of expressing “Joannie is really studious and therefore better than your children, nyah nyah.”
Natch, I have no particular reason to believe that was the case with the people you’re describing here.
This may be how people think when they do that thought experiment, but I ran into a rather chilling example in the real world. I know some people who talk disparagingly of their daughter. When the daughter worked for me and did quite a good job, I told her mother so, and the mother invented reasons why the daughter’s motivations weren’t good enough.
I think that when someone is defined as being of low status, the people who were enforcing the low status will have to admit they were wrong if they change their minds, and people generally aren’t willing to admit they were wrong about that sort of thing.
That’s way too generous an interpretation, as it requires the parent to actually think of the child as a person in the first place. The simpler explanations for that kind of parent-child behavior are usually:
Narcissism (i.e., caring more about how the situation reflects on them, than the child’s well-being) and/or
A sincere belief that positive treatment of a child will result in horrible outcomes
It’s possible for a parent to have both, but neither one has anything to do with status per se. Notably, narcissistic parents cannot conceive of their children as entities having a status. (And if they cared about their children’s opinion, they’d tell them what that opinion should be!)
To the narcissist, his/her child is not actually an independent individual. They’re a possession, sort of like a little robot that happens to be annoyingly unpredictable and independent, and is viewed as defective whenever it doesn’t conform to their whims… preferably without them needing to go to the trouble of communicating in advance what those whims are. The child should Just Know or Should Have Known what the right thing to do was, and is viewed as obstreperous, obnoxious, and willfully disobedient for failing to intuit the correct behavior and perform accordingly.
At least, that’s my personal experience, from being on the receiving end of that sort of thing. ;-)
Anyway, given that sort of viewpoint, there’s no way that the woman’s daughter being helpful to you would raise her opinion of her daughter. Instead, a narcissist would simply view that as further evidence of how annoying her daughter is. After all, she might be helping you, but she’s only being obnoxious and disobedient at home (by the narcissist’s messed-up standards, as described above).
So, in the mother’s eyes, your praise of the daughter just means that the daughter can be helpful, and is therefore refusing to be helpful to her mother. The daughter must be helping you because of some ulterior motive, some selfish reason that doesn’t involve her mother at all… which just proves how bad the daughter really is, not thinking about her mother at all. Instead of being merely a defective robot, she’s now a rebellious robot, a traitor who is supporting an outsider (you) and putting her own childish goals, thoughts, and feelings ahead of those of her own mother.
[Shudder]
Sorry, flashback moment there. ;-) Anyway… yes, there are people like this, and yes, they are unfortunately allowed to raise children, utterly helpless children who will love them absolutely and believe everything they say, at least for the first several years of their life.
(Which, of course, is why they have the children in the first place...)
I agree with your last paragraph, but also there are a number of cultural factors that might be in play with this sort of thing.
E.g., in many cultures parents will disparage their children in a humble-brag sort of way, like “oh, you’re lucky your children are so well-behaved! Joannie is so difficult to deal with, I try to get her to do her chores but all she wants to do is study calculus!” as a way of expressing “Joannie is really studious and therefore better than your children, nyah nyah.”
Natch, I have no particular reason to believe that was the case with the people you’re describing here.