Remember the opening scene from "Idiocracy?" Well...mum and dad weren't Trevor and Carol.

Mine was more like "Leave it to Beatings."

Been there. I had to grow up with an alcoholic father. Finally, my mother passed away from cancer, and my father shortly behind her, and the state placed me in a Mormon foster home (which is how I became active LDS).

Mine was like the movie "Housekeeping", right down to the excuse notes for staying home from school.

Gilligan's Island?

Except everyone was on their own island.

- And no boats.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2014 02:22PM by zenjamin.

The Munsters!

Absolutely no question (even though, for the BEGINNINGS of holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, it sure did LOOK like "Leave It To Beaver"-land).

But fear not, boys and girls, because--by the time Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner was either underway, or (sometimes, on the "good" holidays) the pumpkin pie had been eaten--it was...once again...back to: The Munsters!!!

("Leave it to Beatings" was only on the non-holiday days of the year, when there were no witnesses or observers...just the subsequent bruises all over my arms and stomach.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2014 07:38PM by tevai.

More like Coraline.

It was definitely Father Knows Best--without all the wisdom and stuff since our scripts were all generated by the Mormon Church.
And if "you knew best" you didn't deviate from the assigned dialogue.

"Betty - Girl Engineer" may be the most misogynist sit com episode ever put on TV.

Plot summary:

Aptitude tests at school tell Betty she would make a good engineer. She attempts to do an engineering internship. Her family belittles her. At the job site she is ridiculed and harassed every moment.

She "wises up" goes home and puts on a pretty dress and starts dating the creep at work. (He's cute.)

Mine was like Leave It to Beaver but 25 or so years later and with more kids. So I guess my childhood was like The Brady Bunch except that we were LDS, we weren't a blended family, my father wasn't a closeted gay, my mother was a terrible singer who wouldn't have been invited to sing in church or anywhere else on Christmas morning, and we had a late-teen to mid-twenties nanny instead of a middle-aged housekeeper.

I like to classify my up bringing by the titles, "Dysfunction Junction", "Fists of Fury" and my personal favorite, "Mind Freak"......it was hell.

I'd personally rather live in the Munster household then the Cleaver home.

It's kind of like watching old episodes of the Adam's family, and they don't seem all that bizarre nowadays.

I totally agree with you.

I am extremely and forever grateful that I grew up in the family I had. Despite ANYTHING that was either injurious or insane (both of which were applicable), the also trues prevail:

* My family was NEVER boring--not EVER. (This is really important to me--now even more than it was back then, because back then I didn't understand just how boring families can be.)

* We had a bunch of disparate people who were absolutely fascinating in all kinds of ways, and some of them (like my maternal aunt) knew people--who I met, and got to know quite well a lot of the time--who were even MORE fascinating in every possible way.

* My sibling and I were the beneficiaries of all kinds of trips (all of which were educational), and all kinds of benefits (like Camp Fire Girls camp every year, and all kinds of lessons, like dance and violin and piano) even though my parents had to scrimp and sacrifice for a number of years to get us these things.

* My sibling and I grew up in what was basically "pioneer" territory: a new part of our geographical area that was just being opened to residential housing, and was rich with hills and trees and plants and animal life and all kinds of neat minerals and geological formations that not only taught us about all of these things, but fired our imaginations forevermore.

* My family (both sides) came with BOOKS...lots of them books from the mid-1800s on, and early 1900s, which were an education all by themselves. (Ancient history texts, Ancient Greek tutorials, literature from all over the English-speaking world, "old" science and math which was incredibly educational all by itself, philosophy, architecture, etc.) (There were also a bunch of "old" magazines too, and I still guard these very carefully because they are falling apart from advanced age.)

* The two different sides of my family (maternal and paternal) could not have been any more different, so just by listening to my different relatives talk, it was an education all by itself. Put all of my relatives together, and it was a pretty good representation of most of the history of the United States (and the countries my paternal g-grandparents came from). When I was in school, it was easy to learn history because I could "hook" most everything onto one person or another's history in our family.

* There was a lot of intelligence, intellectual curiosity, initiative, and fun in many of the people in my family. Not only that, but they were pretty "out there" in their talk and behavior, so even when they were wrong, they were "dramatically" WRONG...and even when that was a personal hurt to me (or to my sibling), it was very instructive.

* There was a lot of off-the-wall craziness (in a good way, though many people who knew our family personally would probably dispute the "good" characterization). A lot of the time we WERE a whole lot like The Munsters, only for real. Despite any pain at the time, the benefits far outweighed the negatives.

I can't imagine growing up in any other family and winding up as the "me" I am.

Anyplace else I would have been stifled from the beginning.

(Even my family sometimes ATTEMPTED to stifle me, but I was almost always able to make an end run around them, and they usually--at least finally--capitulated/accepted my behavior, thought processes, and beliefs. Even when they unsuccessfully tried to get me to conform, they (inwardly, anyway) respected me for being an individual who was so UNlike them.)

I would have DIED every single day I was growing up had I been a Cleaver child.

I would have perished from boredom long before I ever reached secondary school.

I'm glad I was fortunate enough to be born a "Munster."

Nobody EVER got bored in OUR family!!!

(Even when certain people wanted to kill certain other people...for [almost, anyway] real!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2014 10:45PM by tevai.

My family life was more like M.A.S.H except nobody was funny and nobody was a real Dr. Lots of sneaking around and manipulating of the generals in charge though.

Ours was more like The Deer Hunter or someother sadistic POW camp movie.

Child abuse is horrible, and growing up in the 60s and 70s, there was no outside help.

All the pressure from the church and my mother's family was to support my sadistic father since he was the "priesthood leader" of the family.

It was just hell, and all of my siblings and I have struggled for years to try to deal with it.

And this is the reason I cannot accept Mormonism. There is a great deal of research now showing the relationship between dysfuntional families and the mental health of the children, yet Mormonism and other religions simply never got this.

If there were a loving god, would s/he really be so worried about the number of holes poked in the external skin of an ear and only pay lip service to child abuse?

Mine was like a business. Dad was the CEO, Mom was the middle manager who had to execute the CEOs directives, and we kids were like employees who only spent time together because it was our job.

maybe you meant, did your family present themselves like beaver cleaver family?, but instead of the parents nicely lecturing their kids, the parents yelled and said I'm sick and tired of this mess.

Because unlike the cleavers, instead of 2 kids, there were 4 kids with 2 years between them, and a stay at home mom, and a dad he couldn't keep a job to support the family, and a mom who refused to work and didn't have a college education. Mom and dad didn't seem to enjoy being married to each other and seemed to only get married because the church said to get married. TBM Dad was 26 and said that was way old to get married. My TBM mom was 19.

Well no family is perfect, and Mormon families seem to be the ones that are the worse off from the start.

I'm sure if my parents were not Mormon and prolonged getting married till they finished college, they might of found out they aren't a good match. My mom was 19 and my dad 26. He was a convert at age 20, he was feeling the pressure and wanted to fit in with his new Mormon clique

Mine was more like an episode of The Twilight Zone. You just never knew what weirdness was going to pop up next.

+1

Oh yeah.

Mine was more like All in the Family.

Mine was like "momma's family". Not the standalone series, but the earlier, edgier sketches from the Carol Burnett Show.

I grew up in a GA family--mansions, boats, limosines--and we were never allowed to talk about money, or ask questions about money. one of my brothers was told to keep his mouth shut and his ears open. I was told to be seen and not heard. We were a real, old-fashioned "Leave it to Beaver" family. Except my brother kept beating me up, torturing me, breaking my toys, bicycle, skis, my car the furniture in my house (when I got older). Then he started being abusive to my children, and suddenly I didn't have that family anymore!

With the GA money, we had a cabin, and I spent every summer by a lake, playing with my cousins and the people in other cabins, boating, water skiing, riding horses, exploring nature, driving jeeps as pre-teens. I would cry when summer was over.

My father was a professor at a prestigious university, outside of Utah, and I was in love with our little town. I found interesting jobs there during Christmas, after school, and the part of the summer we weren't at the lake. Jobs kept me out of the house, and away from my brother. Feeling like I was "homeless", I bonded with good non-Mormon friends, with good, Non-Mormon families, so I never believed in Mormon elitism. Mormons were racist, prejudiced, sexist, and arrogant. I was ashamed to be a Mormon, and have an insane brother who abused me, and a mother who was critical and screamed obscenities at me, and a father who traveled all over the world, and was never home. He did take me and my mother along, a few times, to live in a foreign country and go to school there. My father taught me to swim, ski, fish, play tennis, repair a bike, basketball, baseball, golf, how to garden, and he spend more time with me than with the other children. I looked like him. I respected him, and loved to learn. Every time he went on a trip, I felt abandoned, left alone with my mean mother and horrible older brothers, to fend for myself. I spent a lot of time up in a tree, reading, or at school or the library, or doing after-school sports. I think our ideal community saved me! And my father, when he was home. Also, I went to one of the top high schools in the nation.

I think the only way my family represented a typical Mormon family was the lack of love, physical discipline, males abusing and belittling females, judging others, being racist, my parents discouraging me from making non-Mormon friends or dating non-Mormon boys. Having to go to meetings, and look happy and perfect, always having to perform to impress others. Never working hard enough, never being perfect enough. I had great adventures and opportunities when I was young, but I'm much happier now, as an adult with my own family. We are loving non-Mormons. Through great effort--and much criticism from my TBM family--I ended the cycle of abuse. We have no contact with my bully brother, but had a great relationship with my parents until they died. My children and I resigned from TSCC about 8 years ago.

Maybe, in the near future, this will be the "typical" Mormon family story.

Normal blue collar family with normal blue collar problems.

Ours was more like "Eight is Enough" -- eight people sharing one bathroom certainly is!

In my case...Leave it to Beaver...with a nit of "Rebel without a Cause" and "The Wild Ones" thrown in to stir up the pot.

Ron Burr

I think mine was more The Bunkers meet The Waltons.

In the two different households I lived in from birth to age 18, there were two narcissists, one overt and one covert, and a child molester. Sometimes 'gramps' the incest lover would visit. The only sane one was a step-parent, but he became the enabler of any emotional abuse my mother wanted to heap on me.

It's taken me a lifetime to sort it all out.