In what ways are you different from your parents?

[composer]

My parents are good at entertaining and having a home. Not obsessive at all, just comfortable and people love to visit. My house has crummy decorations and I rarely have people over.

[LastRailway]

In most ways I can think of. From their worldview and beliefs, their way of living their life, their ideas on how everyone else should be living their lives... pretty much everything.

[attila_the_hunny]

I don't do drugs.

[Faust06]

Dad is an ESTP, has the gift of the gab. He can be analytical at times, though he's completely uncreative, doesn't enjoy learning new things, has a narrow worldview and sticks with just a few subjects/interests mainly in conversation. Doesn't like anything weird or technical. He likes biographies and victimizing himself.

Mom is a relatively quiet INfP. I don't relate to her any more than my dad, but we can touch on certain subjects that my father doesn't understand emotionally or intellectually. She likes spending money and not much else.

I had mostly contempt for them these past 6 years, but now we just barely talk.

[Ptah]

I like me.

[bass_n_treble]

I am a bit more cavalier with spending money, although I am working on being more conscientious (directly correlated with the Big 5 OCEAN personality test).
I am political, my parents tend to believe everything on TV and don't like to shake up the status quo.
My parents tend to be passive-aggressive (and I am a sounding board for their complaining), whereas I am assertive/borderline aggressive. I have talked my parents out of salespeople tactics a few times.
I tend to throw things out more often, and have no sentimental attachment to things like cards, drawings, notes, magazines, newspapers.

[Works]

Asian.

[avolkiteshvara]

Had two SP parents.

I'm not guided in life by emotions.

[wote]

ESFJ mother; ISxJ father. It would be far faster and easier for me to list what I have in common with my parents than it would be to list what I don't.

[teleforce]

i was born american.

[djm]

I am far more responsible.

[C.J.Woolf]

I'm the only N in a family of S's. My parents work harder and are better organized than me.

[bluebell]

I like me.

This. Plus I have friends (my father had one friend at retirement age).

[Anonymous]

I'm edumacated.

[synagogue]

The main thing it boils down to is that I think for myself.

[gr8ness97]

I dont rush to judgement and am way more openminded. Plus, I dont make decisions based on feelings, not prone to mood swings and dont get feelings hurt that easily.

[Jasz]

I have money.
They have debt.

Jasz

[ObtainGnosis]

My parents are both Type 1s, I am type 5w4. My parents are hyper-vigilant about the practical affairs of everyday life, I am lazy and detached. My parents are conservative, I am liberal. My parents have southern accents, I do not. My parents don't do drugs (except alcohol for my father), but I do many. My parents are Episcopalian, and I am a mystic with a sophisticated religious understanding and experience to back it up. My parents care little for art, I care for it a great deal. My parents have money, I do not. I read frequently, my parents do not. We're different in almost every fundamental way. My grandfather on my father's side was obviously INTP however.

[skip]

As I wrote a response to this I realized we are much more similar than different.

[rainfall]

I am lazy. They are hard working. I am stubborn, they are conforming. They are independent, I'm dependent on them. I'm actually envious of some of their better qualities. Like willpower. My mom can sit down with a medical book and just read that shit for hours. Now that's willpower. I can't force myself to do the same. I could've gotten an A in bio, if only I had the willpower to study. I got a B, and it was an easy B, but I didn't truly apply myself, didn't memorize anything, just rode on whatever modicum of intelligence I had. I have a very shitty willpower; if I don't feel like doing anything I will literally lay there for hours motionless.


Dad... I'm more willing to be genuine than he is. Only difference I can think of. Ahh! They he doesn't get addicted to things. He can do something pleasurable and then go back to work; I can't, it's either one or the other.

[attila_the_hunny]

My mother is more hardworking and stubborn than I am. She's definitely more charming and everyone who has ever met her can't help but like her. She will literally not take any shit from anyone (I have to reach a limit). We're very similar in many ways.

My bio-father...well, that would take all day to list. The biggest ones are that he has no willpower. He has no ability to stand up for himself and feels like whatever he does is justified, even if it hurts people, because the world "owes" him. What for, I can't imagine. He lives in a world that only exists in his mind, very disconnected from reality, where he is first and foremost the most altruistic person in the world. I don't know whether he's always been like this or if it's from all the insane drug use.

[Skinart]

I'm much more hard-hearted, and more willful. Less tractable. Less successful too... Far less likely to kill myself.

[Jasz]

I am alive.
My Mom is not.
My Dad is somewhere in between.

Jasz

[euterpenc]

More into the arts in general, particularly music, though my do enjoy them, particularly cooking. I also have a more extreme dislike of the State. Into psychedelic drugs, which my parents never even tried.

And I'm much closer to the brink of madness, or so it appears.

[bluebell]

More:

I'm into sharing (I used to get into trouble for sharing any of my stuff at school).

I don't mind holidays where other people are around (my parents' idea of the perfect holiday was if nobody else was there at all).

I like bits of mainstream culture and I like to fit into groups (again, this was highly disapproved of when I was growing up).

I know half the neighbours in my street and interact with them pretty regularly, even though I've only been there for a year (my parents were people phobic and deliberately kept their distance from neighbours, even the parents of a kid that my sister and I were very good friends with).

I am semi organised. If I have piles of stuff and paper lying around it doesn't take very long to tidy up. Despite having a reputation for one of the messiest desks at work, I'm way way neater than my father was. The kitchen table and floor were covered in a couple of inches of overlapping chaotic paper, ditto the study.

I am more relaxed and can be silly and laugh (the only time I ever saw my father smile was at Christmas and his birthday when he got gifts, or on the rare occasions he got drunk).

There's more but it's unpleasant digging over the past in too much detail.

[Jennywocky]

My ESTP dad is a real charmer. He tries to play situations for whatever he can get from them. He also had trouble letting things go and will try to get what he wants even at other people's expense, is willing to badger people in arguments. He's also a chronic alcoholic, is scared of looking at his feelings and inner motivations to the point of abandoning relationships just to avoid unpleasant truths about himself, he blames others constantly for things that are his fault and/or responsibility. He loves gardening and dogs. He's savvy but not necessarily smart. He is an agnostic, although he acted mostly anti-religious much of his life; but it seems more out of anger and fear towards a potential divine being rather than some measured intellectual response to data. He would rather be free to respond in the moment than worry about what is appropriate or follow some social rule. He has a great sense of humor but it often ranges into the crass.

My ISFJ mom is one of the quietest and soft-spoken people I know. She was a nurse for her entire career and that fits her personality; she cares about people greatly and loves to physically take care of them. She is a lifelong Christian, growing up in a country Baptist setting, and has no ability to see the world outside of that worldview, although she tries very hard not to judge people; she's all "heart" and not much "head," and actively feels sympathy for everyone. She has trouble understanding things intellectually and can't really approach anything on a merely "rational" basis. She is hard-working and responsible and takes on hardship to herself for others. She is very aware of what is socially appropriate and always does what is appropriate, as far as she understands it. My mom's sense of humor isn't very good because she has trouble detaching enough emotionally to see why something might be funny.

I can be savvy like my dad, but I am intellectual in a way he isn't. I wish I had more of his charisma, but I'm quieter, and more respectful of boundaries like my mother. I won't typically lash out against people or play them like he will to get what he wants; yet, I'm more willing to stretch the rules and/or sidestep ones I think are irrational or detrimental in the long run, which my mom won't do because she doesn't like hurting feelings or being inappropriate and she has trouble seeing all the possibilities of whether something is good or bad long-term. They are both very S and I am very N. My sense of humor can be very wacky and/or dry, and sometimes can venture into the crass, although I'm usually appropriate for context like my mom. Neither of them abstracts much if at all, whereas it's what I do naturally; communication is hard. I used to be more a mix of my dad's cynicism and my mother's faith, but nowadays I'm largely an agnostic existential mix with a lot of empathy for religious people; that drove a rift between my mother and me for awhile, but we worked past it. My dad, meanwhile, doesn't talk to me anymore; he has trouble getting over people not doing what he wants, especially if he thinks it makes him look bad.

Overall, I would say I'm more like my mother in terms of my manner, but I'm more like my dad in terms of how I see and approach the world. Overall at this point, I'm a good mix in terms of the things I am alike with them about; but there are parts to me they'll never get or understand.

[2hype]

They are right wing, have money, go to church, and join things (book club, rotary club, PEO, etc.). I think my dad is INTJ. My mom baffles me. Maybe ISFJ?

[gator]

Biggest difference between my parents and I right now is worldview and major goals. I don't like the idea of tying myself to a career, a mortgage, a house, a family, a place. These are things that they've worked their entire lives for. They're feelers so we fight about this. They misconstrue my rejection of these things as a rejection of them.

[Stigmata]

I'm far more liberal minded and open to different experiences and perspectives, nor do I desire assimilated into modern society by means of playing according to the rules of the established system. My parents, especially my mother (an ISTJ), are heavily invested in achieving and maintaining the traditional ideal model of success, and therefore have projected those same ideas onto me and my siblings from an early age, stemming from various directions such as attire, mannerisms, and thought process. Any sort of deviation from this model is met with grave suspicion on their parts and is seen as risky or unreliable; Not much out of the box thinking or questioning of the status quo. However, I will say this in turn gives them a much better work ethic, as well as they maintain a level of pragmatism that could be beneficial to my current world view.