A brief history of parental tension

Driving one another nuts since the beginning of time.

Parents - they’re great aren’t they? Of course they are, but while they can be supportive, generous and unconditionally loving, they can also be inflexible, prying and even embarrassing. You may sometimes think that your parents are the most inflexible/prying/embarrassing in the world, but you’re certainly not alone in thinking this. In fact, parents of all kinds have had pretty much that relationship with their kids since the beginning of time. In fact, here’s an at-a-glance chronology of the history of parent-kid squabbles.

6000 B.C.: Cain grounded for two months by his parents for killing his brother. Later raised to three months after bringing up “The Eden Incident.” “That was totally different”, his mother was reported as saying.

1323 B.C.: Eighteen year-old King Tutankhamen’s attempts at independence are scuppered as he moves in permanently with his Mummy.

c. 12 A.D.: Jesus stays behind in Jerusalem temple while his parents are returning home to Nazareth unaware he wasn’t with them, causing great anxiety to his parents when they realised, and to the copyright violation team of Home Alone 2: Lost In New York 1,980 years from then. Jesus’s assertion that Joseph “wasn’t his real Da” caused further tension.

c. 100 A.D.: Fatherly “I had it harder in my day” boasting reaches its all time peak as the first generation of professional Gladiators retire.

1095-1291 A.D.: The threat of sending errant sons to The Crusades keep kids broadly on straight and narrow.

c. 1600 A.D.: Prince of Denmark and Daddy’s boy Hamlet kills his mother and most of his friends. This makes most people feel comparatively better about their family lives.

1666 A.D.: A great fire engulfs the city of London. Teenage girl’s hairdryer defiantly left on all night believed to be responsible.

c.1670 A.D.: In an age of wigs, fops and dandies, fathers generally worry about their sons growing up to be less feminine than them.

1954 A.D.: Bill Haley releases Rock Around The Clock, bewitching kids and confusing parents. Music is added to the list of things parents now no longer get.

1969 A.D.: The “Summer of Love” causes a new invention, known as “feelings”. Parents, especially fathers, start showing these “feelings” initially on a partial and local basis, but are later rolled out worldwide.

1974 A.D.: Harry Chapin writes "Cats In The Cradle", emphasising the fact that despite the emergence of “feelings”, Dads can still be destructively dickish.

2000 – 2007 A.D.: Gilmore Girls and Arrested Development make a mockery of people who claim single parent families don’t work.

Present Day: Most people generally consider Homer Simpson as an ideal parent. Proper order, too.

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