It's Pretty Shocking How Much Money This Person Would Make If They Didn't Love Their Client So Much
Let's be honest with ourselves, everyone. Every single penny of this would be absolutely and unabashedly deserved.
11.28.13
via Canva/Photos
A stressed mom and her happy, busy parents.
As far as generational stereotypes go, baby boomers (1946 to 1964) have often been accused of being a self-absorbed generation that has had no problem hoarding wealth, disregarding the environment, and prioritizing their own interests over their families. After all, they’re the generation that predominantly raised Gen X (1965 to 1980) and older millennials ('80s babies), also known as Gen Goonie, who were the least parented group of people in decades.
It’s unfair to paint an entire generation with the same brush. Still, the people who were once called the “Me Generation” are developing a reputation for being less involved in their grandchildren’s lives than their parents. The different grandparenting styles have been attributed to the fact that boomers worked longer and therefore want to enjoy their retirement. They also have more money than their parents to enjoy traveling and pursuing their hobbies. Those looking to take shots at boomers claim that they didn’t put a lot of effort into raising their kids, so why would they be any different with their grandkids?
Baby boomer grandparents.via Canva/Photos
A mother of one, who goes by TheCalmQuail on Mumsnet (a UK-based mothers' forum), made a controversial post, calling out a significant double standard when it comes to boomers. They had no problem having their parents help raise their kids, but they don’t want to extend the same courtesy to their children.
“It's come up in a few conversations with other parents recently about how little time their parents spend with their children, especially in comparison to when they were younger and at their grandparents' daily,” CalmQuail wrote. “Myself included, I avoided nursery completely when my mother went back to work because free daily childcare from a relative, and some of my happiest regular memories are spending regular one-on-one time with my Nana.”
“I realise grandparents are entitled to their own lives, but the lack of help does seem like double standards, when a large majority have seemingly had so much help themselves,” she continued.
A stressed mom with her head in her hands.via Canva/Photos
CalmQuail added that her mother lives up the road from her but still finds excuses not to help our child or even spend time with her kid. “It often feels like she's an extra toddler, as I have to suggest stuff to tempt her to do anything together; I manage the logistics, drive her there, etc. She will be there for emergency childcare requests when possible,” she continued. At the end of her post, she asked whether she was being unreasonable for thinking that her parents should put as much effort into raising their grandchildren as they had put into raising their parents.
The verdict: 68% thought she was NOT being unreasonable, and 32% felt that she was being unreasonable. Therefore, a majority of parents on the forum believe that Baby Boomers have the same responsibility to their grandchildren as the Silent Generation (1928 to 1945) did to theirs.
Many parents on the forum have experienced similar situations with their boomer parents and have given them a little grace by acknowledging that their grandparents didn’t have many resources or retirement expectations, so they dedicated their energy to their families.
A stressed mom doing laundry.via Canva/Photos
“I know this will turn into a boomer bashing thread but my experience is my parents and their friends are early retirees with a fair bit of cash and feel they’ve earnt a nice easy long comfortable retirement (they have worked hard but only the same as us except we can’t afford a nanny, cleaner etc like they did…).so they’re busy on holidays, golfing, socialising,” a commenter wrote. “My grandparents were typical of their generation—very hard working, modest life, and incredibly family orientated, they had us every holiday.”
“I don’t think my grandparents had much in the way of expectations of retirement,” another commenter added. “They retired relatively early by today’s standards, and lived far longer than they expected. There wasn’t much of a sense of ‘enjoying your retirement’ by jetting off around the world or pursuing personal hobbies - they were always there and available.”
Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with baby boomers enjoying their retirement, but their children have a right to feel a bit miffed by the shift in grandparenting priorities. As times change, so do expectations, but why does it feel like younger people are always getting the short end of the stick when it comes to life's necessities, such as childcare and the cost of living? Unfortunately, so many younger people feel like they have to go it alone. However, kudos to the boomer grandparents who do help out with childcare, just as their parents did. As they say, it takes a village to raise a child, and these days, our villages need to be growing instead of shrinking.
Canva Photos
Everyone brought their own tea.
As you start to get older, it's inevitable that your birthday begins to lose a bit of luster. Sometimes it's because of the other things you have going on in life. Parents usually focus more on their kids' birthdays and holidays, so their own birthdays become a bit of an afterthought. Others just get tired of doing the same kind of things year after year: throwing an unimaginative party to celebrate getting a year older. Yay, I guess? There's also the small matter of our diverse relationships. Most of us have different friend groups, family, in-laws—what are we supposed to do? Mix them all together in an awkward stew of forced small talk?
And let's not even get started on presents. What does a 30- or 40-something-year-old really need when it comes to birthday presents? Maybe something meaningful or thoughtful from a spouse or a close loved one, but certainly most adults have no desire for all their friends to shower them with random gifts they don't want, need, or could buy themselves.
One woman, Liz Migliaccio, decided to reimagine the grown-up birthday party. For her 36th, she invited all her family and close friends and asked them, in lieu of gifts, to bring something far more interesting.
Migliaccio and her wife, Cayla DeRegis, recounted the invitation to Newsweek:
"For my birthday...join me for some cozy wine and please come tell me your insane co-worker gossip or how your boss is the worst," it read. "Regale me with your salacious romantic encounter or unhinged dating story. Get really detailed about someone else's business and we can full form opinions that no one asked for. I'm 36—the world's hottest age and hot people like hot gossip."
It was a clever way of throwing an entertaining party with family and friends from all walks of life, all while giving the strangers in attendance good icebreakers with one another. As seen in a now-viral TikTok from DeRegis, guests took turns spilling their juiciest bit of tea. The party go-ers are absolutely rapt as you can see in the clip:
@cayladeregis the greatest gift there is ☕️
11 million people watched the video on TikTok, with commenters unanimously agree: The 'tea party' was absolutely genius.
In the interview with Newsweek, Migliaccio said the best story of the night came from a guest who attended a wedding that never happened.
"A friend of a friend went to a family wedding a while back," Migliaccio said. "[She] had to go buy a long-sleeve dress for the wedding. As the receipt is being printed out, she gets a text that the ceremony is being called off, and instead, the bride and groom are just going to 'celebrate their relationship. ... They got there and found out the bride and her family weren't coming anymore so it ended up just being a celebration of him. My friend said it was the most over-the-top, beautiful wedding she'd ever been to but there was no bride."
This explains the popularity of Gossip GirlGiphy
Other guests brought stories of dramatic breakups and relationship scandal. Others brought their best watercooler gossip from work. Every single person in attendance was entertained. So were the viewers and commenters on TikTok:
"In this economy this is the best gift to bring"
"I can feel how HEAVY the tea is through the screen"
"You know it’s crazy tea when people have empty glasses but are INVESTED in the story"
"I LOVE this concept- this would make me want to go to a party ... just be messy and then go home to my drama free life"
Dozens of users claimed they would be stealing this idea for their own parties in the near future.
Why is the gossip party such a brilliant idea? It comes down to the power of storytelling.
It's really stressful and challenging to mingle with people you don't know well or at all, whether you're dragged along to a spouse's work event or attending a party where the guest of honor has several different friend groups. It can be tough to find enough to talk about beyond just surface level small talk.
But one thing all human beings have in common is that we love stories. Not only is a great story super entertaining (even one about mundane but juicy everyday drama), studies show our brain activity syncs up with others when they tell us a story. That's something small talk and get-to-know-you chat can't achieve. So, the genius of the Tea Party is that it offers every guest a perfect icebreaker with all the others, lots of laughs, and a feeling of having made great connections with the other guests by the end of the night.
I think most people on their birthdays just want everyone to have a great time celebrating them with no drama. Well, maybe just a little bit of drama.
John Mainstone was the custodian of the Pitch Drop Experiment for 52 years.
Because we use water all the time, most of us have an intuitive sense of how long it takes a drop of water to form and fall. More viscous liquids, like oil or shampoo or honey, drop more slowly depending on how thick they are, which can vary depending on concentration, temperature and more. If you've ever tried pouring molasses, you know why it's used as a metaphor for something moving very slowly, but we can easily see a drop of any of those liquids form and fall in a matter of seconds.
But what about the most viscous substance in the world? How long does it take to form a falling drop? A few minutes? An hour? A day?
How about somewhere between 7 and 13 years?
Pitch moves so slowly it can't be seen to be moving with the naked eye until it prepares to drop. Battery for size reference.John Mainstone/University of Queensland
The Pitch Drop Experiment began in 1927 with a scientist who had a hunch. Thomas Parnell, a physicist at the University of Queensland in Australia, believed that tar pitch, which appears to be a solid and shatters like glass when hit with a hammer at room temperature, is actually a liquid. So he set up an experiment that would become the longest-running—and the world's slowest—experiment on Earth to test his hypothesis.
Parnell poured molten pitch it into a funnel shaped container, then let it settle and cool for three years. That was just to get the experiment set up so it could begin. Then he opened a hole at the bottom of the funnel to see how long it would take for the pitch to ooze through it, form a droplet, and drop from its source.
It took eight years for the first drop to fall. Nine years for the second. Those were the only two drops Parnell was alive for before he passed away in 1948.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
In total, there have been nine pitch drops in the University of Queensland experiment. The first seven drops fell between 7 and 9 years apart, but when air conditioning was added to the building after the seventh drop, the amount of time between drops increased significantly. The drops in 2000 and 2014 happened approximately 13 years after the preceding one. (The funnel is set up as a demonstration with no special environmental controls, so the seasons and conditions of the building can easily affect the flow of the pitch.)
The next drop is anticipated to fall sometime in the 2020s.
The first seven drops fell around 8 years apart. Then the building got air conditioning and the intervals changed to around 13 years.RicHard-59
Though Parnell proved his hypothesis well before the first drop even fell, the experiment continued to help scientists study and measure the viscosity of tar pitch. The thickest liquid substance in the world, pitch is estimated to be 2 million times more viscous than honey and 20 billion times the viscosity of water. No wonder it takes so ridiculously long to drop.
One of the most interesting parts of the Pitch Drop Experiment is that in the no one has ever actually witnessed one of the drops falling at the Queensland site. The drops, ironically, happen rather quickly when they do finally happen, and every time there was some odd circumstance that kept anyone from seeing them take place.
The Queensland pitch drop funnel is no longer the only one in existence, however. In 2013, Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, managed to capture its own pitch drop on camera. You can see how it looks as if nothing is happening right up until the final seconds when it falls.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
Today, however, with the internet and modern technology, it's likely that many people will be able to witness the next drop when it happens. The University of Queensland has set up a livestream of the Pitch Drop Experiment, which you can access here, though watching the pitch move more slowly than the naked eye can detect is about as exciting as watching paint dry.
But one day, within a matter of seconds, it will drop, hopefully with some amount of predictability as to the approximate day at least. How many people are going to be watching a livestream for years, waiting for it to happen?
PoorJohn Mainstone was the custodian of the experiment for 52 years, from 1961 to 2013. Sadly, he never got to witness any of the five drops that took place during his tenure. Neither did Parnell himself with the two that took place while he was alive.
John Mainstone, the second custodian of the Pitch Drop Experiment, with the funnel in 1990.John Mainstone, University of Queensland
Sometimes science is looks like an explosive chemical reaction and sometimes it's a long game of waiting and observing at the speed of nature. And when it comes to pitch dripping through a funnel, the speed of nature is about as slow as it gets.
Lowe Family
Some people can't wait to fly the coop. At 18, their bags are packed and, while they may very well love their families, the idea of living with them any longer is simply not tenable.
But others are glued by a bond so tight they stay warmly in the nest. For many, it begins as a financial decision. Discover reports, "The United States Census Bureau found that in 2023, the median gross rent was $1,406 across American households." Those costs continue to rise, with home mortgages often even higher.
Six years ago, financial adviser Dave Ramsey shared the statistic that "one in three adults are still living with their parents, three times as many as in 1970." Ramsey doesn't seem to approve of this figure. But according to a study by Pew Research Center, they have a different angle: "Multigenerational living has grown sharply in the U.S. over the past five decades and shows no sign of peaking." And although those stats remain in 2025 for adults between the ages of 18 and 34, not everyone agrees with Dave Ramsey that it's something to be ashamed about.
dave ramsey what GIF by Ramsey SolutionsGiphy
One family in Grand Rapids, Michigan decided that having four generations living under one roof is beneficial for many reasons—not just financial. Exemplifying a trend that's on the rise, the Lowe family initially made the choice to "prioritize stability." But, according to a piece for Good Morning America, they later realized what a wonderful advantage it brought all around.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
Jade Lowe is 29 with three kids. They all live with her mother and 84-year-old grandmother. Nicole Curtis reports that Jade wouldn't have it any other way: "Between my grandma, my mom and my sister, they kind of all just, like, help out. And the price of rent—I pay my mom a portion versus having my own mortgage."
In the Good Morning America clip, Jade points out a black and white photo of her grandmother. "This is my grandmother at the age of 22 with her husband." Over 60 years later, all three generations under her grandmother have the joy of sharing a tight-knit life together.
Pew Research also notes, "A quarter of adults in multigenerational households say caregiving actually is occurring in their homes, either in the form of personal care for another adult in the household or care for a child younger than 18 who is not the caregiver’s own child."
Jade's mother, Gema, emphasizes how important the familial bond can be. "That knowledge that goes from generation to generation can also break down barriers to absorb, and every generation is getting better. We just don't think about ourselves. We think as a group, as a collective."
Family photo.
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Jade agrees wholeheartedly. "It allowed me to still live my best life in my 20s. It allowed me to honestly just be happy and not have to worry about those extra expenses."
What's more is the time the living arrangement allows with her loved ones which, some could argue, is the most sacred of all currency. "We kind of bring those differences together under one roof. It is crucial to unite right now in today's climate. I think that just being under one household helps us with that. We're forced to be together, we're forced to have family dinners, which is beautiful."
A commenter on YouTube reminds people that this was once the norm: "This is not a growing trend. It’s something that is coming back. My family grew up in a multigenerational household from the 1940s-2000s. That’s how we survived in San Francisco. I am glad it’s returning. Oldie and goodie."
As far as the Lowe family goes, "Six women all under one roof isn't always easy"—but they make it work and they make it clear that its a situation they cherish.
drcarmenbriner/Instagram & Canva Photos
A lot of parents have noticed kids that are "too young" for puberty are moody and emotional. A doctor explains.
As the father of a 9-year-old, let me try to put it gently: What in the absolute hell?! Somewhere along the way, our education and training as parents failed us. We knew having a baby would be hard due to a lack of sleep and all the crying. We know toddlers would leave us feeling touched out and exhausted from tantrums. We also know to brace ourselves for the emotional rollercoaster of puberty in the teen years. But...nobody told us about what happens at ages seven or eight.
A doctor on Instagram is raising eyebrows for teaching parents a hard truth: puberty starts much earlier than we've been told, and it's these behind-the-scenes changes in body chemistry that explain a lot.
Inside Out is a masterclass in the emotions of young kidsGiphy
Dr. Carmen Briner, a doctor specializing in hormones, puberty, and periods, took to her Instagram Reels to drop some knowledge.
"Wondering why your 7 or 8-year-old is suddenly so moody? Well, puberty starts before you might think, with the brain signaling the hypothalamus and pituitary glands to start secreting hormones, which happens before any visible physical changes of puberty start to take place," she says.
General knowledge tells us to expect a certain amount of teenage grumpiness when the body odor, growth spurts, and hair growth kicks in, but according to Briner, there's a secret "pre-puberty" phase called Adrenarche. This phase is when those puberty hormones surge behind the scenes, leading to "moodiness, irritability, or even sudden bursts of energy or excitement."
Most parents of a kid this age have seen it play out in real-time where a minor mistake or inconvenience leads to half an hour of hysterical tears. "These early hormonal shifts have a huge impact on their emotions, so you might notice new sensitivity or sudden mood swings or a newfound intensity in their feelings," Briner says.
Listen to her break down the science here:
Needless to say, frustrated parents of kids aged seven to ten are in the comments feeling incredibly seen. Boy and girl moms alike were relived to get an explanation for why parenting suddenly seemed so damn hard, right when it was "supposed" to be getting easier:
"All this plus acne for our 7 year old son. I wasn’t ready."
"My friend's 9yo is starting to act up and I told her it must be puberty starting. She said it's crazy, she's too small and she's just being petty on purpose. Thank you for this video, I might not be crazy after all"
"It’s been a nightmare since she was 8. She’s almost 12"
"My almost 8 year old girl has been a moody NIGHTMARE. Always nice to know its not my fault"
"So my 8 year old boy did not suddenly become possessed by a demon?"
"Save me" one tired mom joked.
Parents of 7 and 8-year-olds desperately need help.Giphy
See? If your pre-puberty kid is, let's say, a handful, it's not just you. We're all going through this together, and it's not your fault. It's also not your child's fault. "They are not being difficult on purpose," Briner reminds us.
Experts say the best way to handle this volatile phase is to have empathetic but firm conversations when the heat of the moment has passed. There's no use hooting and hollering when your eight-year-old is in the middle of a hysterical meltdown. Just be there for them and support them as the feelings pass through. Then, when things are calm, discuss strategies for how you two can handle things better the next time around.
And don't worry—the mood swings won't last forever. They should settle down dramatically by the time your kid is 16 or so. Only eight more years—you've got this!