What were your parents doing at your age?

This question indicates a comparison between our lives and those of our parents. Well, I think drawing parallels is quite tricky, as in the last twenty years, the progress of technology and, furthermore, the mindset of society have undergone a considerable transformation. For example, see the LGBTQ Movement, being divorced is not anymore a stigma, child out of wedlock, or single-parent families, since one decides to have a child and raise it alone, be it through adoption or in vitro fertilization. It isn’t, though, that these specific cases didn’t exist before 50 or more years, but it wasn’t much in the open. So, we can see that society’s mentality has become more open and acceptable.

As for my parents, I will go much further back than my age now. It isn’t that I don’t want to reveal my age; I did this long ago in a previous post.

My parents went to Germany in the mid-60s as migrant workers or, as the Germans say, Gastarbeiter. They went separately, as they didn’t know each other then. They met later in Germany and got married there. Many Gastarbeiter migrated believing that after 10-15 years, they would return to their country. But as my parents, many married there started a family, and stayed in Germany for a lot more than 15 years. Meanwhile, for many Gastarbeiter, Germany has become a second home; others moved back to their home countries after retirement, as my parents did, after 50 years in Germany.

At the age I’m now, my parents worked in one of the most famous factories in Germany, and that’s BOSCH. They had three children, one of them, my sister, married, and one grandchild. My sister married at a young age. So did my mother; she was even younger.

So, we see how our mindsets have changed. I really can’t imagine myself now being a grandmother.