I don't want to put stressors in the topic. So be careful.

I was interested in how many of us come from families that went through parental separations, divorce, re-marriage , single parents, what ever.

I was then going to compare that to the available stats for our age groups, just for interest.

I came from a family who were very loving to their children  who were loyal to each other and as Irish-Catholics of their time, no way to even contemplate separation. 

I'm in the 50-60 age group.

Just Interested

Cindy

No separation, but my father was away for long periods working.  Which was  typical of Australia in the 50's and 60's if you were in the construction industry or similar.
No real male role models for a lot of the time, and not a lot of expression of emotions when he was home.  Very much respectable Middle Class upbringing.  At least I didn't suffer the abuse a lot of people I know now did.
55-60.
Karen.

  My parents were divorced after 8 years of marriage. 
  Loving and understanding mother of moderate conservative values, and good relatives and like friends my mom had.  Mom had only one steady boyfriend since that divorce.  None of us kids was abused in any way.  The uncles did the best at the time as my male role models. 

  Corporal punishment and groundings were administered conservatively.
 
  Strong work ethic stressed and passed on.

  I'm 1 of 4 kids in that household, the oldest and tallest. 

  50-60 age group.

  I hope that I'm not putting out too much information here that may start bad triggers here.
  Joelene
 

I come from a happy household. No divorce. No abuse at all. My dad was never really easy to talk to. He was a general in the air force. I was very close to my mother.
I am one of 3 kids and also the oldest.

40-50 age group.

Up to age 6 living in a female-only household. Post WWII.
Name giving father MIA in Rumania, bio father went back to St. Louis MO.
Was never close to ANY male, didn't like them either.
Males either scared me, or plain pissed me off... had not one single male relationship as a child.

Males were either too old, too young and arrogant, too damaged from the war, too absorbed in rebuilding their careers after the war, or just too grumpy and didn't speak at all. No joke that – it's really how it was.

After age 6, almost every year I lived in a new city and going to different school.
I only related to females really --- was only child of a single parent, mostly absent.
Mother died when I was age 12, now fully orphaned.

Father in US never acknowledged me other then in his last letter to my mother.
She was 3 - 4 month pregnant with me.
The day after a lovely Christmas meal he was gone for ever, leaving behind a hand written letter – giving some hope for a reunion. Well, not so as it turned out.
Big shock to here it was I'm sure.

An elderly uncle and one of my mother's half-sisters, one of my many aunts, became guardians.

Obviously no divorce - family background = no family to mention...

I'm 65.

Axélle

I'm the oldest of two children, my sister is 13 months younger and I have always been a surrogate parent of sorts for her - we are very close.  My parents divorced when I was about 10, my mother abused painkillers throughout my childhood and was emotionally (and sometimes physically) abusive to us.  My father had little to do with us.  I lived with my grandparents most of my teenage and adult life - they were my role models.  I'm 32.

I'm in the 30-40 range.. Only child.. Mum and Dad divorced when I was 6, separated when I was 5. Dad had remarried twice since - I have 3 half-brothers from his 2nd marriage. Mum was in a relationship with a guy until I was 27.. So I had a male role model in the home..

I am 28. Both parents live together still and never considered separation, they where both very loving towards me.

Interesting idea Cindy. Knowing you, this could become the basis for a really interasting article, if not a pretty decent thesis.

I confess, I have wondered many time, the effect of different family backgrounds have upon people. Are protestant, small famailies with divored parents more likely to produce insecure and agressive adults than large Catholic families, where everyone seems to know their place? For example.

Is nature really less significant than nurture?

Anyway, my own contribution.

Parent divorced when I was about 16, but their marriage was over before I was born. My father simply lacked the intelligence to realise it and my mother lacked the self confidence to throw him out.

Father remarried. Nice women, but kinda broken goods already.

Father, very protestant, middle class, poorly educated, (with enormous expectations quite soon).

Mother. Catholic, skilled working class, well educated, Astonishingly aggressive and resentful. Rejected by her own family because of that. Former nun. Had briefly been a registered Nurse, during WW2 in London.

4 siblings, girl, boy, me, boy girl. While each maintains some sort of relationship with each other, I had none with any of them or parents, prior to them dying.

Environment. Continually changing. 6 different places in Canada, 2 in US, 3 in England, 4 in Scotland.

Hope that helps Cindy.



Addition. Just realised everyone else put their ages. Cindy knows mine but for the record, I'm 56 and loving that!

I'm the youngest of three. Parents relationship broke down when I was about 6. They stayed together until all of us had finished school. I was 16 at the time, so there was 10 years of living through quite a strained relationship. My actual last day at school was my last day in the family home. Mum was packed and off we went, with her boyfriend in tow. They officially divorced 2 years later. Both remarried within 3 years, and Mum had a fit of depression last year, after which she acknowledged that both her marriages were a mistake. Make for wonderful dinner time conversation, particularly with her present husband at the table.

Parents both from Irish Catholic backgrounds. The interesting mix was my paternal grandfather was a third degree Mason in the Sydney lodge. How he married a staunch Catholic girl is beyond me. Those things were not tolerated in those days.

I'm somewhere in the 50 - 60 age range.  (And no bloody peaking at my profile either .... you hear? .... Go away!! )

Enjoy the number crunching.
Lotsa huggs
Catherine

Hugs girls and boys.

This open to all genders

No I won't sneak looks at any profiles S**t Catherine you are down as 22. Ooops

Only the mature woman seem to respond so far I wonder why, because we are comfortable with our past? I have to admit I have no resentment, nor should I, for my parents care.

I haven't done any numbers but a quick scan is showing no obvious relationship in family relationships, there seems to be about equal divorce, constant relationships. And in the divorce the breaks seem to be random as well. We need more info.

I think this is interesting but we need to be careful for peoples emotions.

It doesn't take much as we all know to go from up to flat.

Hugs Sisters

Cindy

Hey, I'm not 'mature' - I'm just old.  55+.  Parents together, mom died when I was 18, father re-married three years later, stayed with her till he died when I was in my 40s.  Dad was a airline captain, mom never earned a penny in her life, but kept very busy with kids, church activities, social justice stuff (which was largely church too) and cultural stuff like being on the classical music committee or whatever group it was that put on small scale classical recitals.

Again no stats and there will not be for ages, numbers are so,  low I won't bore you with a power calculation, which I have based on homosexual male studies in split and stable  family environments. That data is publicly available,  but (IMO) flawed but gives me a starting place to play with numbers.  I'm very happy to talk about my hypotheses BTW. 

Yes because the information does not fit the model.

The theory that low T or anything or high E or anything during pregnancy is not provable in humans. It is an opinion. That is all.

Animal studies are useless because none of them take into account how 'humans' interact during development. There is no data. They are opinions but they lack scientific merit. There is quite a lot stuff I could put in here but I won't for now, but you can think of animal colonies and hierarchy for a start to the literature.

We have to be very careful of opinions, particularly from so called scientists who do not publish in peer reviewed journals. Their opinion is worthless. IMO

Hum, two things that struck me about my own case.

Mother went through major drama/shock when foetus (I) was about 3+ month – father left over night after lovely Christmas meal, back to US and was never heard of again. Just try and imagine, what it would do to you.

Then nurture... up to age of 6, FEMALE only nurture environment. No male figures in sight far and wide.
Then sometime later... rejection of ALL male figures in my 'nurture' environment I despised them all.
I NEVER idolised anything male or was ever interested in following them. They actually repulsed me - the lot of them. What did not help was, that I was mistreated by males too, I was a girl at heart – but they would not have any of that of course.

I actually do not think this is such an extraordinary scenario at all.

The only issue is, that very late coming-out and - in my case - by epiphany, i.e. some sort of major nervous-breakdown feeling like a scale 7 earth quake. Yet again, even that is not too unusual – I don't actually think.

Now, these ridiculous assumptions that we all had to play with dolls -for ever-
I had a VERY! beloved rag-doll, it was VERY painful having to throw it away at age 5. But then I also liked to push little toy cars about after age 6... and next that one HAD TO HAVE continuous FANTASIES of being female! It is idiotic! - for all I could say.
Repression and denial would take care of PLENTY of just that.

I think one of the problems here is... that a LOT of 'scientific' assumptions are made by cis-people, which have not the first bloody idea about the subject because they can not FEEL it!
So how will they really UNDERSTAND it?!

It be interesting to see what you will come up with, Cindy.

I wish you much success,
Axélle

One thing that has rather surprised me with this thread, so far, is that we seem to be almost evenly split between secure and insecure family background.

Coupled with the somewhat interesting results of a poll we did here a while ago, on the ages people were when we realised something was wrong. (Though I really wish I'd worded it better).

It does tend to point toward the nature argument.

QuoteErrr.... the what?

The nature vs nurture argument. Nurture meaning the belief that family background etc are to blame for us being trans/gay/etc rather than due to natural causes.

Anyway - first bloke to contribute, go me ;P

Parents very open-minded, never imposed gender boundaries on me or my younger brother. They split up about 20 years ago after 16 years of marriage - father could get abusive, but only in the younger days; ironically it took the break-up for him to grow up, but he's still a kid at heart Mum was always the one to raise and discipline as we grew up, often complaining that she felt like a single mother even when they were married.

Most of my childhood woes were down to excessive bullying at school, and one instance of sexual abuse by a neighbour who was meant to be looking after us while Mum and Dad moved house. The parental fighting and divorce didn't help, but that happened a bit later.

Oh, and I'm 32 if that helps.

My dad and mom claimed to be in a common law marriage.  My dad would beat on her and my brother occasionally and would always critizise my brother.  He never laid a hand on me but he rarely showed me any love or emotional support when I needed it.  There were even times where I would wish to be beaten by him.  I wanted him to abuse me because I thought that would be better than what I was getting from him which was not too much of anything.  It stopped when he was arrested when I was in the 10th grade when my brother taped him beating on my mother and he moved out and is now living with a woman.  She's a very sweet woman but I still kind of wished my father was living with me because there were mostly single parents and I wanted to be that exception even though my mom and dad rarely saw eye to eye.  I have 2 sisters who are ministers..  One is about 37 and the other about 33.  My brother is autistic and about 26 and we hate each other.  It turns my stomach to even call him my brother so usually I just say my "father's son".  I hate him but I envy him at the same time.  We have the same father while my sisters have a different father.  I'm 19 going on 20 this Sunday.

My family is complicated. There was a point for awhile where I had a mom and a dad and a brother and a sister and a cat and a dog and we all sat down to eat at the same table at the same time every night, and we went to church on sundays.

I'm multitasking so can't go into much detail but I'll say my family background is confusing and unstable and has been for a long time.

Quote from: Nemo on February 16, 2012, 08:20:42 AM
Anyway - first bloke to contribute, go me ;P 

I normally wouldn't take offense to this, but I'm in a bad mood today.