We were recently in Ireland and I watched this older couple at breakfast. Man sat on his fat ass while his wife got his food at the buffet, his coffee, water, utensils, etc. He didn’t wait for her to get her food, just started digging in. It’s definitely a generational thing, not a cultural thing.

My uncle is older than Boomers, he would have been 90 now I think. We spent Christmas in Puerto Rico when I was 15 yr and wow, was he a pain in the ass. My Aunt was doing laundry, after serving us dinner, and the Uncle is yapping about wanting more water, I gently asked him why he couldn't get his own water from the fridge 3 feet away? Didn't go over well. My mom told me to chill with being mouthy. Ugh, which is not to say that the make me a sandwich mindset is limited to Hispanic cultures.

I believe it's a generational thing.. my parents are the same. We're American

These are the dipshits that voted for MAGA. Literally voted to deport their own relatives and countrymen because of "traditional values". Pathetic.

My old British uncle was the same - he never barked at his wife - but she enjoyed travelling in her old age and he’d eat nothing but fast food while she was away

Wouldn’t even heat up the leftovers she’d prepare for him lol - fragile masculinity that can be cracked by learning to operate an oven is a generational thing I think

If he’s being rude and disrespectful that’s just an asshole thing though - I’ve seen loving marriages that thrive with just about ever culture / time period / gender role - and I’ve seen abusive wives and husbands from just about every walk of life too

My Boomer dad was a first generation person of Slavic heritage. He expected that shit too

When in college, I hosted my first Thanksgiving at my apartment. When announcing that food was ready I said "if you don't make and take your own plate, you don't eat." My mom's smile was so big!! Couldn't stop the behavior under their roof, but I sure AF could decide what happened at my home.

Ok it’s generational BUT can absolutely be broken. I’m (61F) married to my husband (62M) so just a year or two younger than OPs uncle. I’m technically the last year of the baby boom but what I think people forget when they talk about “boomers” is that the youngest of us came of age in the 80s. I was 18 in 1982 and graduated college in “86. My music was the Clash, Prince and Queen. My husband has NEVER expected to be waited on, we both are good cooks, but he is a GREAT cook and really enjoys grocery shopping so tends to want to do it. These gendered stereotypes do not have to follow ageist norms, anymore than cultural ones. I think if he ordered me around I would either laugh, tell him to F off, or worry that he’d had a stroke.

It's a very unfortunate generational issue. Boomer men were raised by mothers who did everything for their husbands & children. Many boomer men went right from living with mommy to living with wifey. They didn't learn to cook, mop a floor, clean a toilet or wash a load of clothes. On the other hand, they learned to mow the lawn, change the oil in the car and fix the hole in the roof.

Boomer women were raised in these same environments. Then came the 80s message of a woman you can have and should do it all, a career, kids & a social life. What they weren't told was they'd have no help doing it. No boomer man with manly pride would be caught dead cooking or cleaning house, that was women's work. If they were kind enough to care for their own children, they called it babysitting. If mom was working & dad was off work , the kids still went to daycare. If mom had a day off she had the kids with her.

Very few boomer men put any effort into changing the status quo because it worked to their advantage.

The gen x kids that went home to an empty house after school and prepared their own meals were the ultimate victims.

"cultural" is another way of saying I am a fat lazy ass who wants to do as little work as possible.

My favorite quote about competence:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

Robert A. Heinlein

It’s a cultural thing, and that cultural thing sucks, let’s not do it anymore.

JP/US grandparents, 1920s bdays. Same thing, buttt my grandma didnt want anyone in her kitchen. I (male) was in my late 20s before shed let me help clean in the kitchen. Now i understand, i dont want my knives thrown around, dishwasher gets loaded my way (as per bosch manual), idk the kitchen is special to me. It stuck with me when she got hospitalized for a week, how ass backwards my grandpa lived. He couldnt cook rice, wash clothes, find anything. Like child level functionality.

My boomer parents were never like this but they both worked so they both did house work. My in laws however are exactly like this. The man won't even heat up a hot dog for himself if she doesn't cook, he just takes it out of the refrigerator and eats it cold. When they got a puppy he wouldn't clean up any accidents, just waited for her to do it. I can't even begin to understand that mind set.

Machismo and misogynistic nonsense definitely reside strongly inside Boomers.

My exmil won’t leave her husband for a weekend worried he’d just wither away and die without her there to feed him. What 70 yo person can not feed themselves?? They are American, I’d say generational rather than cultural.

I work in the medical field and the amount of elderly male patients that use their wives to keep up with their medical information and meds is astounding. They are man babies with no agency. Pretty useless imo

It’s infuriating that the husband can retire… but the wife works until one of them dies.

It is definitely a cultural things, but that is ultimately just an excuse. My parents and their generation grew up in a time when you took film to a shop and got your photos developed, then you might get an extra copy made so you could mail it to someone. Today, they want their kids to upload photos of the grandkids. They grew up with a book of maps in the car so you could navigate in an unfamiliar place, but today use gps. There was a time all three television networks went off the air, but now you can play Fox 24/7. If you grew up in a time where your spouse was a servant whose needs and wants could be disregarded but you actually care about them and others are telling you that you can do tiny things to make their life better (you don’t need to go to culinary school to put coffee in a cup and add sugar or cream) but you refuse to do it, the problem isn’t the culture

See, and this is part of why I loved my paternal grandmother so much. She and my grandpa were married for 74 years when he passed. They raised 8 sons on a farm and both worked hard at full time out of the house jobs. He was an ironworker and she was a hospital nurse.

He used to come into the kitchen at meal times and “demand” something like, “Wheres my dinner, you old battleaxe?” And she’d say something along the lines of, “It’s on the stove, you degenerate old reprobate. Get it yourself.”

I’m GenX my wife is late boomer.

Her silent gen sisters SHAMED berated her because I would not let my wife serve me.

I was honestly disgusted by her they treated her, and told them, we are an equal relationship. We care for our house together.

All the while, silent gen husbands waited on hand and foot. Pffft. F that.

Wild weird dynamic Oh well, they’re gone now…. To the Golden Corral buffet in the sky.

Sounds to me like your uncle is just a lazy POS.

I’m pretty sure my boomer FIL would starve if his wife wasn’t cooking for him. Even now that they’re retired, the same expectations of being waited on continue. I’m pretty sure she does all the cleaning and his laundry too. 

The best thing my grandmother ever said to me was "Don't wait on a man. If you do it once, you'll be doing it the rest of your life". She waited on my grandfather all of the time. I took her words to heart.

The bad part is that he gets to retire and she never does. She is expected to work her entire life.

That said, my Grandpa was born in 1905; so not a boomer. He is, of course, no longer alive. However, he would do all sorts of stuff cooking, canning, cleaning, laundry. He had a huge garden and an avid fisherman. He lived several years after Grandma passed and he was fully capable of taking care of himself for the first few years. She had a strong mind and he had a strong body.

72 yo male- both my parents worked. My dad usually got home earlier from work and started dinner. Peeling potatoes, cutting veggies etc. Mom did mom things ( laundry, garden) Dad did dad things( cut lawn , took care of house repairs etc). Mom never waited on Dad. Mom handled all finances. Mom 1st gen polish immigrant , Dad 2 nd gen german.

It’s not cultural as someone dating a hispanic man. He has 2 older brothers. They all open doors for us. Make us our plate at the family gatherings. We come first. His mom raised them well.

Mom mother was a feminist all the way through and would accept nothing less than a true partner in marriage. I was lucky enough to learn from her.

Idk my grandmother cooked everything but she didn’t wait on my grandfather and he would never speak to her that way.

My grandparents are like this too. We're American. My partner and I were visiting them last week, and my grandfather rattled the ice in his cocktail glass as a signal to my grandmother to get up and make him another drink. You could have seen smoke coming out of my fiance's ears. That's just the way they are.

My daughter-in-law's paternal family is Mexican-American. Her grandparents are in their late 70s. In addition to all the behaviors you listed, the grandparents are members of a very conservative Baptist church that very firmly believes that the husband is in charge. So, in their case, this type of sexism is ordained by god. Her grandmother has never had her own debit card, for instance, and the only money she has ever been able to spend without approval of her husband has been cash that she earned babysitting.

Grandma is not babysitting any longer, so for her 75th birthday, the kids and grandkids pooled $1000 and gave it to grandma on a prepaid Visa card. Grandma cried.

We only see the grandparents once a year when they host the extended family on Christmas eve. But this year her grandmother was uncharacteristically pushy about a couple of things: how the food (that she cooked, of course) would be served, and she sewed a unique quilt for each person in attendance (17!), which was very thoughtful, but she hovered over each person when they opened their gift, and she insisted that they look at and read out the tag that read "Handmade with love by grandma."

I asked my DIL about it, and she agreed that she and her mother both thought it was odd. My thought is that after a lifetime of being treated effectively as a child, she was rebelling in the only way should could. Very sad.