This may come off as a rant but I'm annoyed by how infantilizing everything in the world is today.
Story time. My wife and I had another child a few months ago. When we take our daughter to her checkups the receptionist hands us this tablet and we have to answer a bunch of questions before we can even go back. It proceeds to ask us questions like:
Do you have any guns in the house? (None of your fucking business)
If so, how are they stored? (Again, none of your fucking business)
Name three things you love about your child (Why am I having to answer open response questions?)
What makes this organization think they have the right to ask me these invasive questions? It feels like everything is this way now. Every company or organization treats you with this infantilizing tone like they have to guide you through life.
I don't remember it being this way when I was younger. Has anyone else noticed this shift?
Payernailiztic is the correct word. The organization involved wasn't acting maternal. It was acting paternal. Taking responsibility for you, attempting to root out danger as it perceived and protect you from external threats as well as the threat of your own stupidity.
I get that it's trendy to blame the wiminz here, but western masculinity is warped to shit as well. Ignore cause for the moment, different discussion.
The government takes the paternal role in society, that's the whole issue with the single mom mill. And then everything downstream of that role (read, everything the government does) is built to accommodate that systematic assumption.