Even aunty life is ass

I think children also become so attached to the nuclear family idea that they don't really care much for extended family. Even if you tried to play an active role in their lives, it's not necessarily the norm that they even remember you fondly or anything.

It's like you're just there. An option of some sort. But then it differs with families. That's just the way I'm finding it with my family. Even the parents of the kids take you for granted and pretend you don't really have a life. They don't ask you anything specific about your life but constantly talk about theirs. Any significant input you had in the children's lives is attributed somehow to the parents. I have taught my nieces many things but no one seems to remember and they don't share their lives with me nomatter how much I ask (I left the country). You don't do any of it to get kudos but it's weird how you kind of become invisible overtime. You slowly get written out of the family narrative, like you're a branch of the family tree that's disappearing.

Even a coworker got into a fight with a cousin because they were getting the matriarch a gift and engraving names on it. (No idea how big it was but the idea seemed to make sense to them.) The family had decided to engrave the grandkids' names and couldn't understand why the childfree person was offended when they told her it was okay she wasn't represented on the gift because they'd add her name when she finally had her own kid. Wild.