Basic Trope: Parents chastise their children for doing things they did when they were younger.
- Straight: Shannon scolds her daughter Sharon for smoking weed, although she did just that when she was her age.
- Exaggerated: Shannon rebukes Sharon for smoking weed, having sex with multiple boys, committing vandalism, and using profanity, even though Shannon is still doing all those things.
- Downplayed: Shannon scolds her daughter Sharon for doing something similar but more serious than she did in her youth like pickpocketing when she shoplifted.
- Justified:
- Shannon grew up in a shady neighbourhood, while Sharon has a more comfortable childhood by comparison.
- As an adult, Shannon looks back on her wild youth with the wisdom of hindsight and can see that what she did was very irresponsible and caused her a lot of pain. It's because she experienced that herself that she wants better for her daughter.
- Inverted:
- Sharon calls out Shannon for cheating on her dad, Simon, although she previously cheated on Harry, her ex-boyfriend.
- Shannon encourages Sharon to smoke weed, even though she never did that when she was her age.
- Subverted:
- It turns out that rumors of Shannon's past were highly exaggerated. Or Sharon acts much better than Shannon at her age.
- Shannon was a teenaged mother — however, it was later revealed that Sharon wasn't born of a consensual union.
- Shannon secretly wants Sharon to do all the things she used to do. It's just that she thinks that there's no thrill if your parents let you do them, and she doesn't want to deprive Sharon of that.
- Double Subverted:
- But they aren't just rumors. Or Sharon isn't meaningfully better.
- It's suggested Shannon wanted to have a child that early in life.
- Or so Sharon guesses, but when Shannon catches her sneaking out to meet friends and do drugs, she realizes it was a Secret Test of Character.
- Parodied:
- Sharon makes eye contact with a crackhead and Shannon bursts into an extended rant on the dangers of drugs, ending with "Ah, crap, I need another fix."
- Shannon had quite a wild past and owns up to it a bit too preemptively to her very mild daughter Sharon with details like why you should never smoke cocaine and then have a threesome with a clown and a midget. Especially not twice in a church.
- Zig-Zagged:
- Shannon is inconsistent with what she'll own up to. She'll admit freely that she was The Slacker in school and at her first job, engaged in all the Vandalism Tropes out there, and got involved with rebellious music, but she denies her premarital sex and that she was the Alpha Bitch in high school, thinks her being permanently naked is good, and downplays how much she drank and smoked.
- Shannon tolerates some of Sharon's foibles that she recognizes from her own history on the grounds that "girls will be girls", discourages others, and expresses no opinion on others.
- Averted: Shannon actively teaches Sharon through her life stories.
- Enforced:
- "Shannon always seem to be the paragon of virtue to her children. Let's subvert this by having her be like a hypocrite."
- The part of Shannon was originally intended for a woman a decade older and they used her real age for a joke — then realized it implied she was a teenaged mother.
- Lampshaded: "But you did too!"
- Invoked: Shannon didn't learn from her actions properly. She realizes other people aren't invincible (but not that she isn't) because she's alive, well, and free, while her friend Alice went to prison and her brother Bob became disabled.
- Exploited: Sharon learns about Shannon's checkered past and specifically does what her mother has to annoy her and points out her hypocrisy if she complains.
- Defied: Shannon begins her criticism of Sharon's behaviour by saying, "I've made all the mistakes you have, and every waking moment of my life, I regret them all."
- Discussed: "I'm not so sure about having children. How can I tell them not to do certain things? I've already done them all."
- Conversed: "It'd be pretty funny if all the things you criticize me for doing are things you did when you were my age."
- Implied: Shannon reams out Sharon for her latest misbehaviours. Sharon then goes back to performing them in Shannon's view, while Shannon looks on grimly.
- Deconstructed: Shannon's lectures come across as anvilicious to Sharon, who decides that since her mom did what she's now criticizing her for doing, and is alive and well, she can keep doing the same thing with no negative consequences. She's soon proved wrong.
- Reconstructed: Shannon is compassionate and frames her lessons in an engaging manner, which gets through to Sharon much more effectively.
- Played for Laughs: Shannon was an aspiring comedian and sees Sharon is better at it than she was. Now she wants to forbid Sharon from doing it.
- Played for Drama: Sharon ends up dying from an injury, overdose, or something similar to what Shannon did, and Shannon has Survivor Guilt.
- Played for Horror: Same as Played for Drama, but it's so horrible as to constitute Nightmare Fuel.
- Plotted a Good Waste: The story plays Shannon's hypocritical attitude toward Sharon's actions for Deliberate Values Dissonance.
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