To think we're really terrible at recognising that our parents are also the product of their own difficult childhoods?

[FineDamBeaver]

I think we (culturally, and on MN) tend to be very good at blaming our parents. Saying, for example, "I'm an anxious parent because my mum was always worrying"; "I get depressed because my mum was so critical".
Much less good at realising that (in many cases) parents were then in exactly the same position as we are now, equally products of their own families and pasts, trying (and to some extent failing) to do their best in the context of their own flawed characters and mental health problems.

AIBU to think we should all read that Philip Larkin poem (This Be The Verse) daily to remind us not to be twats about our mums and dads?

Op if you had negative experiences you haven't got disordered thinking?

My own parents never told me they loved me, never hugged me, if something good happens to me they try and ruin it.

My Mum hates fat people. I am very thin (I have been extremely skinny before). My Brother's girlfriend is a teenage and size 10/12. This really angers my Mother. She goes to the Supermarket with them to check the types of food she buys. She then rings me and my Brother to kick off about it saying the Girlfriend will get fat.

They tried to sabotage my wedding and births. They didn't even go to my wedding. Didn't go to my graduation as 'any idiot can get a degree'. I didn't even go as no one to go with me and my Mum sat in home all day.

My mum gave me 1k at 18 and 2k when she sold her house. I know she didn't have to do that but I was self sufficient at17, bought a property at 18, paid for myself through uni and my own wedding, paid for myself to drive. Despite all this my parents say I am stupid, hysterical, drama queen, not as thin as my Mum. I was like you once as you have been conditioned.

'Keep it in the family', 'Don't be weak/dramatic'. For that reason when 'normal' people struggleI have spent my life doing what they have done x 10. My parents are against counselling, anti depressants and outside help. I suppose it has made me a high achiever than most, however it has made me crazy inside

I do get that it isn't just me my Mum hates. She doesn't like anyone from different countries, anyone overweight,single Mums. If we go out for food she will say things like 'disgusting all these single Mums about. They are lazy and disgraceful' or Black people sitting near us are 'taking over, watch your bags'.

I am scared of my parents though. We fell out for 3 days 2 weeks ago when my Dh kicked off at how they treat me. It made things worse. I lost 4 pounds in weight and hardly slept and then they rang and then they don't mention it. I have never heard my Mum say Sorry to anyone. She says she doesn't believe in it .

My question would be 'Why do we allow our parents to act like twats?'

YABU. My parents had shit childhoods but they should have the awareness and decency to end the cycle and do better for their kids. DH and I both had horrible lives as kids but we are good parents to our DS. The buck stops here.

If parents are 'good enough' their children shouldn't obsess about their perfections and concentrate in getting on with their lives.
However many parents do a spectacularly bad job and do fuck up their offspring. Being aware that we now have higher awareness of the effect of our childhoods- self esteem and attachment theory and cornerstones of happy lives and just didn't exist as concepts a generation ago- excuses some things they did, but for many they are still suffering from the parenting they received.
Those of us who are products of adequate parenting should be kinder to those who aren't!
to pink and all the other posters still working out how to live happily after a destructive childhood.

I've thought about this a lot with regard to my late father. I loved him dearly and he was a good man, but he was a terrible parent. He had no ability to tackle issues, quite serious issues that needed tackling (after the death of my mother when I was a teenager she was just never mentioned again).

But then - he was sent to boarding school at 8 years old and before that had been brought up by nannies. He was never parented himself - what chance did he have of parenting me? And equally I've found it much harder to parent as my children have got older - because I have no memories of being parented myself at that age. I have no example to copy.

I've always loved that Larkin poem but I'm not sure how justly it can be applied to truly abusive and horrific childhoods. Larkin was a bit misanthropic and I always took it more as a cynical jab at the kind of 'fucked up' that is the product of normal, otherwise caring upbringings. As a teenager I saw all the things my parents didn't address properly with me writ large and a couple of them certainly shaped aspects of my personality for better or worse but it's only as an adult that I've been able to see them as people not just parents and realise that they've always done their best for me. I'm not sure that's a sentiment that's so easy to apply to people who have suffered genuinely traumatic upbringings, nor should we expect them to.

NUMBERS; picking up on my post. What I should have said/meant was, don't know how to parent/don't want to be a parent. It seems many have had children yet can't be considered a parent, only by name.

I am in my thirties and my mother still can't be a parent, even after years of me begging her. (Crying, shouting, calling her names when I was younger) I've even resorted to showing her how to be a parent. It goes in one ear & out the other, she behaves like a stroppy teenager in every sense.

I am the mother & she is the child. Why does she (they) not realise their lack of patenting skills & try and change? That is what I really mean.

I understand that OP but also think that it comes down to not passing the damage done to you on to the next generation.

How this is possible and why some people fail is what interests me.

I think it is interesting. I certainly had a weird childhood, and as I've acknowledged up thread, I have hardly any actual visual memories of it. After my dad's suicide my mum shut down and began collecting rubbish - not dirty, but just lots and lots of it - magazines, newspapers, yoghurt pots, plastic bags. Basically after the early 70s, nothing was thrown away. Nobody was allowed past the front door, and it was my job to make sure the adjoining doors were quickly shut if anyone came to the door.
In my memory of teen years, I was my mum's confidente. She told me all her worries and this made me feel very special. I know my parenting map is completely messed up - and it's true that her parenting (or lack of) is largely the reason. I'm very lucky that other balancing forces in my life that have helped me to be a better parent (although not so great in other areas if my life!) To make a brief political point, I do worry that the dismantling of social security provision we are seeing is going to make it far harder for young people in an equivalent position today to find compensating forces for the good, but perhaps that's for another thread.

lionheart I think some people develop defence mechanisms including deep, deep denial early on. Also maybe it has taken a changing society to help many people recognise the damage in their own upbringings - it's not "normal" to treat kids the way we did 50 years ago anymore.

I don't know why my mum couldn't and doesn't break the cycle. One small example ... she'd call me a whore (and fully mean it, with venom, send me to my room without dinner, ground me etc) when she thought I'd been talking to a boy. This is one of the reasons I didn't dare talk to boys until I was 21, and they terrified me at uni! The next day she'd always act like it hadn't happened - not just deny actually, she wouldn't remember. This sort of gaslighting happened routinely in a number of ways and I wonder whether part of it was guilt and denial - not that that helps in retrospect.

I think she had/has an idealised version of herself which she CANNOT let herself see past or it would destroy her. She says she's better than her mum because she didn't hit me - but she did, repeatedly - just with a wooden spoon not a shoe. I don't know why she couldn't look at her behaviour and see how damaging it was, or how like her own mum it was. To some extent I hold my father to account for this too. He could have challenged her, but didn't.

Hopefully I can break this. God I hope I can break this. I've read every parenting guide I can get my hands on, and learned a lot. I'm nothing like her in other ways (I hope) and I've already begged my (sensible) husband to help. Do you think there are other ways apart from being self-conscious that we can break damaging cycles of nasty behaviour? I'd love to know more.

So much of the OP resonates with me. I had a lousy childhood. My mum was an alcoholic and then (and still is) clinically depressed and the most self involved people I know. seriously never known anyone to make everything about themselves as much as she does. she blames her problems on everyone but herself and will not let go of the past, blaming her parents (who are now dead) for everything that has gone wrong in her life.

Her dad was emotionally abusive she said. he shouted a lot she said and called her stupid. My sister and I spent every weekend with our grandparents growing up. He did the same to us yeah that was out of order but.... He grew up in an orphanage in the 1920s. both parents dead (father died a horrifically violent death) before he was 2 he never knew their love he didn't remember them. He would have spent most of his childhood with shouting adults. one of my biggest regrets in life is not telling him that despite everything I loved him very much and I know he did his best and I know he loved us all very much. I know he wanted us to know he loved us.

But.... all of the generations thus far in my family have tried to be better than the previous ones. My grandpa never hit his kids because he remembered the beatings in the orphanage. But still communicated by shouting an awful lot and calling people stupid. My mum didn't call us stupid or shout at us but used us an emotional crutch and also beat 5 shades of shite out of us at times. And me? Trying so hard to not and never treat my 2 like an emotional crutch or beat them up (I don't do the latter) or make them feel like shit and I am STILL probably messing them up in some other way that hasn't occurred to me yet!

You're absolutely right, Nargles; good balanced post. It is much harder to apply in some cases than others, and there will be some instances in which it doesn't seem right to apply it at all (with many grey areas in between). I think it applies to a majority though, possibly related to mrsfrumble'S explanation

Desperately, so sorry to hear what you've been through.
I agree we will all be potentially messing up our kids in ways we don't yet know about (& perhaps some we do know about but feel powerless to change). However good we might try to make our parenting, our children may disagree.

Yy anddeepbreath. I can handle however awful she is to me and my children if sometimes she apologised. She has called my eldest awful names. My Dad said he had a long affair due to my eldest being born as he resents her. He has said sorry he did that though.

If you met my parents though you would think they were perfect. Image is everything and never having friends so no one knows

My mum had an abusive alcoholic dad who stole her wages and beat her mum. They escaped together to a women's refuge and then moved away to live with my dad, without leaving a forwarding address.
She never saw him again. Now that she has dementia, he is her recurring nightmare. So not surprising she was as she was really.

My own tips anddeepbreath are:

1. be self aware
2. if you do something wrong say sorry
3. If something good happens for someone else don't think I want attention I will have an affair/sabotage it for them in some way/not attend/call them names. Just be happy for them

Oh and a lot of this comes down to communication skills. Don't think they don't agree with me I will punch them/smack them up the door/steal their clothes. My Dad punched me in the eye and gave me a black mark under the eye when I was 16 when I said I was moving out.

Nowadays they are constantly giving each other bruises, smashing furniture, egg on my Mums head, smashing my Dad's watch. They call you round and you go round next day and they pretend nothing has happened. Just talk to each other!

I cannot wholly agree - I think it is part the reason my father was abusive, his childhood was very 'messed up' and confusing. However, I know my mother had a wonderful childhood, she said as much. Was never bullied (would not be suprised if she bullied others, or at least Queen B). She obviously trusted her parents enough to raise the kids she couldn't be bothered with. Always said her life was a wonderful adventure of parties, boys and doing as she pleased, until she was 'made' to get a proper job, accidentally fell pregnant and married an alcoholic. I do believe, in some rare circumstances, some people are just not 'right'. It's not a product of their childhood, they just cannot behave in manner deemed acceptable by society, and think nothing of being cruel towards others, epsecially for their own gain.

Apologies TTWK. I am a sometimes a little obtuse.
Have pmd you.

pinkstrawberries thank you, especially for no.3 which is definitely something she sadly does and I've tried so hard not to echo. I might end up making a list somewhere and printing it to the fridge or something as a reminder, I think that's a really good idea.

And to you and everyone else who's had a difficult childhood, regardless of the factors which went in to making parents who they are. I don't think there is a "perfect" parent (or perfect childhood or life) but I hope I can be a healthier one than mine.

Much less good at realising that (in many cases) parents were then in exactly the same position as we are now, equally products of their own families and pasts, trying (and to some extent failing) to do their best in the context of their own flawed characters and mental health problems.

How does that account for parents who treat one child well and the other badly?

This is an interesting thread. I don't think the intention was dismiss or belittle anyone's experiences - just to discuss the specific question.

I am so sorry to hear about some of the experiences PPs have suffered. And no there is no excuse or justification for that sort of behaviour. Some people have survived some unimaginable childhoods.

I don't think that was what was meant by the original OP though. Her post was more about context I think - and a discussion of that.

My childhood was OK. Pretty good on the whole but my mother would NEVER admit she was wrong and would never discuss anything, ever.

I was determined to be different and have been open and consultative with my kids. We talk about everything. My DD knows she can come to me about anything and I will not judge. What does she say to me? "For God's sake Mum, why does everything have to be a major discussion with you? Can't we just do something without having to analyse every aspect of it!!??" or " I don't care how we spend the weekend just make a decision"
or "If DS doesn't do his homework just take his stuff away - no need to have a huge drama about it!"

Our daughters might not judge us as we judge ourselves.

lurked, I wasn't taking anything out on the OP.

And it is a little patronising (though I can see it's unintentional) to say this: 'op is not your parents so having a go isn't going to actually make you feel any better long term.'

Why do you think I need to 'feel better'? You see, when you say that, it comes across as if you're dismissing my comments as just representative of my feeling upset, rather than listening to them as valid criticism of what the OP is saying.

I can see that the OP meant well, but that doesn't mean her comments weren't naive and misguided. And she's also making a point that is made over and over and over. It's actually surprisingly difficult to get people to admit that you do not have to feel forgiving towards everyone. I think it matters to make the point - not for me, but for other people too.

Those three reminders pinkstrawberries are helpful. Thank you.

And to those who have shared details of very difficult times - your posts have made me think a bit more about how important it is that I don't get this wrong. (I really try but it is so hard sometimes to be the better person, the real parent, when I just want to say "But what about me??")