Childhood Parenting and subsequent parenting ideaology

May be sensitive for some people

Please may I ask that you don’t turn this into a “You are not a parent yet, you don’t know what it’s like, you won’t parent how you imagine you will” thread - I do understand people go into parenting with a set of ideas, and come out with what may be a different reality.

I had a therapy appointment and we started discussing parenting and whether trauma can affect parenting and how it can affect parenting in both negative ways (cycle unbroken) or positive ways (cycle broken). It was mostly based on recognising and reflecting different things that I had been through and my own ideas on how I would ensure that my children won’t go through the same things, or similar things.

One of the key things that stood out to me is that I have imagined myself to have a totally different style of parenting to the rest of my family.

For instance, I abhor people raising their voices at children; this was common place in our home. I don’t like children being behind closed doors; we would be shut in our bedrooms at night. I don’t touch alcohol around children; regularly in the vicinity of alcohol and drug use as a child. There were several examples

The therapist pointed out that many of these are accepted socially, and I said that that didn’t mean that I had to accept them as a socially moral way to raise children. However, her comment has made me start wondering if I am having some sort of “avoidance” reaction to parenting where - you have to imagine a scale here - we have the totally unacceptable on one side, and the totally acceptable on the other; I am completely sticking to what I view as totally acceptable rather than trying to be rationale and come to any “societal” middle ground.

I don’t think I will be able to limit all the contact that my children have with people who have alcohol (or drugs), but I would try too. Neither do I think my children are going to go through childhood without being shouted at, or, closed in a room, but they are all things that I would hope that I wouldn’t do in terms of “cycle breaking”.

Just wondering if anyone else has been through similar thoughts after suffering trauma in their own childhood?