Why do parents get so much blame/credit?

[Stressedmum2017]

Just something I've been pondering about recently...

I have a best friend who has 2 daughters a year apart so 8 and 9. I've known them all their lives and our families are very close. One of the girls is so lovely, polite, helpful but not in a brown nosey way, it's genuinely who she is. Not perfect and has had her moments like all children but in general a really sweet kid. The other girl is quite frankly not nice to be around. She is incredibly rude with the worst attitude and mouth on her. Depending on which adults she is around as she will chop and change her personality to present differently to different adults. Very sly, sneaky and manipulative it actually worries me for a kid that's not even 10 to be like that. She's not neurodivergent or anything my own child is ASD and ADHD I've never seen any signs of anything like that, she can be very charming when it suits.

Both girls have had exactly the same upbringing, friend is very careful to treat them the same.
So I wonder which girl is a result of their upbringing and which one is not? Just going off the children is my friend a good parent or a bad parent?

My own 3 children of course have different personalities but not perhaps not quite to that extent.

Similarly my mum is 1 of 9. All my auntie and uncles despite having the same upbringing have completely different personalities and have led completely different lifestyles, some incredibly successful, highly educated, well off, families of their own, others down and out drug addicts, been to prison etc and then everything in between. Some vote green party some, vote tory.

People who have had severely abusive backgrounds in poverty can turn out to be the most kind hearted, successful people despite their background. But people will look at them and assume 'wow they must have come from a really good home'. And vice versa, people from loving, supportive homes can turn in to psychopathic monsters.

So I wonder why as a society is always the parents fault/credit? I guess Im asking are people their own people more than we realise?

Well, my parents were vicious spiteful and abusive so yeah, I do blame them.

Ah yes the old golden child/devil child 1:2 switcheroo.

My point is, is your personality because of them or despite them?

The nature versus nurture debate is as old as the hills, but I don't think there is a definitive answer. Broadly though, I think personality is nature and behaviour is nurture.

You can't parent your children exactly the same.

You don't parent the second child the same as the first because you have another child to consider, personality types also come into play because what works as a punishment for one doesn't necessarily work for another.

I agree with this.

My brother and I are very different personality wise but behave very similar.

For example, I am very close with my parents and see them as friends now I am an adult. I help them and am involved and interested in their lives and love chatting to them and visiting them at Christmas etc. My brother sees them as an obligation and a commitment. He knows he has to see them at Christmas, respond to their texts, send them birthday cards/gifts, but he doesn't go out his way to interact with them. Both raised in a close family environment.

Then again, he is far more analytical whereas I'm far more emotional.

Everyone's personality is formed by a variety of things. YABU to suggest that the fact that two siblings have different personalities means that parenting does not contribute to the formation of personality. It's just that it's not the only thing that forms personality. It's genes, parenting and a whole bunch of other experiences, influences and stuff.

I wasn't suggesting that parenting does not contribute to personality at all, just that perhaps it doesn't hold quite the heavy weight everyone thinks it does.

Because personality is hugely genetic, as is intelligence and also sex-related behaviours (much as I will be piled on by the ‘it’s all social conditioning!’ types).

I’m one of 5 and we had a horrible upbringing. Mum a nasty cow, my dad an alcoholic, screaming arguments, walking on egg shells. Eventually they split and mum got into an abusive relationship, we had to call the police for her on a few occasions. My dad found a fellow alcoholic and they have been drunk (and nasty to us) together ever since. Very little good parental input. Haven’t seen either of them in years, and they don’t contact me.

2 of us kids had ‘hairy moments’ as teens but now as adults, by some miracle we are all ‘respectable’ adults with good jobs, no criminal records and nice families ourselves.

We’re all slightly different characters but seem to have the same ‘core’ of a sense of humour, resilience and responsibility. We’re happy go lucky types and roll our eyes looking back at our rubbish upbringing.

That’s why I am at Mn posts where the most minor of parental behaviours is considered ‘traumatising’ to kids, and any unhappiness or normal negative emotion in a child or teen is agonised and pored over, with the parent tying themselves up in knots to ‘solve everything’.

Beyond creating a (relatively) stable home and ensuring they are clean and fed etc, there’s not actually that much we can do, what will be will be.

my mother would vocally say she treated us the same, and in company she treated us the same, behind closed doors however...

Also though we as parents are not just responsible for the nurture of the child, but also the nature. We maybe cant be held responsible for the genes we ourselves pass on (though to a certain extent we can if we know there are genetic things in our family), but we choose our partners, so try to choose someone whose genes would be an asset to a child. We wouldn't have a child with a violent disagreeable arse if we could help it, as the child could inherit violent disagreeable tendencies - generally speaking.

To be fair no two kids have the same upbringing. One is the eldest and the other the youngest. One might be more academic/arty/sociable and the other less. They have different personalities and need different things from their parents. The best way to parent one child won't work for another. It's also just a fact that some kids are easier to parent than others. I also think it can be easier to parent a child who has a similiar temperement to you as a parent because it's easier for you to intuitively understand them.

The vast majority of parents are doing their best to parent the kids they have. Parents who have naturally 'easier' kids sometimes kid themselves that it's all down to amazing parenting (rather than good parenting and a chilled child).

I've raised 3 of my own and I realised early on that my own influence was somewhat limited. They are totally different in personality and outlook on life. They do all have lovely manners though.

Both girls have had exactly the same upbringing, friend is very careful to treat them the same.

That’s completely impossible and I don’t know why anyone says this. You might take a similar approach to more than one child but you can’t give them the same upbringing, you had them at different times unless they’re twins, even then it’s not exactly the same as they’ll have been different types of babies, you’re a different person with each baby. You learn and adapt as you go.

My daughter is lovely and generally well behaved but hand on heart I don't think its down to anything that I've done. My Dad bless him says that it's down to parenting but honestly I feel like she's her own person and always has been. Obviously I set boundaries and bedtimes and whatnot but I've not, for example, insisted that she says please and thank you every time yet often as not she will, so it's definitely not me! You can influence their behaviour I think but ultimately they are who they are.

@Stressedmum2017 - it's really worrying that you describe a 9 year old as sly, sneaky and manipulative. She hasn't got a chance to be anything else when you are around.

A relative would say she parents her children in the same way, and when around certain people she very much performs. When its just family it is very very clear that the oldest is her favourite and the youngest is an inconvenience.

Very very few parents parent their children in the same way.

The debate is as old as the hills, but it seems to be a peculiarly British thing to crow about ones kids' successes and immediately blame the parents every time an (older) child odes something wrong, as if all kids do exactly what their parents tell them to do all the time!

I think kids turn out well (or not) despite their parents, not because of them.

The best thing I heard was that parents of great kids are given too much credit. And parents of challenging children are given too much criticism.
I have one of each.

YABU

I am very close in age to my sister and my mum would say she treated us both equally but she absolutely did not. My sister was the golden child who could do not wrong whereas as I apparently couldn’t do right.
we would both have the same material things but my mother was cold and distant towards me but very loving towards my sister.

It's a combination of many factors, including the fact that quite often children in the same family are not treated the same.

Golden child and scapegoat, for example.

Babying the youngest.

Just being inexperienced with the first and making mistakes you don't repeat with the second.

Add in different experiences outside the immediate family during childhood and different personalities and you get very different people.

It's not all down to the parents but that does not mean that parents are not a huge part of who you grow up to be.

Why?
Should should the op consider all children to be without any faults?

You really shouldn't parent every child the same way. They each have different needs you need to respond to.

Both girls have had exactly the same upbringing, friend is very careful to treat them the same.

I also think this is not only impossible but unfair.

My two couldn't be more different. I couldn't parent them the same because they are nothing like each other in temperament or personality. Also you can never parent subsequent children the same because they will never be 'the only'.

When I had DS1 after 17yrs of infertility I took the year off work, spent hours and hours snuggling on the sofa gazing adoringly at him. Life was chilled, no pressure. Cue DS2 2.5 yrs later and it was back to work at 8 weeks, up early in the mornings, nursery runs, lower income, more stress.

If I was to use the 123...discipline with ds1 I never made it to 3, with ds2 I could count to 223 and it wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference. I had to parent them differently but it was always fair.

I will never know if their personalities would be different if DS2 was first. DS1 is chilled, easygoing, is confident and values his own worth, enjoys his own company. He coasts along happily, has no id3a what his future looks like. DS2 is more frantic, has to be busy, needs external validation, likes to have people around him and needs reassurance that he's doing the right thing. But he's totally focussed, knows where he wants to be and how he's going to get there.

The only thing they have in common is that they are polite, friendly and neither have ever given me a moments trouble. They are now 24 & 21.

2 children growing up in one home doesn’t mean they are parented the same.

They may have had the same basics like, access to hobbies, food, parental interest in education etc.

But trying to parent kids the same isn’t a great idea. My oldest (now an adult) comes to me when she has a problem, but wants solutions suggesting or my opinion on what steps she has taken. Ds (11) usually just wants some comfort then a talk about it and let him come to his own conclusion about what he should do.

If I started giving solutions to ds straight away he wouldn’t be open to it. Dd is more straight to the point.

But also look on here to how many people feel they had a completely different childhood and experience with their parents, to their siblings.

Then there’s nature vs nuture debate on top of that and the impact of that. Plus impact of people outside the family. Teachers, friends etc.

Parents do influence kids a huge amount. But they aren’t the be all and end all and other things do impact it a lot