Time to get over blaming parents

[Slightyamusedandsilly]

OTHER than actual abuse of course. That is a totally and completely understandably different category.

Most of us on here are parents. With all the best will in the world, our children will grow up and vehemently disagree with aspects of our child rearing. We know we love our kids. And getting our errors thrown back at us in later life will be excoriating. But it's bound to happen.

So why, oh why, do we continue as adults to pore over the past and blame any number of aspects of how we were brought up? Our parents were fallible. Just like us. I read thread after thread on here about it. Most by people making their own mistakes with their children.

Before I have it thrown at me, I had a bit of a horrific upbringing. Almost ended up in care. But given that 'They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do.'

Our generation are no better than the previous one. Thinking we are is arrogant.

But they do ‘fuck you up’ (no coincidence it’s one of my favourite poems) and me and my two siblings have all independently ended up in therapy due mainly to our awful mother and our father who enabled her. She held the strong belief that praising children is bad for them. Consequently our childhoods were filled with negativity and criticism. It makes even less sense because she hated her own critical mother yet was just the same. I have spent my whole life ensuring I’m nothing like her. Consequently I have a very close relationship with my 2 sons (and I’m not saying I haven’t made mistakes) and in an ideal world would be totally NC with her.

Someone on the other thread said we all go through a stage of questioning everything our parents did in our twenties and then when we have children in our 30s forgiving them because we see what parenting is like.

Um I don’t think so had my first child at 16 and took till my 20s to fully realise how much my dad sucks in fact having children of my own made me appreciate that even MORE

Yes, but the generations before them had it even harder.

My grandmother was in a Banardo's home because her mother couldn't keep her (poverty). My grandfather was clearly ND and was beaten at school and literally made to wear the dunces cone and stand in the corner facing the wall.

Opposed to my father, who is obviously ASD, who, yes, had a hard time at school, but not outright child abuse. And yes, my nan was a cold women and not very huggy with my mum, but after being left in home as a baby, who wouldn't be? My mum was warm, fed and had a family, albeit not as outwardly loving as she would have liked.

We have to have understanding of our parents experiences. Having a bit of humanity with our parents will hopefully model our children's tolerance of our own errors.

As said before, NOT talking about outright abuse.

I had a decent childhood so can’t really comment but I do sometimes try and stand up for parents when people blame them for not having good stuff/ their parents being messy/ food not being great because they’re what I know about

I totally agree with you op!

I started off in my twenties really resenting my mother for her parenting of me and my siblings. We had the usual benign neglect parenthood of the 1970s. There were six of us. She was strict, emotionally quite closed off and she used to hit us with a wooden spoon when we were naughty. She was intelligent but had had a pretty poor education so she was also quite angry and frustrated stuck being a housewife

She has been raised by strict religious parents and she had been a teen during the Second World War, She never seemed to have any time for frivolous reasons but our clothes was clean, our meals were wholesome and our house was spotless. Out towels had always been warmed when we got out of the bath. She nursed us impeccably through all of the usual childhood diseases. I remember her returning from the chemist with a small phial of olive oil to warm up, in which she dabbed cotton wool, to insert in our ears for when we had earache.

Forward to when I had children of my own and my attitude softened towards her somewhat as she was a great granny and I developed a lot of respect for her practical capabilities and common sense, She became more relaxed and humorous. Our relationship improved massively.

Forward to when I had teens of my own, one of whom was rather challenging, and omg at this point, not only I totally understand my mother, but I have developed much more sympathy for why she often seemed emotionally weary and depleted; but I also developed huge love and respect for her solid independent spirit, her intelligence and her emotional resilience,

Moral of this story: don’t judge your mother’s parenting skills until you have parented your own teen children. Once your children are in their twenties and are well on their way to independent life, only then can you give your mother a final objective score as it were, because only then do you fully realise what it takes to be a parent.

Yup my childhood was not perfect but I do know my parents (despite being able to say the actual words) love me ans tried their absolute best.

Perhaps. Or maybe BIL is someone who likes to blame other people for his own poor decisions. He’s certainly not above tapping his parents for money, despite his substantial six figure salary, mainly because he decided to live in one of the most expensive areas of the city he moved to, among other things.

The person in all of this who did have have pretty shitty childhood is in fact FIL. Which BIL was and is fully aware of.

Both at fault in various ways. Both with agency (though BIL more than FIL I would say).

I agree with you OP. For me though, the fundamental difference is that my parents never acknowledged any wrong doings (and they did some pretty crap things verging on neglect) but made excuses instead or denied things happened. I know I made mistakes with my DC, however I have apologised for them and try to take to their views on board. Not saying I’m perfect - far from it - but if my mum had just at least acknowledged some of the things instead of responding melodramatically with wails of ‘oh I’m such a bad parent, I’ve had such a tough life, woe is me’ etc I would be more forgiving.
However, I don’t dwell on it and accept we’re none of us perfect parents.

Parent’s sometimes definitely can’t win. I have a constant stream from one of mine about access to screens. He may say when he’s older that I should have let him have more, that denying him made it more attractive and I have set him up for an addiction or he could say I let him have too much and it was damaging to him and I set him up for a life of addiction.

My mother was very restrictive about ‘treat’ food and I sometimes think that led to me to become very overweight as a teenager. Equally she could have let me eat what I wanted and I wanted to eat so much I became very overweight as an teenager. Unfortunately we don’t get to live parallel lives.

I’m doing my best with all of them. I don’t have a crystal ball and there is no set of rules which works for every child and parent combo.

And I definitely don’t think we are any better than previous generations. We have a problem saying no. I’m the 80s we remember not getting the roller boots/slushie maker/girls world and decided we would not make our children feel so left out.

Except we now have far more damaging requests and are dealing with a monumental level of global corporate manipulation of society via big tech.

I'm a huge Larkin fan. DH and and I wrote a speech for DC's wedding and he read that poem as part of it.
Weirdly, I think MIL did more damage to DH through spoiling (he was the golden child and she would tell everyone what a wonderful mother she was), than my DP ever did through negligence. It's a minefield.
I have three adult DC, thankfully so far no blame has been pointed in my direction. There's still time though.

I agree with this I've seen it happen.

I don't think my parents fucked me up at all. I am grateful to them. Even though they had very high expectations and were not touchy feely like modern parents are expected to be. So grateful that I plan to take my mum into my home when she is too old to live on her own.

I had a from the outside a very loving stable home but inside was filled with the fear and uncertainty of alcohol from an emotionally abusive father. He was also physically abusive to my mum and sibling. My mum was very distant and left us at the home for 6 months roughly whilst we tried to carry on without knowing where she was. I thought he had killed her. I was 11. Over the years I went nc with my father and he died a few years ago alone.
I have since spoken to her about what happened and she has been responsive when talking about the guilt that she carried around with her and although I do understand why she left I cannot understand why she didn’t take us with her as I would never have left my dc with a father like that.
I promised myself I would never repeat what had happened to me to my dc’s and i can honestly say I have achieved that. Obviously have got things wrong but I am very open to discussion and to sincerely apologise for the unintended hurt I have caused from their point of view. It leaves me with a sense of love and calm that I now have in my life from a very supportive dh.
I did forgive my father and mum as I realised I was hurting myself and tbh I needed to put myself first. It wasn’t easy and I had a lot of support over the years but it definitely helped me be a better parent and person.

OP has already said she is not talking about abuse.

Now I’m a parent I can look back on my childhood more objectively. I have massive admiration for the sacrifices my parents made for us (especially considering their circumstances) and that that raised us to be strong, smart, resilient and confident by providing a loving and secure home. They also modeled a healthy marriage and I have a real appreciation of my father’s attitude towards women and girls which was way ahead of his time. Having said that, there are certain things I am doing differently with my DC because I can see the ways my childhood could’ve been easier or provided me with more opportunities as an adult. I am overall thankful to my parents, recognizing that no parent is perfect. I read somewhere you can only blame your parents until you’re about 25, after that it’s on you to determine your destiny.

I agree there is nothing so unattractive as a person who keeps on blaming their parents for something they could easily change
I have a shopaholic friend who keeps blaming her parents for not teaching her how to budget. She's 50!

Everyone is different. If it was so easy to let it go there wouldn’t be a need for psychologists and therapists.

Well I guess it depends. Some of us had awful childhood experiences, which were never acknowledged. 9/10 on the list of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) here. And my parents made very bad choices which significantly impact me today. I have also made choices that have not been right for my DC, but the big difference is that I acknowledge, hear them and try to do better. My parents died never ever having even noticed what they did.

My honest feeling is that those among us who feel like they're getting it right are in for one hell of a nasty shock at some point when their children turn on them.

"Sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child." Shakespeare. 1605. Children blaming parents isn't new.

Indeed.
I already see 5 posts a day by adult children blaming their parents for not giving them a house or inheritance or childcare or all three. I hope my DC are not here in 10 years saying the same.

Hmmm I don't know. I absolutely agree that we are all human, and fallible and that I will fuck my kids up in my own special way. But there was a really good thread on here the other day where a Mum was reflecting on how she potentially neglected (in a very loose sense ) her DD as her other child had additional needs. That resonated with me as my brother was born when i was 12, had a profound disability and I was basically left to my own devices as a teen. I did my own uni visits, took myself there on the first day. I still remember lugging my suitcase by myself up a hill to uni with a bag of pans and my flat mates and everyone else being taken out to dinner with their kids. I never really went home after uni and i live at the other end of the country now and there is a distance (emotionally and physically!). My mum once commented on this about we aren't as close as her sisters and their kids, and i said something around my brother and it did not go well. If she had owned it more, maybe we could have healed. Its not about blame, but acknowledging we get things wrong and acknowledging the impact, whether or not we intended it.

Our generation are no better than the previous one. Thinking we are is arrogant.

I agree and disagree.

We are better in many ways. My self esteem, confidence, boundaries and resilience was damaged in many ways by the parenting I received. My father has zero insight into his own psychological functioning, never reflects on his parenting choices and believes he is always right. That is fairly common in men of his generation who had the type of childhood he had. My DH and I are both well read in therapy concepts through work and direct experience. We are definitely better parents in many ways than either of our fathers or his mother. BUT we also made new mistakes of our own. Most of the mistakes I made with my DS are due to modern issues such as having to work 2/3 jobs as a lone parent to fund exhorbitant rent and childcare, and the mistakes of allowing smartphone and social media access too young. Our parents didn't have to negotiate issues of the internet in their parenting, and we who are raising children entirely in the digital age are the guinea pigs (or our children are) and will be the first to truly fuck up in this specific way. No doubt our own kids will have new issues to mishandle when they are raising theirs.

My friend is always sharing stuff on fb about childhood trauma and her upbringing, her parents divorced but it sounds like her mum worked hard to support them all and did her best, but wasn't as emotionally available as my friend would have liked. She herself is a very gentle parent. She doesn't get on that well with her mum now, and sometimes I wonder how hard it must be for her mum to see all of that on FB. This only started once my friend started reading into parenting, gentle parenting, trauma/ the body keeps score, etc and her relationship with her mum seems to have declined during that time as initially her mum was quite involved.

What was your passion at 17?