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.

Yes I did and they have now had their own .

May I ask why? If I believed that poem, I wouldn't have any and risk handing on misery.

I don’t think I was the best parent to my older kids (I have a younger one who was born when the older ones were teens), though I certainly did my best at all times. Likewise, my parents let me down plenty of times in my childhood and also as an adult. Now I’m middle aged I completely agree with you OP: no one is perfect and most people do their best, with the emotional tools and baggage they have. I love my parents and am grateful to them. I hope my children will extend the same understanding to my failings.

I agree, none of us are perfect. My parents certainly weren't but like us all they were of their time. I always felt loved and secure at home. I also know they were doing the best they could.
That doesn't mean that each generation shouldn't try to do better than the one before but I don't think adults should blame their parents for everything wrong in their lives.

I think the current thinking is gone even beyond blaming parents. Its also shouldering massive responsibilities as parents and being very self critical, and also judgmental about others. We don't just accept the cards life dealt us anymore. I had a poorly behaved young child, I spent my life apologising and feeling so ashamed that I was failing as a parent, I felt I was judged all the time but I see how the harshest judge was me. I work with children now and I see it over and over again with mothers, they question where they are going wrong, they immediately blame themselves. If child is anxious, or clingy, or boisterous, or too quiet or too chatty or anything really that is a bit of an issue, they immediately assume they are doing it all wrong. In a way it's a bit of a God complex. We are just people who birthed people, why do we think we are responsible for it all? so much of a person's character is innate and the society will live in moulds us. Family is obviously very important too but it isn't everything.

I see you know the type. upper middle class. professional jobs. pillars of the community. active in the church. school governors. Never was there a collection or charity that they hadn't been seen to give to.
But behind closed doors: cold, coercive, manipulative, and always the threat of violence behind their demands for compliance.

I think the poem has elements of truth based on the fact that no-one is perfect and when we become parents we are really just winging it . As I said I had a good childhood , no abuse etc .
What the poem is basically saying is that parenting is partly passed on, the good bits and the not so good . And for some we can learn from our own parents how to replicate bringing up a child or not if someone's childhood was not so good .
I think you are being quite literal about the poem , in life we make good choices and sometimes not so good and those chooses can be because of our upbringing which in parts is determined by our parents ( or caregivers ) own experience of their own childhood .
Philip Larkin was trying to say its ongoing the good and the bad and if you have a problem with that , stop it by not having children .
It's quite a deep poem if you really think about it .

As remember this poem was published in 1971 , nearly 55 years ago , different times .

Fair enough! I am overly.literal some times. 🙂

Do you think so? I'm 40 and always curious about continuity and change, I feel like we're so often told that things are really the same as they ever were, but I'm not sure. I suppose there is no way to really know, but the best way to get close is to ask those who were around for longer

Are you saying the way you were brought up is exactly the same as you brought up / are bringing up yours ? I'd guess no as things change across the generations and what your parents worried about for you is surely very different to your own ?

I definitely remember all the media hype about TV though. 'Letting children grow up with square eyes.' 'Allowing them access to unfettered TV viewing.' Etc etc.

NOT that I think any child should have free access to the internet. That way madness lies. BUT the hysteria around it isn't new. I'm not sure yet whether it's actually dangerous or the fear of something new. Only time will tell.

NOW it is. 50 years ago it was the norm. Which doesn't stop it from having been bad. But standards have changed. For the better, obviously. But we have to put stuff into context.

I no longer blame my parents for the stuff that was considered normal. Some of what happened wasn't which, fair enough, I blame them for. But getting walloped? No. All my mates were also getting hit. Some of them were beaten with belts. I got slapped.

In the same way, if our children turn around and accuse us of neglecting them because they're in before/after school wrap around care, nurseries from the age of 1 for 45/50 hour weeks, they will hopefully understand the context. That the cost of living today makes that essential for very many of us.

Or for the 'blended' family that has landed them with step siblings/parents that they don't want/didn't like. Because divorce has made that the norm.

We definitely do not have the moral advantage.

I hate that poem. So negative and awful. My parents didn’t “fuck me up” and neither did my parents parents. All lovely people doing their best - not perfect but who is.

LOVE this.

Theres a thread on here at the moment about being given UPFs as children years ago and what a failing their parents were and theres a poster on there who emphatically denies that their child will be critical of them when they're an adult.

Talk about in for a shock!!

I ALSO think (looking back a generation BEFORE my grandparents) that the trauma that they suffered (war, evacuees, loss of a father OR the return of a father with shell shock (PTSD) or with hugely challenging disabilities for very many of that generation) exceeded even my grandparents horrific childhoods.

So I think, to quote another thread as many have already, wingeing on about parents feeding UPFs in the 70s/80s when society didn't realise how unhealthy they were being abuse, is crazy.

For all that we may have had a hard time as kids (NOT those who suffered abuse, the disclaimer I issued in my initial post) we really didn't have it as hard as previous generations. And yet we spend a LOT more time going on about it.

100% agree with you

That said both my great grannies were apparently nightmares but they were literally Victorians so think we can move on !

My view of my parents is, overall did they do the best they were capable of with the resources and knowledge and support they had? Were these actions motivated by love.

for my parents they generally did and were.

They made lots if mistakes, I was under social services care, but I can forgive, move on etc because they werent motivated by hate or indifference. They just made mistakes because they didn't know better basically.

I don’t disagree, but I think the difference between my parenting and my mother’s is that she will never brook any perceived criticism of her behaviour, whereas I will apologise if I’ve fucked up, and accept if I’m wrong. The difference is accountability.

Dad seems pretty sensible. What he said is an acceptance that what was done is in the past and unalterable. What parents do is one thing, how it is received is another. Who is to say which party is correct?

I think people forget that there wasn’t as much “collective wisdom” about parenting available back in the pre-internet days of the 70s,80s and some of the 90s.

Or what there was, was restricted to books.

I suppose people relied on their own families more.

But there was little to no reality tv or tv programmes about parenting. No You Tube videos. No child psychologists or teachers on morning tv, No accessible early years neuroscience available.

We know so much more nowadays.

Parents should be doing so much better and parenting with much more emotional intelligence now, given the information available to them.

However, through no fault of their own, parents perhaps have less “mundane” down time with their dc (particularly mothers) and children live with half of their lives hidden on the internet, being exposed to heaven knows what, with parents having very little control over that.

In other words, every generation has it challenges!

Not being goofy but genuinely just interested to know what we are actually classing as abuse on this thread?

For goodness sake, a child attending nursery is not remotely comparable to a child being beaten up by their parent. What a disgraceful comment.