Or is it too complicated/does it leave too many blurred lines?
Brief history is: DH and I are both from ‘dysfunctional’ backgrounds in terms of our parents. Would classify it as 99% emotional/verbal abuse, some DV witnessed as children, some physical abuse on one side of the family as teens. Both of us also have lots of siblings, all of whom have, as adults, forged their own relationships with our parents to varying degrees of contact and closeness. Essentially, we all just tolerate them. It rubs along ok.
I am currently pregnant with DC2 and having children (we are the first to have kids on either side) has thrown a lot of this stuff up, in terms of how DH and I want to parent, and what we want to expose our children to. I’m sure it always does.
I want to be more structured in how and when we see the grandparents, who are fairly ‘hands off’ anyway,,and I don’t mind them knowing why this is. I’m not afraid to have a difficult conversation. My concern is that we would miss out on family gatherings with our siblings and cousins, who are all lovely and who are not all ready to break ties/put boundaries in place.
So has anyone managed to make something work on this basis?