I understand what my mother did even less now that I have children. What about you - more or less understanding about their decisions and choices now you are a parent?

[thenewme]

Just wondering - no idea why this has suddenly come into my mind.

How sad to see stories where the one person in your life (your mother) has failed you.

The only useful thing I have to say is that people can only parent in the best way they can and all parents make mistakes, it is just that some are far more damaging than others.

I don't understand how my biological father could know about me, see me once, but never want to be part of my life. DH is a bit more understanding of his motives though, which surprised me.

I also have massive, massive respect for my mum, who is a better mum than I am, sadly for my children, and my (adoptive) dad.

thenewme I think you come across as strong in your posts. You obviously have a lot going on in your family but you are trying to find a way through it.

thenewme... but have the things you have achieved with your kids been the right thing to do? if yes, then you are strong.

pgwithnumber3... agree, and i had a most amazing dad which more than made up for my mother. i was really lucky.

i cannot even begin to fathom why my mother behaved/behaves as she did/does.

i'm not sure i want to think about it really as if she even came close to feeling about me as i do about my kids............

my biggest fear is that i will ever make my kids feel like she made me feel, the thought of it is unbearable.

I'm with Eachpeach sadly- less and less understanding of their choices.

My mother and father left my brother for three weeks to go on holiday without him, over his first birthday. I cannot even begin to imagine doing this to my DD; I find it hard enough to spend eight hours without her. The whole "leaving the pram at the bottom of the garden while they cry" thing is beyond me too.

While I'm not understanding, it's tinged with sorrow as well as anger. I do feel more sorry for a woman with two small children and PND and little money and no job and no local friends due to constantly moving with dad's job. What is on my plate is much easier, and yet I moan constantly.

DH's parents failed him and I bear the repercussions of this very often. He sometimes just doesn't understand how to emotionally support me and I blame that on his father walking out on him and his 2 siblings when he was very young and never bothering to see them. His mum then tried her best but she was pretty selfish and put other men before her children.

Agree with thenewme's hypothesis - I understand my mother's feelings, and am even more grateful for all she did - I had a fab childhood. My mother feels the same about her own mother, who had a pretty grim childhood, and vowed not to pass it on to her own children. I'm most definitely a huge beneficiary of that choice.

I also think that parents can get caught in a bad place and the cycle of behaving poorly towards their children is too hard a habit to break.

I'm even more understanding of my parents, and think they did a superb job. I had a lovely childhood, and a great relationship with them now.

I have more and more respect for my parents, esp my mum. There were three of us and she was a SAHM with no family close by. I feel very lucky to have her as my mum and hope I can come even close to matching her love and creative energy as I bring up the DCs

I have always had a bit of a tricky relationship with my dad and that did give me self esteem issues. But I do know that he loves me and, as he had a loveless childhood, I respect him for managing to avoid passing the bulk of that on to me and my sisters.

God I totally appreciate all she did for the first time.

I also want to be a bit less rigid though..so I would do some things differently.

I also genuinely wonder how all those women, especially more isolated SAHMs, managed without literally going mad..

Thenewme i WOULD believe you and ive no doubt that many on here would too.

When me and my sister chat about our childhood i always say to her when she gets angry and upset, XXX the best thing we can do to overcome what happened to us is to make sure we dont treat our own children that way.

hope you are ok.

jen
xx

my mum is a wonderful mum and grandmother. I can only hope that some of her kindness, fun and generosity of spirit has rubbed off on me.

whoops leaned on keyboard too soon.
What I wanted to say was I don't understand how she could have stayed with my father, who was an alcoholic bully, and frequently, beat us, shouted at us,humiliated us and did the same to her.
I would never do that to my ds's now.

Oh, I understand their choices all right. I make totally different ones, that's all.

It is true that having access to communities like mumsnet makes a huge difference to us. Can imagine my mother putting some of her decisions up in front of mn, she would get screams of horror. whereas of course, she didnt have that possibility to educate her in teh 1970s.

Well I can see that I am acquiring the art of attending to my child without actually attending e.g. "Really? How lovely/wonderful/awful........." whilst continuing to read mumsnet threads (my mother read books).

less understanding - and also really sad that motherhood clearly didn't make my mother happy and she had no support to change that

jenk
'the best thing we can do to overcome what happened to us is to make sure we dont treat our own children that way."
agree and i also think the best revenge is to live well and be happy.

Gemzooks - they were all on valium. Amazingly high prescribing rates for housewives in the 50s and 60s.

I do admire my mum for being strong. She went through the horrible first marriage, losing two of her children to her husband for whatever reasons, re-married to a prat, lost a son to leukaemia, divorced, met another man and was happy and then he was killed in a car crash.
I wish she was not so repressed emotionally and could have included her other children in things like the illness and death of my brother.
I worry that despite seeing her faults I will repeat them almost against my will. I shout a lot. I hear my father saying "Christ!" as I say it.

My mother was a terrible one!
While I understand more now about how hard having kids is, I understand even less all the choices she made and the ways she behaved.
For example did she really have to have a kid every other year for 10 years? I love my brothers to bits, but I just wonder that, given her lack of mental resources, whether this was a wize thing to do. She must have known she was already messing up with the kids she already had(Yes, we were all planned)

But she had also lots of resources that I don't have today i.e her parents and my father's parents were always on hand to babysit last minute, pick us up from school when smalll; there for her every time she fell out with my dad. I live abroad. THere is no-one here for me at all! I am on my own and I can't contemplate how she behaved the way she did towards her kids.

It is hard knowing my mum only got pregnant to try and keep my dad and was really annoyed when I was the wrong sex.