'after the age of 25, you're not allowed to blame anything on your parents'

[secunda]

I read this statement recently (in 'England, England' by Julian Barnes, not anything written by a psychologist). How far do you think it's true? Of course upbringing affects us, but at what point does a personal failing stop being due to parental failing and start being something you should have sorted out yourself? Is it even possible for you sort these things out yourself, or are the effects permanent? Can you use the events of childhood to justify your behaviour forever?

I quite like this quotation by George Bernard Shaw:

"People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them."

I don't think we can make sweeping judgements about whether or not people can or cannot blame their parents for their lives after a certain age - it depends so much on what the parenting was like. But I do sometimes feel that there comes a point when it does seem like an excuse, perhaps an easy way not to take responsibility for one's own poor judgements or lack of success.

I totally agree- unless you were horrifically abused, obviously. It drives me nuts reading whinging threads about how being made to do PE explains why everything ever since has Gone Wrong.

no you can't use the events of childhood to justify your behaviour forever. However, ot everyone gets the help they need to be able to move on.

A counsellor once told me that peope have to take responsibility for themselves and learn how to move past bad things becuase if they don't then they will never move on.

While your childhood does affect you forever, if you find yourself saying 'it's because of xxxxx' then maybe you need to take a look at why your behaviour needs excusing, and whether you can change it, rather than just carrying on as you are.

(not you personally, but everyone calls me a ponce if I say 'if one is doing this' )

Yep, unless (as previously said) it was a horrific childhood full of abuse etc then I am a believer in just growing up and getting over it. Especially once you have your own kids and realise that you are just as misguided and shit as your own parents most days.

I agree to an extent. My sister has refused to speak to my mum since she was 16 for some nebulous reason - nobody quite knows why but she now is 26 and has OCD which she blames entirely on my mum, but she refuses treatment and I think secretly likes having something to whinge about and blame for all her problems. She blames mum for splitting up their marriage, when my dad went off with with and subsequently married a friend of my mum's. My mum is, of course, devastated that my sister wants nothing to do with her. She refuses to take responsibility for her problems - even my stepmum (hardly my mum's favourite person by a long shot) has told my sister that she's had nothing to do with her mother for 10 years so has got to accept that her problems are entirely of her own doing now. She acts like a petulant 14 year old still - I've been waiting for her to 'grow out of this phase' for 12 years but doubt she'll ever change.

There are so many other things about my sister's behaviour and the way she treats my mum, refuses to take responsibility, blames everyone else, throws away opportunities which really get to me. The crazy thing is, she actually had a fairly privileged upbringing but constantly makes poor choices which she refuses to acknowledge. She was really bright, went to a top independent school, could have sailed through uni but instead left home at 16, lived in a campervan and for the past 10 years has played the 'poor me' card instead of accepting help and doing something constructive with her life.

Argh, that turned into a bit of a rant! But I agree - there comes a point where you can't blame your parents (except cases of horrendous abuse as already mentioned by earlier posters) - especially in my sister's case - she had every opportunity she could have wished for and threw it back in my mum's face

When I was 21, I did a quiz in a magazine that said I had clearly suffered from my upbringing, but should stop feeling bad about it & get on with things. At the time (being a very malleable 21-year-old) this struck me as a nugget of wisdom. I went on to practise what it preached. Decades later, I realised that I did need to work through the effects of what my parents taught me. I might have been better advised to "blame" them; at least I wouldn't have been blaming myself!

I think the confusion between blaming one's parents and understanding oneself causes much damage. People like me, who were badly parented, become adults with unhelpful values & belief systems. It's hard enough to recognise that. Actually changing the effects is a long process, accurately dubbed 're-parenting oneself'. Statements like the one in the title only serve to magnify self-blame.

I know a teenage boy who has been reared with love, but roughly, by parents who are currently in prison for a crime of serious violence. All his life, he's suffered bullying and prejudice. He's a sweet-natured kid, but his manner's aggressive and he lacks ordinary social skills; his boundaries are all over the place; his assumptions about people are negative. Because of all this, his life experience bears out those assumptions. He is in for a very difficult life and it is NOT his fault. I feel angry when people say damaged individuals should "just get over it". From where are they supposed to get the know-how?

I agree that a lot of people have a hard-wired zeitgeist that they got from their upbringing, which is not useful for their adult life. But how are you supposed to tackle it when it's the background to everything. Everyone thinks their pov is 'normal' even when it isn't, so how do you get to the point where you know to deal with it?

I asked the question originally because, although I don't exactly blame my parents for my problems, I can trace them back to childhood experiences that didn't need to happen if my parents had been a bit more careful. I think to an extent DP is 're-parenting' me (quite big age gap as well) but not sure if this is very healthy!

I seem to be posting a lot about this lately.
To clarify: my self-sabotaging psyche WAS caused by my parents. They ARE at fault. When you think about it, however, nobody would choose to make their family dysfunctional. So, whether they recognise it or not, they themselves were damaged by their own childhood.

It's inappropriate to blame them, then, because they only did what they knew how to do. As the cliche says, they did the best they could.

People seem sadly obtuse about this. I blame my parents in the way I would blame an earthquake for demolishing my house. It couldn't be helped; the damage is done. Extending the earthquake analogy, I am left to survey the rubble and rebuild my life.

You're right, Secunda, it takes a deal of insight to recognise what's happened. The rebuilding tools are not readily available: my parents, as demonstrated above, didn't have them so I never learned them.

That's what therapy's for.

OP, I think it's a stupid rule designed to make people feel bad about themselves. Nothing is ever that black and white.

Rubbish. IMO.

My father spent my young/teenage years telling me I was fat and why couldn't I look like some screen siren that he fancied. I was actually very slim. But at that age you take in everything your parents tell you.

I became very promiscous...I guess looking for the validation that my father wasn't providing. I am still insecure about my looks, despite people telling me I am gorgeous/slim, etc.

So was it all about his comments or am I just insecure? I really feel that if I'd grown up with a father that told me I was beautiful it might have been a different story. I still need men to find me attractive. And I dread to think what will happen when I get old and wrinkly.

I agree with Grace (as always!) - I have spent far too many years of my life blaming myself for self-destructive behaviours that resulted directly from my upbringing - precisely because of comments/expectations like this.

I thought that I could force myself to be ok and get over it but unfortunately this attitude wasn't enough to cope with deep-rooted beliefs about my lack of self-worth given to me by my parents.

I think I would have been much better off if I had blamed my parents and then maybe I would have been more inclined to seek therapy and actually deal with my ishoos rather than believing it was just something I was expected to just get over.

Not sure if that makes sense?

Have to agree with Grace, fizz and malinkey.

My ex had some very problematic behaviours that can be traced back to problems in his childhood. He would never admit it himself.

There is a nugget of truth in the title of the post, in that it wouldn't help much for him just to blame his parents and carry on with the bad behaviour. It is his job to control his behaviour now.

I don't think anyone escapes from their upbringing without something to "blame" their parents for.

From my own observations, the adults who are still blaming their parents after the age of 25 tend not to take responsibility for themselves in general. I have also found that the same adults tend to be guilty of naval gazing and very turned in on themselves in general.

I have also noticed that the blaming type of adult does not correlate to having the worst type of parent, if that makes sense. Quite often, adults who have every right to spend their lives blaming their inadequate upbringing never do.

Of course, it may be that the parents of the blaming adults didn't allow them as children to take responsibility and therefore didn't give them the tools they require in life.

I think there comes a time in your life, 25 sounds about right to me, when you have to put your upbringing to one side and realise that you only have one life and you can either continue to focus on your parents failures towards you or you can focus on making your life excellent.

In my own experience, whatever I focus on tends to become my experience.

But there's a difference between just putting the blame on your parents for any old failings and realising that your own parenting wasn't up to much and has resulted in unhealthy patterns of behaviour and trying to do something about it - this isn't the same as going around saying 'it's all their fault'.

Being forced to think that you 'just have to get over it' without any kind of help doesn't seem to work in my experience.

i think it looks very churlish when people with fairly marginal problems act as though their parents are the worse people ever - it lacks perspective and yes, once you're an adult and have control over your own life to say 'oh well, they broke it, nothing i can do now to fix it' ....such a person is only harming themselves though.

there are cases where peoples parents do things that you would stay angry with them for forever OTOH, and that would be very hard to just put the back of the mind....

I agree with what others have said: that recognising that you have unhealthy patterns of behaviour that have been caused by your own poor childhood, does not mutually exclude getting to a stage in your life when you realise that the responsibility for changing those patterns rests solely on your own shoulders. And that if you are making yourself and others around you unhappy, you have to 'get over it', which may well include seeking out the necessary help and therapy to do so.

My ex had a horrible childhood, and always blamed this for his abusive behaviour towards me. Both I and his other family members offered to pay for him to go to therapy, but he refused to do so, probably because it was easier for him to continue to blame his father than to take responsibility for his own actions. It was not his fault that he came to be like that in the first place, but it was his fault that he refused to do anything about it.

Well put, Thistle.

There is a difference in causality and moral culpability though, upbringing can be explanatory without the parents being to blame - motive has to be accounted for. Sexual abuse is separate, there is obviously blame there. Unless they deliberately behaved in a way intending you to have problems as an adult, then it is more a lesson in your parents not being perfect (a normal growing up lesson that helps us not feel too bad when we become parents).

For example, many people blame their bad relationship choices on parental divorce. There might be an association, even a direct cause in not learning how to relate well. However, the parents did not get divorced in order to mess up relationships for their future offspring, in fact many would have tried to stay together to avoid it. Blaming them for a situation they would not have chosen and its consequences is childish and usually ends up with blaming grandparents, GGPs etc. Wishing it hadn't happened, for their sake as much as yours, and trying to understand and learn from it, is a healthier way to think post 25.

Also, take Thalidomide as an example - you can directly link a parental behaviour with a poor outcome but it is obvious the parent did not know the outcome and had been doing what they thought best at the time, therefore we do not blame the mother but she can still be used to explain a phenomenon.

I agree with the sentiment, blame is a fairly childish emotion and as adults we are better able to understand complex and difficult situations.