I think about this a lot actually. That whole new kind of fucked up shows us that our parents had good intentions, they thought they were doing better.
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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I, too, thought a lot about this.
Having kids now and reflecting on my childhood, it's extremely obvious that my parents truly had the best intentions and tried their best.
But they, too, are fallible and made mistakes.
Some of those mistakes were due to a lack of knowledge or bad advice they received. I think that nowadays, thanks to the internet, it's quite feasible to get much better advice. On the other hand, there is also a lot of disinformation.
I am optimistic that each generation will get better, because knowledge tends to accumulate and humanity tends to improve over time.
But perfection is still far away in a distant future.
I am optimistic that each generation will get better,
I thought this too but then it didn't in a lot of ways and did in some. If we do our best and try to spread that to our kids and our circles, that's the only way. I never in a million years thought we would go so far backwards on so many issues like civil rights, abortion and worker's rights. I know it would be a roller coaster but I didn't think the dips would be that far down.
Yeah, but that's not because of generational progress.
Many civil rights in the USA weren't properly arranged for through democratic laws, but by Supreme Court decisions.
They were always at risk. Once you achieve the same level of progress through electoral majorities, they are much more stable and secure.
As for workers rights and inequality, there is a similar story. Between the great depression and globalization there was a time of great progress, but it was never sustainable.
It only occurred because two world wars and a great depression left the world in tatters and destroyed the power of the wealthy, while the Western world still fully enjoyed the fruits of colonialism. Western Middle classes suddenly had all the power for a brief moment in time.
Now, we will have to figure out how to create real equality, without exploiting other countries and without relying on war and depression to break the power of the rich.
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I’m convinced that the intentions you have don’t mater that much. It’s how well you’ve managed to solve your own problems that determines how fucked up your kid is going to be.
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It doesn't make sense when you're young .... but the older you get, the more you realize that everyone is just making shit up as they go along.
It's made me realize after a long life that my parents were no smarter (or no dumber) than me.
It's just that as children, we look up to our parents and think that they should be smarter than everyone else but in reality, they never were. It doesn't mean that they were dumb either ... it's just that people are people, including your parents.
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Absolutely, my mother thought she was doing great by parenting me to live the childhood she never could, problem was, I was my own person, and absolutely not interested in experiencing all the things she never could.
My dad on the other hand treated me akin to a roommate (his words), which is not ideal for a teenager trying to learn basic life skills.
I don't have kids but a lot of my friends do, I have hope for that generation of kids.
I wish I could adopt the mindset of them having good intentions and whatnot, but sometimes parents really shouldn't have been parents and are just truly shitty people.
I didn't mean to discount that experience. My parents were shitty sometimes but they really did love us, I know that's not always the case.
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To me it seems late 90s/early 2000s parents went overboard with helicopter parenting and ignored kids online presence due to their lack of understanding of the Internet.
Then late 00s 10s parents doubled down on Internet and tech ignorance.
am i the only one who had pretty good parents?
Yeah they're not perfect but like the biggest mistake they made was not getting me diagnosed for autism as a kid, and that's not really something i blame them for since it's really a societal problem and you can't feasibly handle something you've heard about in passing twice in your entire life..
Like it's not rocket science, treat your kids like actual human beings and you're a good way toward being a good parent.
It's weird, I think my parents did a fine job of raising me and my brother, even though my father was a raging (but functioning) alcoholic and my mother was (is) manic-depressive. They made sure we were taken care of, put us both through expensive college, and have always been there for us whenever we needed anything. But my brother decided long ago (thanks to therapy) that our upbringing was somehow traumatic and he harbors enormous anger and resentment towards our parents (although he keeps this mostly hidden from them). He has consciously chosen to raise his own children basically the opposite of how our parents did, but they have basically turned out exactly like him: socially awkward, depressed and in terrible physical shape. I asked him whether he blames himself for their problems since he blames our parents for his, and it turns out no, he blames our parents for his children's problems, too.
Everyone has problems. And everyone thinks they are above them and have moved past them. I think it's more realistic to just love your kids and hope that you do just a little bit better than your parents did. Just like every generation is smarter than the last maybe in time the planet will be less fucked up.
You know your situation better than anyone so feel free to ignore this if I'm way off base.
But I'm guessing two things here:
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Your parents were able to provide you with things you needed as a child. Perhaps things like college and clothes on your back were the things you needed to grow into a fulfilled and happy person. But maybe your brother needed your mom to control her emotions better during an episode. Maybe he needed your dad to be predictable and consistent instead of drinking and behaving in ways that were irritating or unpredictable from a child's perspective.
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You might not be fully acknowledging some of the things they did (or didn't do) that made you feel bad when you were little. It doesn't have to be physical abuse for it to have an impact on you. We know now that children form attachment styles at least partially based on how their parents responded to their cries during infancy. Kids can be amazingly resilient, but also incredibly delicate.
Also, the odds that they treated you differently based on birth order, their age when they had each of you, gender, your personalities, etc. is very high.
You should ask your brother what really bothers him deep down. I'll bet you get some tears and probably some very deep, very impactful memories/feelings about your parents.
If you asked my younger, more relaxed brother about our parents, he would say, "Yeah man dad's a dick for drinking and bailing on us, and mom likes to guilt trip us but oh well."
I would be the one to explain how their constant fighting, dad's drinking/drugging, mom's emotional manipulation and authoritarian parenting, etc. made me feel deeply unsafe and insecure as a child. I felt bad about myself and my life. I wished I could get a letter from Hogwarts more than anything. And when our father got so into drugs that he became absent completely, I felt lonely and abandoned. Took me many years to make peace with it and realize he was really sick and struggling.
The thing is, I suspect that I've actually come a lot further in my healing than my brother has. I don't think he's aware of some of the things he does or why he does them. Any chance your brother is actually onto something here?
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Wow, this is kind of fascinating. If anything it points to nature over nurture, which I would think your brother would find a relief.
You'd be surprised how many parents struggle with even basic stuff like "don't scream at your child all of the time". It should be easy and common sense, and yet so many fail at this..
man i don't even understand why they do that, it very obviously doesn't work and means that when you actually need to shout at the child they'll ignore it since you always shout at them
oftentimes it's straight up more effective (though maybe not quite the correct option) to simply ignore them, which i would think is easier than screaming, but what do i know
I think there's a lot of people that never got to the point of examining whether their emotional impulses are at all effective at driving them towards their immediate goals, let alone their long term ones. And they don't realize that things don't just go back to normal after they bully someone into going along with their way.
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I can stop this. I can just never have kids.
Yes, but that alone won't heal someone's trauma.
It will heal in death. Our deaths. And then no one will be traumatised ever again! Because no more humans exist! The system is perfect!
Edit: I seem to have had a stroke: If we do not have children, only THEN will no one be traumatised again. Please excuse my sieve of a brain.
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My dad died recently.
He was definitely a flawed man, and there were tons of problems between the two of us over the years. But I also heard plenty of stories about how he grew up, and about his parents—both from my dad and from other family members. Without a doubt, he managed to be a better person than his parents, and a better parent to me than his parents were to him. They were straight-up cruel to him, whether physically or simply using him for the family's gain.
That doesn't absolve everything, and I've still got plenty of my own issues. But what I respect most of him, in hindsight, is that he played the hand he was dealt and managed to be a better man. Not perfect, but better. I want to do the same.
Sorry for being sappy, it's only been a couple of weeks. I also know that this doesn't apply to everyone, since some parents are indefensibly cruel and abusive. In general, though, I hope people can be easy on each other, easy on themselves, and stop letting "perfect" be the enemy of "good."
I’m very sorry for your loss. it’s really touching to see how much you understand him and accept his imperfections. May your grieving be as smooth or intense as you need it to be.
Thank you. The grieving has actually been both smooth & intense, with ups & downs, but I'm gradually doing better, as is my mom.
But anyway, the meme is accurate. :P I just have a more sensitive feeling about it given recent events.
This Be The Verse
BY PHILIP LARKIN
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
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Nobody escapes childhood unscathed.
This comment section is gonna be pretty depressing.
Anti-natalist sentiment definitely pretty strong on Lemmy, which makes sense considering the crowd but sometimes it gets pretty brutal and uncalled for. Like at the end of the day we're a species because we make babies lol.
I don't want to be anti-natalist. I wish we could make sure that our children will have better lives than we do, and I will fight to make that true. But for now, the guilt is too much for me.
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Her: "So, hear me out: We'll give them every one of our issues and then take away all of the safety nets we enjoyed."
Him: "I'm so down. This is gonna be great!"
Society needs to change on a fundamental level. The school system is flawed. The government is flawed. Social expectations are flawed. The tech industry is rotten to the core. The environment is collapsing under the weight of random stuff humanity wants but doesn't need or benefit from. Our generation needs to fix this and clean up after our ancestors.
One of the larger problems is the government of the USA anyway providing zero healthcare/mental healthcare or any social help/care to it's own citizens then somehow expecting in the future to have a functioning country.
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"Are you traumatized in any way? No? Think again! Did I do anything traumatizing? Tell me, I'm willing to admit and learn from my mistakes. So tell me, what did I do that traumatized you and don't look at me like that! I'm really trying to help you!"
Meanwhile my parents don't remember any of their abuse and say I'm imagining stuff.
Literally what every one of my clients with childhood trauma says. I'm a therapist. I can think of one exception where the parents kind of listened and tried to atone, but that's it.
My step mom beat the shit out of us and says all five of us, two of her own children, are making it up. Needless to say, no contact going on 7 years.
I'm sorry that happened to you. That's exactly the kind of denial I hear about, and then these (step) parents wonder why there is no contact...
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In my country, there's a saying, "The one who hurts forgets, the one hurt remember."
The axe forgets, the tree remembers.
Oh, hey me!
Don't you find it easy to blame how fucked up you are on your parents? Coz, me too and guess my child is gonna do the same in turn.
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my favourite is the one that shows 2 people at the park with a stroller, arguing about which one of them needs to go to therapy, and the baby in the stroller thinks that they'll be the one to go to therapy since neither parent will.
People expecting perfection from imperfect beings: the thread
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