Have you gotten MORE angry at your parents since having kids?

[Anonymous]

7:28 here. Just reading through these responses. Just want to send some love to everyone else who struggles with this. Parenting is always hard but if you grew up with abuse and neglect, it's harder. Just want to say I see you and I know how hard you all are working to do for your kids what your parents didn't do for you.

I know when you have abusive/neglectful parents, you might not get much encouragement or support as a parent and I just wanted to take a second to offer some. Y'all are doing great. Thank you. Your kids may never know how hard you worked to give them something you never had.

[Anonymous]

No, by the time I had kids I was mostly past the point of being angry anymore. It did make me sad for the little girl I once was who wanted nothing more than to feel safe and loved. I am so grateful to now have a stable, safe, loving family and to be able to provide that for my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, by the time I had kids I was mostly past the point of being angry anymore. It did make me sad for the little girl I once was who wanted nothing more than to feel safe and loved. I am so grateful to now have a stable, safe, loving family and to be able to provide that for my kids.

I'm one of the PP's and I agree its less anger at this point and more just sadness and disappointment. I would have given anything to have the childhood that my kids have, which of course they just take for granted that they have two loving, involved parents and enough money. And that is how it should be.

[Anonymous]

I went into therapy a couple years ago because I was so angry about it! I had been angry for a long time but I do feel like having my own kids took me from like, standard anger to like incandescent rage. I have come down a lot from there, but still I am so resentful. And so happy and grateful and committed to/for the idea that my children will grow up without the pressure and enormous instability I withstood. Their childhood will be boring and happy and their problems will be their own (rather than my problems being their problems).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes.

My parents did the best they could and ALSO their best was abusive and neglectful. My parents hit, screamed at, manipulated blamed, ignored, scapegoated, and berated us throughout my childhood. I've spent most of my adult life trying to essentially construct a sense of self-worth from scratch because my parents convinced me I was an inherently bad person with no value or competence during the years when a human being normal develops their sense of self.

I get they did what the could with the tools available to them, which were terrible because they, too had horrible childhoods with abusive parents.

Interestingly, they both grew up in homes with alcoholism but they were not alcoholics and my mom actually does not drink at all. So they did learn something from their childhoods. I just wish they had ALSO learned not to hit their kids and that it was their job as the adults to take responsibility for their own emotions, instead of constantly blaming us for them or pushing them onto us.

I don't know. I guess it would be great to wake up one day with a sense of peace and acceptance about it all. I do have empathy for them. But yes, being a parent has highlighted for me in a very intimate way how harmful my parents were. Also my DH's parents. So much violence and dysfunction and trauma in our family. It's a huge weight on me. I often find myself parenting my child and myself at the same time. There is wonderful healing in that. It also feels so unfair -- I wish my parents had offered me the love, acceptance, patience, and calm that I now provide for my daughter. I'm happy for her and sad for myself, but also happy for myself to at least get to experience a functional family from this angle.

I think when you experience abuse and neglect as a child, and it never gets addressed or resolved for that child, you wind up mourning what the child version of you lost for the rest of your life. Like my parents, I think I've done my best with what was available to me, and fortunately I've found ways to make more and better available to me than they did. But I'll probably always be a little bit angry on behalf of my child self for how she was treated. It was wrong. My parents should have done better. Even if it seemed impossible to them at the time, they should have done better for that child.

This is so well said, and captures the conflicting emotions. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:7:28 here. Just reading through these responses. Just want to send some love to everyone else who struggles with this. Parenting is always hard but if you grew up with abuse and neglect, it's harder. Just want to say I see you and I know how hard you all are working to do for your kids what your parents didn't do for you.

I know when you have abusive/neglectful parents, you might not get much encouragement or support as a parent and I just wanted to take a second to offer some. Y'all are doing great. Thank you. Your kids may never know how hard you worked to give them something you never had.

I’m a PP and this means a lot, thank you for saying this.

[Anonymous]

Not anger, but honestly a lot of bewilderment that they care so little about me. When I see and feel how much I love my own kids, it surprises me a little that my parents are so disinterested in me. The idea that I could just... Not give a shlt what my kids do the day they turn 18, not be curious about their careers or interests, not visit the cities they choose to move to, not want to meet their friends. That's how my parents treat me and I used to just brush it off. But having my own kids has made me realize how messed up that is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I see how self-absorbed they were and what it cost me as a child who was vulnerable to predators.

I think that you hit the nail on the head...their self absorption is what I really have trouble letting go of....

[Anonymous]

No, but my parents were amazing and if anything parenthood has made me appreciate them even more.

Reading these posts on here though breaks for my heart for those of you who were innocent little kids dealt a crap hand for parents. I imagine the love you feel for your children has made your parents’ treatment of you even more difficult to comprehend. You seem entitled to anger, but I hope you can find peace for your own sanity, and be proud of yourselves for breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect.

[Anonymous]

I had a much better appreciation for the physical work my mom did for us (with a lot fewer resources, no less), but got angry about the emotional aspect of their parenting. One of my DCs is very much like myself in personality and temperament: sweet, sensitive, and a rule follower. There were a lot of beatings, shouting, hair-trigger temper and using us as emotional punch bags when I was growing up. I simply cannot imagine doing to my children what they did to me, and it breaks my heart every time I think back to my childhood. I was so emotionally beaten up by them that I continued to be docile and conforming, while they kept me under their thumbs well into my 30s.

The hardest part was that both of them passed away when my children were still in the infant/toddler age. I had this newly awakened anger but they were gone. I was mourning their deaths and dealing with so much conflicting emotions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had an OK childhood, but it was marked by alcoholism and a very stereotypical working dad and mom at home. Dad was gone mostly.

I’ve always had a lot of anger (yes I’m in therapy) but one thing I always said is that I was sure I would find a new perspective and some level of forgiveness once I have my own kids and could understand that context all the better. But now I’m pretty deep into parenting. My oldest is six. And over the years, I’ve just become way more furious with my parents, and realizing how shitty they were to little kids. I see my husband with our kids and just think, why couldn’t my dad even pretend to want to be in the same room with us? How could you do that to a kid?

Anyways, I wonder if anyone out there has had the same experience of getting more angry with their parents instead of more forgiving as they get perspective.

Never personally experienced a similar situation, but my biggest surprise with older parents is that they are so protective of how they did things. Even when you tell them how it affected you, or how it affects you now, they defend their stance to death, as if their life depended on it.

Don't you think you'll do the same? Our kids will be just as angry at us... What's in vogue today will be criticized tomorrow and our kids will be angry that we followed the trend. I try to remember that when I start thinking critically of my parents.

[Anonymous]

Just the opposite.

I now have so much more compassion and understanding of what they were dealing with from the other side. Also I'm more forgiving of things that used to bother me now that I've experienced the challenges of being a parent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had an OK childhood, but it was marked by alcoholism and a very stereotypical working dad and mom at home. Dad was gone mostly.

I’ve always had a lot of anger (yes I’m in therapy) but one thing I always said is that I was sure I would find a new perspective and some level of forgiveness once I have my own kids and could understand that context all the better. But now I’m pretty deep into parenting. My oldest is six. And over the years, I’ve just become way more furious with my parents, and realizing how shitty they were to little kids. I see my husband with our kids and just think, why couldn’t my dad even pretend to want to be in the same room with us? How could you do that to a kid?

Anyways, I wonder if anyone out there has had the same experience of getting more angry with their parents instead of more forgiving as they get perspective.

Never personally experienced a similar situation, but my biggest surprise with older parents is that they are so protective of how they did things. Even when you tell them how it affected you, or how it affects you now, they defend their stance to death, as if their life depended on it.

Don't you think you'll do the same? Our kids will be just as angry at us... What's in vogue today will be criticized tomorrow and our kids will be angry that we followed the trend. I try to remember that when I start thinking critically of my parents.

No, because I don't think the differences between my parenting and what my parents did were about what was "in vogue." I mean, some stuff like lying a baby on their back or different approaches to feeding, sleep, etc. That stuff does go in trends. But I don't get mad about the fact that my parents did those things differently. They had different information, different cultural influences. It's fine.

But I think what a lot of people on this thread are talking about is not a "parenting trend." My parents were physically abusive and emotionally immature. They didn't do the things they did because they were trendy, though of course they would try to defend them that way ("this is how I was raised" or "corporal punishment is a valid choice" in reference to whipping your kids with a belt). And I guess if my parents had raised me in another country, in the early 1900s, or in absolute poverty, I might be able to say "yes, your behavior was condoned by your environment."

But they didn't. They raised me in a middle class small town in the 1980s and most of my peers had parents who never hit them and who were emotionally supportive of their kids and had enough maturity to do things like maintain boundaries and not take out anger and shame on their children. My parents couldn't do that. I get why (they came from screwed up families where violence and volatility were common, and never really learned a different way), but it wasn't them embracing a "trend". It was just crappy parenting. It's always been crappy parenting. People have always known that the parents who are knocking their kids around, ignoring them, quick to anger, fighting all the time, were bad parents. And the only peopel who ever argue that actually, that's just how parenting should be done, are peopel who are abusive and want to justify it as a "parenting strategy." It's not. It's reactive and immature.

So my kid may dislike aspects of how I parent her. She might wish we'd put her in more activities or less, she might complain about where she is going to school, or how we eat, or how we handle discipline. And she will almost certainly be right about some of it and wrong about some of it. It's all subjective anyway and with that stuff, there really isn't a definitive right answer. Some of the stuff she'll wish we'd done will be things we could never have afforded, for instance. But I'm okay with all of it, it's okay for her to second guess, that's natural and will help her decide how to parent if she decides to have kids.

But she will never have the anger I now have at my parents for simply failing to love, support, and protect me, because for all our faults, my DH and I have always and will always do that. Not because it's trendy but because it's right.

[Anonymous]

No - I’m the opposite. I really appreciate my parents much more now that I’ve had kids. I know I didn’t appreciate them when I was a teenager. I wish I had treated them better.

[Anonymous]

Yes. Growing up - parents fighting, screaming at each other, breaking things, punching holes in walls, alcoholism, father vocal about dissatisfaction of sex life with mother in front of us, creepy father around my friends. Mother to this day denies all.

I wonder how they could have done this to their own family. They destroyed the family they created.

I don’t let my father spend time with my kids without either my husband or me present.