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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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