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They Fuck You Up, Your Mum & Dad

Bad Bungle said:
On Saturday I was in Princes Risborough and saw a young Dad cart his two moppets around the High Street in a wheelbarrow - one had a smile as bright as the sun and the other had her nose literally stuck in an ice-cream cone. I hope when they grow up they will remember their old Man with fondness - I don't think anyone sets out to be a bad parent.
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Sounds like that Dad is actually there - so important to be there as a parent.
 
Bad Bungle said:
I don't think anyone sets out to be a bad parent.
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I think - a few maniacs excepted - you are right. But the trouble is that you don't know what kind of parent you are going to be until the child is already here, and most people simply replicate the parenting that they themselves received.
 
Min Bannister said:
And as a child, you don't have a choice of what kind of parents you are going to get and if they fuck you up, it is very hard to ever get away from it.
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We have no contact with any of my brothers, and I don't believe they speak with each other either, such a happy family. :)
My Father passed away way over a year ago, and the will still has not been settled, greed and nonsense. We had to hire an attorney for representation.
As soon as school was finished, I ran out the door with my clothes and left that nightmare.
Not everyone knows how to be a parent.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
We have no contact with any of my brothers, and I don't believe they speak with each other either, such a happy family. :)
My Father passed away way over a year ago, and the will still has not been settled, greed and nonsense. We had to hire an attorney for representation.
As soon as school was finished, I ran out the door with my clothes and left that nightmare.
Not everyone knows how to be a parent.
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My father passed in February 2021, and we only settled his estate about a month ago. We all get along and, although there was no will, nobody quarrelled. It just took forever.
 
I think my parents did their best given their upbringing. My father had a lovely rural, close family and was a great and loving father. My mother had a mother who could be ... difficult, who'd had a tough life and was very unconventional. My mother craved conventionality and conformity as a result and, because I was neither, our relationship was strained. But my upbringing was very similar to my friends and schoolmates, all of us had parents who had been scarred in various ways by WW2. To us, our upbringing was normal, because it was all we knew.
 
Not just the children, their mother as well.

A Brazilian woman has spoken of her ordeal of being imprisoned - along with her two children - by her husband for 17 years, local media report.

The family was rescued from a house in the Guaratiba neighbourhood, in the west of Rio de Janeiro on Thursday, police said.
The husband has been arrested.

In comments to authorities quoted by Brazilian news site G1, the woman alleged her husband had said she would only leave the house once she was dead. According to G1, the man - named by authorities as Luiz Antonio Santos Silva - and his wife had been married for 23 years. After being rescued, the mother reportedly told authorities the three imprisoned family members would sometimes go without food for three days, and were often physically and psychologically abused, G1 reports.nThe house in which they were held captive was also squalid, with little light and a dirty interior, pictures released by the police show.

The two adult children were tied up, unkempt and starved when they were found, according to police. They are 19 and 22 years old, local media report.

Captain William Oliveira of the military police said in comments quoted by Brazilian newspaper O Dia that he initially thought the two were children because of their level of malnutrition.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-62356210
 
catseye said:
I think - a few maniacs excepted - you are right. But the trouble is that you don't know what kind of parent you are going to be until the child is already here, and most people simply replicate the parenting that they themselves received.
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That's a good point - in an ideal world we'd watch for those things our parents did, that we ourselves wish to avoid when raising our own children. The trick is to separate those things which were bad from those which made the good traits of the person you are, even if you didn't like them at the time.

To use a facile example, just to illustrate the point; you might hate your parents' insistence on you doing chores and earning any pocket money, but that resulting slight improvement in your work ethic might well be a very good thing in the long run.

I don't mean to suggest that really bad parenting doesn't have a negative and long lasting effect (the sort where the best thing is to get out as soon as; some of you folks have done well to escape situations I can barely imagine). But rather to suggest that in general that there's a 'baby and bathwater' thing to take account of.

There's a broad band of people between those who think their parents were great and the ones that were intolerably bad.

In this band, there are people who prefer to blame their parents for everything they don't like about their lives, especially if the zeitgeist supports such ideas.

In this group, I'd suggest that blaming parents is wasted time once you reach adulthood. At this time, even if it's hard, it might be best to take responsibility for yourself, as you're the only person who can change anything.
 
Coal said:
In this group, I'd suggest that blaming parents is wasted time once you reach adulthood. At this time, even if it's hard, it might be best to take responsibility for yourself, as you're the only person who can change anything.
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Absolutely. These also tend to be the people who blame everything on someone else - who can't take general responsibility for themselves. Ultimately though, I'd say the biggest part of being a 'grown up' is growing past the bad stuff from our backgrounds and consciously deciding not to repeat them.
 
catseye said:
I think my parents did their best given their upbringing. My father had a lovely rural, close family and was a great and loving father. My mother had a mother who could be ... difficult, who'd had a tough life and was very unconventional. My mother craved conventionality and conformity as a result and, because I was neither, our relationship was strained. But my upbringing was very similar to my friends and schoolmates, all of us had parents who had been scarred in various ways by WW2. To us, our upbringing was normal, because it was all we knew.
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I think those of us whose parents lived through WW2 have very little idea of the effect that it must have had on them.

My mum was conscripted into the ATS where she learned to drive large lorries in the blackout. She lived in London but was based in Cornwall and I would have known nothing about what she went through had she not made contact with a friend she made at the time. They were then both widowed and wrote down some of their experiences. They never spoke of them to me but to each other when I was around.

Mum was dad’s second wife and he died when I was seven so I never knew him well but he was in France in 1918 in time for “Operation Michael” the last German push to win the war before the Americans got in (He was on the allied side!) Mum said he never spoke of that and I’ve been trying to piece together his service then, he was wounded or gassed, and in WW2 when his first wife died.

They seemed to want to protect their children from what they’d seen and experienced which can’t have been easy when all us little buggers were running round playing “armies” and pretending to machine gun each other.

My maternal uncle died a few years ago and his family managed to prise out of him the fact that he was in a reserved occupation actually working on putting flamethrowers in tanks, which he hated but thought was necessary.

Talking to my cousins we all felt that although loving our parents had a “distance” and were definitely authority figures until we were adults. We don’t have kids but my cousins do and while they seem less distant as parents they still regard their children as children not as seems the case today as their friends.

I think we were all lucky in that their experiences didn’t leave them with serious mental health issues but I’m sure they would have been very different people and parents if they hadn’t had to go through it.

Those were two effing tough generations. :hoff:
 
Coal said:
In this group, I'd suggest that blaming parents is wasted time once you reach adulthood. At this time, even if it's hard, it might be best to take responsibility for yourself, as you're the only person who can change anything.
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This is what I love about the Crappy Childhood Fairy on Youtube. She talks a great deal about personal responsibility and how other people are not responsible for curing someone elses childhood problems, that can only come from the abused (former) child. I think this blends in in many ways with the Tidal Wave of Narcissists thread!
 
Min Bannister said:
This is what I love about the Crappy Childhood Fairy on Youtube. She talks a great deal about personal responsibility and how other people are not responsible for curing someone elses childhood problems, that can only come from the abused (former) child. I think this blends in in many ways with the Tidal Wave of Narcissists thread!
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It all seems to tie in together. Those of us who had parents who passed through one (or both) World Wars have a different experience of childhood than those whose parents were born to the following generations. I suppose parental experience is also combined with the prevailing theories on childrearing. Back in the day you were only influenced by how you were raised and how people around you grew up, nowadays there are books and TV and podcasts all telling you how to parent. And we all think the current generation are doing it wrong! (Not in the form of criticising our own children's parenting so much as looking at the younger generations and thinking 'All those theories and look at what they've turned out' when seeing roaming bands of youths abusing the police or old ladies or something)
 
Min Bannister said:
This is what I love about the Crappy Childhood Fairy on Youtube. She talks a great deal about personal responsibility and how other people are not responsible for curing someone elses childhood problems, that can only come from the abused (former) child. I think this blends in in many ways with the Tidal Wave of Narcissists thread!
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I shall look her up.

catseye said:
It all seems to tie in together. Those of us who had parents who passed through one (or both) World Wars have a different experience of childhood than those whose parents were born to the following generations. I suppose parental experience is also combined with the prevailing theories on childrearing. Back in the day you were only influenced by how you were raised and how people around you grew up, nowadays there are books and TV and podcasts all telling you how to parent. And we all think the current generation are doing it wrong! (Not in the form of criticising our own children's parenting so much as looking at the younger generations and thinking 'All those theories and look at what they've turned out' when seeing roaming bands of youths abusing the police or old ladies or something)
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Many UK children of the 50s/60s were living in an age of relative austerity (don't forget food rationing only fully ended in 1954 or so) and parents might well have been strict to ensure resources were not wasted, even by children. We don't think twice about dropping a plate or chucking out a slice of bread these days but when you can't afford another plate or even don't know where the next meal is coming from it's probably a bigger deal and reactions to unthinking waste and any incurred costs were often terse as a result.

I kind of think the more permissive late 1960's were a reaction of the children who were brought up in the 1945-1955 era, and like all generations some probably felt hard done by. A higher proportion of 'no-father' families might not have helped (societally speaking).
 
Coal said:
I shall look her up.
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I am not sure how to link to an entire channel or how to choose the best video to link to but this one explaining complex PTSD is probably a good one. If you are interested in this subject though you can end up losing a lot more than 12 minutes clicking through videos.:)

 
Min Bannister said:
This is what I love about the Crappy Childhood Fairy on Youtube. She talks a great deal about personal responsibility and how other people are not responsible for curing someone elses childhood problems, that can only come from the abused (former) child. I think this blends in in many ways with the Tidal Wave of Narcissists thread!
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I heartily endorse the Crappy Childhood Fairy. She presented a perspective that allowed me to view certain events of my past in a new way! Even if a parent fucks you up, you can take actions to mitigate that, even if you can't entirely cure yourself.

As was touched on by several posters, I think that many socializing factors affect children, not just parents, but the extended family, the neighborhood, the school, the ethnic culture, the broader national culture, the degree of security, etc.

Poor parenting in a particular way seems to produce narcissistic children. Not all, but many narcissists.

Edit: I do blame my mother for many of the things that are wrong with me, like being blind in one eye from her beatings, but acknowledge it was up to me to figure out what to do about it. In my 50s, medical technology advanced enough to remove my multiple trauma cataracts (this was not possible until about 15 years ago) and put in an artificial lens. For me, my resolve at 9 years old to survive my childhood remains my greatest accomplishment. This resolve, and the self-awareness and self-control it created in me, gave me a very good life. But still, I do not thank my mother :)
 
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Min Bannister said:
I am not sure how to link to an entire channel or how to choose the best video to link to but this one explaining complex PTSD is probably a good one. If you are interested in this subject though you can end up losing a lot more than 12 minutes clicking through videos.:)

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Interesting that she referenced the ACE study, I've mentioned that before on here (can't recall where), it's quite staggering data. I shall work through a few of her videos. :hoff:
 
Coal said:
Interesting that she referenced the ACE study, I've mentioned that before on here (can't recall where), it's quite staggering data. I shall work through a few of her videos. :hoff:
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Coal - I think it was in "Kid's Residential Moves."
 
As I've written before my Mother never bonded with me and although I was always there to help her when she was older I wasn't really devastated when she did die.
So I was surprised the other day when my girls were telling me I had to go to hospital as I might die in my sleep.
I had replied that that didn't really worry me whereupon they burst into tears and have been keeping close tabs on me since.
 
My mother also had problems bonding with me. I was a caesarian birth, taken away for 24 hours, and she'd previously had a stillborn baby boy, so I, being female. was not a sufficient replacement.

I only found out about my stillborn brother when I was in my 50s. You 'didn't talk about that then' so he was never mentioned. But when I found out, suddenly so much of my mother's behaviour towards me (and my subsequently born brother) made absolute sense. If only we'd been able to talk about it as a family - the trauma of a full term stillbirth, how it affected my parents, how her anxiety during pregnancy must have affected her, how my somewhat traumatic birth and not being able to see or hold me affected bonding... things may have made a lot more sense.
 
catseye said:
My mother also had problems bonding with me. I was a caesarian birth, taken away for 24 hours, and she'd previously had a stillborn baby boy, so I, being female. was not a sufficient replacement.

I only found out about my stillborn brother when I was in my 50s. You 'didn't talk about that then' so he was never mentioned. But when I found out, suddenly so much of my mother's behaviour towards me (and my subsequently born brother) made absolute sense. If only we'd been able to talk about it as a family - the trauma of a full term stillbirth, how it affected my parents, how her anxiety during pregnancy must have affected her, how my somewhat traumatic birth and not being able to see or hold me affected bonding... things may have made a lot more sense.
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Something similar with my first wife and son. She had a long labour and was given an epidural? and also the nurses were having some sort of strike / union meeting when my son finally arrived, so the midwife had to use me as assistant/catcher. Still remember very clearly holding him all covered in blood. Maybe something to do with why I've forgiven him so much since.

Poor Cath was pretty much unconscious from the various drugs administered when he was delivered,, and as with your mother didn't see our boy for 24 hours. Added to the fact that she had been taken from her (unmarried Irish Catholic) mother at birth, I suppose the lack of bonding was no surprise. It led directly to our our breakup - she was prone to getting drunk and leaving our baby in the street.

She had the same lack of connection to her next child. I wasn't around by then although it's possible I was the father - a mistaken attempt at reconciliation. AFAIK the next kid has been brought up by the bloke she was with then - I have pause for thought because she put our surname on the birth certificate and didn't name the father, but she was still legally Mrs. Cochise at the time - the divorce was still going through. I only know about it because the chap phoned me after she (Cath) had left, trying to trace her.

My, what a tangled web we weave. I wish my next marriage had been uncomplicated but no. Much happier, but certainly not uncomplicated. It's the way I pick 'em. Or, more accurately, the way they pick me - I'm not exactly a thrusting suitor - normally it's me that requires the metaphorical club over the head before I realise the lass is interested in me
 
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French 30-somethings curse their parents for naming them Kevin - a name that, in France, has come to symbolise a working class airhead with appalling fashion sense.
Kevin Fafournoux has now launched a "Sauvons Les Kevin" campaign to fight back against being the butt of a national joke.

 
I can't make out his use of the name Kevin anywhere in that.
 
Tunn11 said:
I think those of us whose parents lived through WW2 have very little idea of the effect that it must have had on them.

My mum was conscripted into the ATS where she learned to drive large lorries in the blackout. She lived in London but was based in Cornwall and I would have known nothing about what she went through had she not made contact with a friend she made at the time. They were then both widowed and wrote down some of their experiences. They never spoke of them to me but to each other when I was around.

Mum was dad’s second wife and he died when I was seven so I never knew him well but he was in France in 1918 in time for “Operation Michael” the last German push to win the war before the Americans got in (He was on the allied side!) Mum said he never spoke of that and I’ve been trying to piece together his service then, he was wounded or gassed, and in WW2 when his first wife died.

They seemed to want to protect their children from what they’d seen and experienced which can’t have been easy when all us little buggers were running round playing “armies” and pretending to machine gun each other.

My maternal uncle died a few years ago and his family managed to prise out of him the fact that he was in a reserved occupation actually working on putting flamethrowers in tanks, which he hated but thought was necessary.

Talking to my cousins we all felt that although loving our parents had a “distance” and were definitely authority figures until we were adults. We don’t have kids but my cousins do and while they seem less distant as parents they still regard their children as children not as seems the case today as their friends.

I think we were all lucky in that their experiences didn’t leave them with serious mental health issues but I’m sure they would have been very different people and parents if they hadn’t had to go through it.

Those were two effing tough generations. :hoff:
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Absolutely - my Mum lost her dad in WWII, he died young of a massive heart attack, from staying up all night as a Morse code operator. He was a spy for England.
Because of all the bombings in Beaconsfield (or thereabouts where they were living), my Mum and her sister were sent way out into the country to live with relatives, a miserable time of rationings, and what everyone was going through.
My Grandmother never remarried and had two little girls to raise alone.
And I've written about my Dad and his family, stuck in Siberia for years where he lost his mother and his father never got home to Poland and lived in Russia for the rest of his days. But my Dad escaped and joined battle.
No one knows what they went through, but yes they were tough, they had to be!
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
It's just a reaction to "Kevin" having acquired very negative connotations in France, rather like how Americans have turned nasty against the name "Karen".
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It's like he's barely pronouncing it aloud, because he dislikes it so much. Hoping that people might not notice that 'K' name.
 
Ronnie Jersey said:
Absolutely - my Mum lost her dad in WWII, he died young of a massive heart attack, from staying up all night as a Morse code operator. He was a spy for England.
Because of all the bombings in Beaconsfield (or thereabouts where they were living), my Mum and her sister were sent way out into the country to live with relatives, a miserable time of rationings, and what everyone was going through.
My Grandmother never remarried and had two little girls to raise alone.
And I've written about my Dad and his family, stuck in Siberia for years where he lost his mother and his father never got home to Poland and lived in Russia for the rest of his days. But my Dad escaped and joined battle.
No one knows what they went through, but yes they were tough, they had to be!
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I also wonder what effect the evacuation of children had on the children. While it was intended to safeguard them they were actually taken away from their families at a time of peril and sometimes billeted on people who didn’t treat them that well.

How did that affect them when they became parents?
 
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