Do you parent like your parents?

My parents were very traditional and, although they loved us, they were undemonstrative in their affection and rarely if ever “told” us they loved us.

I am traditional in my parenting also, but unlike my parents, I am very demonstrative in showing my love and affection to my small children, and I tell them I love them everyday.

In some ways yes, in other ways no. I have adopted elements of their parenting style but there are some areas where my parenting is very different. My parents were very strict and quite rigid about some things. I take more of a ‘don’t sweat the small stuff’ approach.

I do think people who come from dysfunctional families can be good parents. I think it would demand spending some time (and perhaps with a professional) understanding how your parent’s style affected you and how you could do better. Parenting isn’t an innate thing. We learn from examples I think so, if the examples have been really terrible, a person would need other sources of information and guidance.

I certainly hope I won’t, that is if I become a parent. I have been a paternal figure to my baby brother (he sometimes accidentally calls me dad) and can say I have never treated him in the way I was treated when I was his age.

I am not a parent, but I think I would parent similar to my mom.

I think people with unhappy childhoods can be good parents if they are not stuck in the past, if they do not dwell on feeling damaged. If they really spend some time learning about other ways to handle difficult situations, or how to be supportive, or trying to understand the needs of children. Children are great observers, and so even if you do everything perfectly as a parent, which is impossible, in terms of discipline, and patience, they still will observe an unhappy or negative parent and be more likely to follow that model. Some things show through no matter what.

Yes and no. While I’ve taught them the traditional manners and the work ethic that I learned from my parents, I talk more to my children about things that my parents wouldn’t dare: like sex and relationships. I’m gay as most of you know, and I’m completely out to my children. It’s a different perspective for them to grow up with. Thankfully, their friends are accepting, so they don’t have to hide it.

No, I wouldn’t beat my children.

I love my Mom, and I love my Grandma, but when it comes to my dads (step and biological), I have a lot of resentment towards the both of them.
Mainly, my biological father would rather play slowpitch softball than have anything to do with me. And my step-dad has a lot of unresolved issues he needs to work on.

I am sure under review there would be a lot of similarities, but there are some key differences for sure. My mom surely has noticed this as on more than one occasion she has said I have done a better job of raising my boys than they did of my siblings and I and that I am proud to say says a lot as they did a good job of raising 5 kids under rather challenging conditions.

Not. At. All. As most of you know, I come from the most dysfunctional family imaginable, and there was no way in hell I’d be repeating my mother’s mistakes. I make plenty of my own, though, I’m sure. Honestly, I think part of the strong desire I had to have children of my own was to give them a much better childhood than the one I had. In that regard, at least, I have succeeded. Obviously, I do believe that people with bad (even horrifying) childhoods can be good parents.

I was just thinking about this last night. I do parent like my parents, and I feel like a relatively equal blend of both my mother’s parenting style, and my father’s. I’m not as strict as my father, and I’m not as lax as my mom, but I take traits from both of them. I don’t hit, though. My parents did.

Nope. I don’t spank my kids or call them mean names when they upset me or do something wrong. When I ground them, they can’t talk their way out of it or do extra chores to get out of it. I don’t use them as replacements for adult friends, talk to them about my relationship with my husband (their father), or need them to be on my side or happy with me all of the time. I don’t buy them everything they ask for at birthdays or Christmas, I keep the house reasonably clean, do laundry regularly, and insist we all eat dinner together at the table every night. I don’t let them watch all the TV they want or watch shows that aren’t age-appropriate.

My parents weren’t terrible, but my dad was harsh and didn’t communicate well. He wanted to be in control of everything, to the point where when I was 17 if I didn’t eat all of my dinner, he’d ground me to my room. But then I could either offer to do some chores or just talk my way out of it. I actually think it’s kind of funny that my parents did a lot of the things people complain about now, like spoiled us and didn’t effectively discipline us. Yes, we were spanked from time to time, but all that did was make us try harder not to be caught. We had no problem with lying to stay out of trouble. And yet, supposedly parents “back then” did everything right. ;)

My mom has some emotional problems that have worsened over the years. She wasn’t so bad when I was a kid, but clearly didn’t know what boundaries were. She’d talk to me about things like her sex life with my dad, her plans to divorce him someday, and how her life would be better if my younger brother had never been born. She didn’t do much around the house, I often had no clean clothes to wear, she never took us to the dentist, and anything related to personal hygiene was completely optional. She was mortifying to be around in public. I know think she has borderline personality disorder. She’s actually gotten much worse, but didn’t really go off the deep end until I was in college.

Sometimes I wonder how my brother and I turned out to be pretty normal people. Anyway, I’ve made a lot of conscious decisions to NOT do things the way my parents did. My brother and I had to figure a lot of things out the hard way, much to the delight of meaner kids. For example, I clearly remember when I learned most people bathe more often than once a week and brush their teeth more often than once a day.

In some ways, yes. In other ways, hell no.

@MissAusten I’m supposed to brush my teeth more than once a day?

Yeah, apparently some people brush IN THE MORNING as well as at night because of this thing called morning breath. Who knew?!

[mod says] This is our Question of the Day!

A big reason my parenting style differs from my own parents is age. My parents were 19 when I was born and I was 38 when my daughter was born. I think older parents do things differently than younger kids when they have kids. I think I’m more patient and I care less what people around me think.

My own mom says that I’m a better mom than she was, but I think she should go easier on herself. If I had a baby at 19 I would have totally sucked at being a mom. She was a better mom than I could ever be at that age.