[turkishmonky]

Those types of generalization have always been troublesome for me - While I admit I was an idiot as a kid, the respect I had for my parents has decreased even further the older I get. I understand more and more how harmful their behaviors were for me as a child, and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids.

Some parents are just really really inadequate or abusive as parents.

[rayiner]

But there’s a reason for the generalization. Some parents are inadequate and abusive, but virtually every kid is an impulsive and short-sighted creature whose brain isn’t fully developed until their mid 20s.

[borroka]

It's a matter of probability like everything in life. A good parent can lead to good outcomes, say, 60% of the time. A bad parent, 20% of the time. The numbers are random, but that's the idea. In retrospect, the vast majority of parents I knew when I was a kid were "bad," not in the sense of abusive, but in the sense of having no idea. They didn't have any clue about their own lives, how many could they have about their children?

They didn't even want to inquire and then decide what was best for their children. Too many parents are given a pass because some sort of "sacred virtue" is assigned to parenting and any mistake that does not include beating their children is somehow forgiven or given a pass.

The "they did the best they could" is a cop-out: did they do the best they could given their laziness, poor impulse control, vision that doesn't go beyond the fence of their backyard?

For example, I was an excellent student, the best in the school, in terms of awards and recognition. Not Einstein, mind you, but someone they should have identified as very talented from a scholastic/intellectual standpoint. My parents never saw this in me, for some reason, because now, I would immediately identify as very talented someone who did as well as I did. My parents never hit me or told me I was stupid or anything like that. They simply acknowledged that I was a good student and that was it. If they had said, this woman is talented, we need to support her, find her mentors, send her to the best universities, I have little doubt that I would have been very successful.

I was successful anyway, after traveling a winding and long road, but my path to professional and financial success could have been (these are my a priori odds) much easier and faster.

Now, you might say, if they had acted differently, maybe you wouldn't be here, etc., which is a very defeatist way of thinking. Their process was wrong and for no other reason than their "intellectual laziness".

[grog454]

>the best in the school, in terms of awards and recognition. Not Einstein, mind you

I thought the conventional wisdom was that Einstein wasn't academically accomplished until his great works were published.

A lot of your story reminds me of my own but I've reached a different conclusion. Specifically I suspect I would have been accepted into certain magnet schools (pre college) with the sourcing and simple suggestion of taking practice tests. If I had a kid that I suspected would be capable of excelling in that kind of environment that is exactly what I would do to help improve the odds of said kid achieving that goal.

But I don't resent my parents for not bothering to help in this way. I'm honestly not sure why but I suspect it has to do with an unspoken and mutual lack of respect for "academics". The system is so easily gamed, and a gameable system is a flawed one.

[johntiger1]

i think you're making the mistake of judging them with hindsight. they made the best possible decision with the resources they had, their mental model and their risk tolerance and belief in the world

[borroka]

"they made the best possible decision with the resources they had, their mental model and their risk tolerance and belief in the world"

Can this not be said for any action, any thought, including, if we are talking about parenting, beating the kids up? "It is the way I was brought up, my father always told me, a few slaps and they'll learn!". "I was feeling so alone and I could not control myself when they were crying, I am so sorry I decided to use the stove gas to put them to sleep, that's what my grandmother used to do!".

My belief is that that kind of "therapist's speech", which as becoming more popular as therapy became the fashionable path for people wanting to make changes in their lives, of "you did your best", "those were the tools that you had available at the time", has caused many to avoid their responsibilities by paying therapists (people who got "second hand smoke" did not even had to pay) like times back they used priest to carry the same function and getting the same result: absolution and comfort.

[b112]

have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids

Some behaviour is just plain borked, but other behaviour is just more nuanced.

An example, some kids are extroverted, others intro. What works for one, may not be the same for another.

You may need to constantly work with an extrovert, so they are eventually, as an adult, be in control of their own exuberance. And with an introvert, work with them, trying to help them expand thier ability to interact.

An ability for both to live in a shared society.

But imagine a parent who was an extrovert, was constantly upset at, as a child, being told to calm down, or stop asking 1000 questions per second. Or even, just "give another a moment to talk".

So they, with an extrovert, do not do such things. And the extrovert does not learn control, and dicipline, and to give others some space sometimes, and becomes less capable of interacting with others as an adult.

Of course, this is a poor example, and poorly phrased, but I hope my point comes across.

We should focus more strongly on what is correct for the child, not how a parent may have misapplied childhood lessons to ourselves. For those lessons may be right for your child, even if not for oneself.

[cracrecry]

Usually when someone has abusive parents, they become abusive themselves. It is a good idea that they get professional help in order to break the cycle.

>and have been intentional about not falling into the same behaviors with my kids.

This is usually the problem. You are intentional on NOT falling into THE SAME behaviors, and probably will overreact on the opposite behaviors that is as abusive as the original.

Just because something is bad does not mean that the radically opposite is good.

It is not a good idea focusing on what not to do instead of on what to do.

E.g I have seen parents that were too constrained as kids removing all limits for their children. The kids getting into bad friendships and destroying their lives as a result of the neglect from their parents.

Or someone educated as a Catholic with sexual restrictions promote sexual promiscuity on their children, with very bad outcomes.

[thrashh]

Personally I find the solution is to meet and hang out with very diverse crowds.

I find that whenever you make a decision, you are really sampling from what you’ve already seen.

If haven’t seen a lot, your decision making is really constrained. If you’ve only seen bad decisions, you will make a lot of the same ones. You won’t even know that they’re bad.

The hardest part of life really is figuring out what you don’t know yet. And it’s really, really hard.

[turkishmonky]

My great grandfather used to beat my grandfather - going as far as to stab him through the leg with a pitchfork on occasion.

My grandfather, partly from trauma and partly from what I believe is hereditary mental illness, swung back the other way, peacing out instead of parenting, leaving my father to get into a lot of trouble as a kid, and witness some different traumatic things.

My father swung back towards being unable to control his anger, and with frequent mood swings between depression and rage. Although, aside from spanking he didn't beat his kids, just pets and walls.

I'm the first generation that has been working towards treating my hereditary mental issues - taking mental health meds, going to counseling. I'm hopeful that I can break the cycle, but enough of a realist to realize I am lacking on a lot of parenting things that I need to learn from outside sources instead.

[s1artibartfast]

The heuristic can be reworded as adult parents are more knowledgeable and capable than children.

Put the average child in the position of the average parent and you will see the difference.

Think of how abusive the average parent is, then imagine them trying to parent with 10-20 years less development.

[kelnos]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting that we should excuse parental abuse, because a child would be a worse parent than an adult?

[s1artibartfast]

not at all. Some people are objectively bad parents.

I'm just that in general, the heuristic is accurate that parents have better decision making than their children. The very real counter examples (eg abuse) don't negate the trend.

[pc86]

And somehow also strangely arguing that most parents are abusive?

[s1artibartfast]

Not the best phrasing on my part. Better phrasing would be "consider how likely the average parent is to be abusive"

That said, all parents make bad decisions to the detriment of their children. The severity and frequency is what constitutes abuse vs mistakes.

[jcims]

Fortunately your children will almost certainly find new ways to critique and disparage your decisions as a parent and their respect for you also diminish as they grow older and calcify their opinions of what makes a good parent.

[eloeffler]

You're missing the point here. Ideally the 3rd gen kids will grow up to realize their 2nd gen parents made reasonable decisions even though they disagreed as kids, just as the cliché says (and like so many testimonials out there).

e.g. If gen 1 only used witty condescending remarks to teach their children that they're dumb, then 2nd gen can realize that this severely damages their kids' self-esteem. If gen 2 recobers from that abuse they may choose the path of taking their kids serioisly even with their shortcomings. The 3rd gen might take some kind of offense in that but there is less of a reason to grow in resentment towards gen 2 while they raise gen 3.

[sosborn]

Take any family line. What generation are they at? Shouldn’t all bad parenting be weeded out by now?

[virgildotcodes]

People are not purely products of their parents behavior. You have not only genetic variation, but a lifetime of all the incredible complexity of life experience that happens outside the house and with all other humans. I could imagine these factors moving each person backwards and forwards along any scale of “progress” we chose to measure people by, generation by generation, at times overwhelming the positive or negative influence of their parents.

[imtringued]

Maybe generation 3? One of my grandmothers worked on a farm in a developing country.

Times change. Subsistence farming doesn't cut it anymore. The lessons learned from that generation are something we have to grow out of.

[Shared404]

This assumes that the kids themselves actually learn and grow at some point.

Some don't. It may be that the parents overcorrect and never teach their kids right/wrong, or it could just be the kid being a problem, or any number of other issues.

[netizen-936824]

Well think of how bad things used to be, the progress is very incremental. Our short term perspectives as humans isn't good for seeing these patterns.

[lazide]

Also, there is no ‘right’, rather a series of attempts that fit on an ever shifting curve. There is no ‘ideal’ parenting except by sheer luck.

[jcims]

Doesn’t this assume a static target of ideal parenting?

[nradov]

Why would you think that parenting skills would improve in successive generations? Historically that doesn't seem to be the case.

[Consultant32452]

And they learned a valuable lesson that it's okay/normal to terminate relationships with you.