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Are you afraid of becoming your parents?

watercolorwish

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i feel like this thread has been made already but i can't find it anywhere hmph

this has been on my mind for a long time and i'm sure other's too maybe. i'm terrified of becoming both my mom and dad since they were low life figures to look up to. thankfully i don't know them enough to become like them so i'm glad for that if it works like that

i'm sure its different for everyone though! i'm curious if other people think about this with their parents
 
to become like my mother seems like a torturous life.My parents are divorced. My mother is emotional and has always worn her heart on her sleeve. Mix that with a failing marriage and clinical depression. it's a cocktail of misery. My mother says we are similar which terrifies me honestly. The silver lining is she is also empathetic and therefore is sensitive to others' emotions. My dad handled things differently in the marriage. Quiet and stoic. My dad is a hard worker and rolls with the punches, even as he ages into his mid sixties now. I respect the hell out of my dad. I handle problems like my dad. Which might be a bad thing since, as I said, my parents are divorced. I don't wanna divorce if I ever get married (who would?) But I know after reading books and doing specific reports for school, the odds are stacked against me as being a child of divorced parents.

So, yes, some aspects scare me.
 
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Career-wise my parents are very hardworking but successful workers, so I can only hope I have as much success with my career as they do.

But they don't do much else when they get home; they mostly just watch TV, and they are both overweight.. And my dad is very, very racist and super religious.

So in some ways yeah, in some ways nah.
 
I'd like to continue to be carefree and fun as my dad but Id eant to avoid being my mom in basically every way. She's emotionally abusive and I want to avoid being like her.
 
only fear developing their bad traits
which everyone has so... no I don't fear becoming like them
 
I'm afraid of following in the bad health on my mother's side. That's about it.
 
Yes.. although I already see a lot of one of my genetic material donors in me. It's kind of sad when you're lowkey terrified about becoming like 'em, only to realize one day that oops, you actually did inherit quite a few of their most horrendous traits.

Granted, I know I'm not actually like them - at least not in the sense that I'm a vile excuse for a human being - but.. yeah. I really drew the short end of the genetic stick in a whole lot of areas.
 
Well there were a lot of bad qualities in both my parents that I am fearful of having.. But I'm not going to talk about that here. Instead, I'll say in which ways I wish to be more like them, because I'd rather keep my thoughts about them positive.

My mom was smart. Incredibly so. She was an amazing writer, singer, passionate, sweet at times. It was really such a tragedy she got MS and a stroke which took all of that away from her. I wish I could be as talented and intelligent as she was (unfortunately, I am not very gifted lol)

My dad's love for my mom is such a beautiful thing. Did you know that more men abandon their wives after a difficult illness than women would? It's a statistic I read about a few years ago.. And it made me love my dad because he sticks by my mom's side. For ten years, she's been bed-ridden, unable to speak or move, fend for herself.. and he has visited her every single day. The kind of love he has for her is admirable and so rare. I hope that if that were to ever happen to my partner, that I would have the strength to visit everyday and love him through everything, even in moments of loneliness.
 
I'm afraid of becoming too much like either of them - I think that they are such opposites, but both have traits that can come across as frankly callous and unhelpful, in different ways. My father was very strict and would never let you live anything down or feel like anything was more than just good enough, at best. Neither of them were very receptive to the real struggles I had growing up with mental health issues, because neither of them thought a child or teen could have 'real problems' and neither really knew how to approach that sort of thing, so I never felt I could go to them, and we still aren't really close now I'm an adult as a result. I am terrified of being that kind of parent.

I like to focus on the fact that I think I still got some of my best traits from each of them, though - while I wouldn't want to be too similar to them in how they approached parenting if I one day have kids, their hearts were in the right place, and I'm proud of the most central qualities I got from them.

They both stand by not worrying too much (essentially, both have an attitude of 'do what you can about something and beyond that, there's no point continually worrying about it', which I think is ultimately the healthiest approach to have).
They both work hard and really taught us that if you want something, you need to put the work in, because you don't get much for free in life.
My mother can be a very sentimental, emotional person, and it's from her that I get my immense compassion for animals especially. I'm not afraid to express or feel emotions and consider it a sign of strength and sometimes even goodness rather than one of weakness, which is saying something since admittedly my father made emotions the butt of jokes and essentially something to be shut off in our family, lest you be told you were 'overreacting' or being stupid.
My father can come across as blunt or emotionless, but he is simply a very matter of fact person, and can be a bit black and white sometimes. I don't want to be like that as a parent, and I don't think things are nearly as simple as he can sometimes see them. What I do take from him, though, is a strong conviction with what I believe is right and a willingness to express and develop those views - from a young age he debated with me and challenged my views on everything from war to religion and encouraged me to do the same with his, treating me as an equal in that area, not as a child - he could never stomach anybody talking down to me intellectually, even while I was literally a toddler. Because of that I've never struggled with or been afraid of articulating what I believe in and why I believe it, and debating that with other people in a way that makes us understand and develop our perspectives more. I am absolutely not afraid to disagree with someone if I feel they are being unfair or not considering all the facts or how others might feel about something, and I will not be intimidated out of it. That's not to say I'm not also good at picking my battles or times and places - just that I will not back down if I feel there's more to be accounted for just because someone else thinks they're right.

Like a lot of people my experiences with my parents are a mixed bag, but my father in particular has mellowed considerably and expressed regret at how strict he was now we are adults and he and my mother have been separated for a good while. I think the most important thing is to be aware of what you don't want to take from them - it's not always conscious or easy to change by any stretch, but being self-aware and willing to seek help to make changes is the first and most important step imo. I'm thankful that I was able to do this, and I feel like with those things, you can cultivate what you like from your childhood/parentage, if anything, and not have to give into the rest.
 
A little bit! I love both of my parents and feel like they're generally good, well-meaning people but there are certainly some traits and habits of theirs that I hope I haven't picked up. My mother is extremely hard-working and will go out of her way to help the people she loves however she can, but she also has a tendency to be stubborn and oftentimes refuses to take on board ideas or suggestions from other people. On the other hand, my father's a bit of a people pleaser which is something I admire, but the downside to that is that he often makes promises to please people that he never actually follows through on. He's absolutely more of a sayer than a doer, that's for sure. The two of them tend to drink a lot too, not to the point where it interferes with their jobs or any other obligations, but it's definitely an expensive habit that I really hope I don't fall into myself. Dad still smokes a pack of cigarettes a day too, although Mam managed to stop smoking a few years ago, and that's costing the family a lot of money as well.

I don't know, all in all I could do a lot worse than to end up like either of my parents, but I'm going to try my best to avoid falling into some of their less desirable behaviours.
 
Nah, because I'm determined to never become my parents. Being told all the time I look just like my mum is bad enough.
 
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I'm afraid of becoming my father. He's abusive, a drug addict, mentally ill, etc ...
 
I'm old enough now to know I'll never be fully like either of my parents. Of course when I was younger I feared being too much like either of them.

If you realize you don't want to be like your parents you can work to make that a reality. Since I knew I didn't want to be like my parents, I would take the things I liked about them and incorporated those aspects into my life, and avoided the traits they had that I didn't like. I also mixed in good traits I found in other people in my life as well, so while I'm still similar to my parents in some ways, I'm still very different from either of them.
 
I'm not worried at all about becoming like either of my parents anymore. As a child, even into my late teens, that was a major concern of mine. But I had enough good quality therapy to work through the worst of my trauma and issues.

If I was to become a parent I'd still have a lot of work to do to avoid repeating the destructive parental patterns I grew up with. But that's not a consideration for me. I adore working with children but have no interest in procreating myself, nor am I physically able to go through pregnancy. I'm happy to be a loving auntie (literally and surrogate).

Being a responsible, loving, stable parent when you've grown up with destructive/abusive/dysfunctional parents yourself is one of the most challenging tasks a person can undertake. I admire the heck out of people who take that challenge on. I have no desire to do so myself, but I do what I can to support those parents who do.
 
My dad's a **** so yeah I'm afraid of that

He's given me a lot of **** stuff
Mostly his anger tbh... I just get annoyed easily but I think he has Actual Issues

He can be nice sometimes, but even if he's being generous he'll take it back afterwards
Like he offered to give me an allowance (I didn't even mention it) and then refused to give it me
Like, it was your idea :/

He just overacts to everything and no one wants to put up with his ****
I guess that's why my mum left him a decade ago lmaoo
Wish I could leave too hsnsnsn kms


My mum sometimes says stuff to me along the lines of "you're like your dad" or "you remind me of your dad when you do that" (obviously in a negative way) and then she'll slag him off for half an hour

I'm more like him than my mum unfortunately
but I really don't want to be like him at all
I hope I'll be ok lmfao
 
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My mom is manic bipolar and suffers with episodes of schizophrenia. Basically every time I feel confident or happy, I have to second guess myself and make sure I'm not getting into any sort of manic state.

So yes, yes I definitely do, hahaha.
 
Of course I do, but more so my dad. My dad was a terrible father, but his habits he took from his father (my grandpa) and I don't want that to spread to me. I would then fear that if I was a parent like my grandpa and dad both were, then my children would be like that, and it would just keep going on from generation to generation.
 
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