One of the things that makes me most sad every time I read an awful screed by a parent who has invested an inordinate amount of time into hating their child is that they could have just loved their child instead.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
It’s confusing and heartbreaking. My kids are under 8, but I sincerely cannot imagine a world where I could possibly hate them. If something is encouraging me to turn against my BABIES, I know it’s evil and wrong. I held them inside me. I have to love them. I WANT to love them.
I think in a lot of these parent-POV narratives, the problem is a failure to understand their kid as an individual human being, not like … a branch plant of the parental firm. And all the horrible consequences flow from that misconception, and everyone suffers, especially the kid. SO UNNECESSARY.
Do people really ....think they will have a particular kind of child? I mean, I suppose I would have been surprised if I got handed a newborn mongoose at the hospital, but beyond human, and preferably alive, what expectations can you even have? (Okay, I did anticipate my daughter would be a clutz.)
People often go into parenting with a picture in their head of the child they will have. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's bad when you love the picture in your head more than the child you're raising.
One funny thing I'll note is that I can actually summon up the picture I had in my head from, idk, 25 or so years ago (it was a very vivid picture) and at no point did my kid look like this picture aside from the dark hair. But also, my kid is great and having a real kid was better than a picture.
Also, a big reason I was picturing a child is that I was trying to picture myself as a mother. (Becoming a parent is genuinely un-mooring and disconcerting.)
I had dreamed of having kids since I was a kid myself, I had all kinds of ideas of what those kids would be like, and of all of those ideas maybe 10% proved even slightly accurate. And my kid? Is entirely herself and absolutely terrific.
My mom decided I wasn't the child she wanted by the time I was six months old or so. Which is messed up, but I got off so easy compared to my sister, who was the child she wanted, but not in ways that had anything to do with who she actually was.
It also meant that she was the focus of a lot of bullshit and manipulation, and the one whose affection both parents fought over during the prolonged divorce.
Oof. I'm sorry. Neither you nor your sister deserved that. I can't understand people going through the not-insignificant trouble of making or acquiring a small human and then dehumanizing them.
The desire to have children is, IMO, extremely selfish and mostly driven by expectations of what the child will provide to the parent (love, gratitude, pride, etc), not the reverse.
And I say this as a parent and a person who wanted to have children.
In middle school, parents would gather in the park for pickup. One said to me, "I can't believe your kid still hugs you. Mine doesn't," then proceeded to berate their child about everything from their untucked shirt to homework and activities. My kid watching this: "Hmm, shocking."
Oh yeah. The adults I grew up with expected their kids to: be their kind of Christian, do well in school, go to religious college, follow an extremely narrow moral code, vote Republican, and above all be cishet.
But if the change that has you off balance is a Political THING, being off balance for a moment and figuring out where you are now with your child is not something that's permitted.
You MUST choose one political side or another. Any nuance or ambivalence or complicated feelings is forbidden.
Like accepting their gender or sexuality? That is something I have never had any expectations about. If they develop any really "bad" takes (racism, (lgbtq+)-phobia, totalitarianism is great) that is something to reflect on and reteach. If they call me out for being closed minded, I can learn.
I think an unfortunately high number of people think kids are like clay they can mold, or else a tiny copy of them they can relive vicariously through to "get it right"
I expected my daughter to be a lot like me, and I hoped she would be a pretty boring school-focused kid who didn’t require a lot of grounding or curfews or whatever. I think it’s hard not to develop some expectations. The trick is letting go of them with grace when they prove irrelevant.
Yes. See Emily Perl Kingsley’s ‘Welcome to Holland.” It’s unfortunately very common to meet parents of disabled children who feel cheated out of the able child they ‘ought to have had.’
I mean.. I do love my kids. And they voluntarily tell me they love me, which is, you know, ideal. Little kids want to be loved and love others. All you have to do to preserve that relationship is to treat them with autonomy and respect. Like, it's not hard.
Parents and children should love each other! But being a parent is more complicated than that. The person who said it clearly thought it was just automatic and they wanted something to cuddle.
Yes, sorry, I was agreeing with you! I probably phrased that wrongly. It's just super weird for people to assume that they can just pop a kid out and expect that kid to just permanently be their emotional support zygote.
They absolutely do. They have gendered expectations, they have expectations about intelligence and interests and careers. Also, the number of adults who do not see their children as entire individual people is distressingly high.
On a more lighthearted note, I'm absolutely positive neither Mom--whom grandma banned from the garden for not watching where her feet went--nor Dad--whose athletic career was "team manager--were under any delusions about their kids' probable grace & agility!
My brother surprised them. I did NOT! 😅
One of the many delights of raising a child are the ways they'll surprise you, and in particular when a lifelong klutz has a child who is athletic and graceful (or similar "this is amazing and I have no idea where it came from" type traits.)
I am someone who complains a lot to cope with stress, and my mother was the same way. My Grammie was the opposite: she'd try to put a cheerful spin on things, to the point that a trip to an amusement park (it rained all day) turned into a long-running family joke ("I THINK THE RAIN IS STOPPING").
My older kid got the Grammie trait, apparently, the "oh, it's raining? that's OK, I like being wet!" approach to life. Still weird to me! Also delightful. Probably significantly improved the overall dynamic because you kinda can't complain when the five-year-old is being resolutely cheerful.
I think it's of a piece with their wanting to control other adults too. They're afraid of people that are different from them, because those differences challenge their values and worldview. When their own children take a different path it must feel like a deep betrayal, and they react accordingly.
My son, thru thick and thin, taught me unconditional love. I grew as a mom and as a person, too. Learning to love unconditionally allowed me to bloom and, I hope, provided my son a safe and accepting home.
The world is full of parents who want their children to grow up to be just like them. They often end up puzzled that their children don't want to be around them.
It has to be so much harder to hate your child than to love them. You are chemically dispositioned to love them; the hate to overcome that must be immense. It can’t be good for your health.
Payers do their best not to cover /necessary/ medical care, they certainly don't as a rule give a pass to people knowingly misusing financial and provider resources.
She'd be squealing to the heavens if her insurance dropped her for this. I suspect that, assuming this whole story wasn't a fabrication, her insurer is unaware.
Oh, I’m sure KP’s fraud and loss prevention (and maybe UC Davis HR) is looking into this now for a denial of coverage at a minimum. One thing about being an integrated payer-provider shop, you’ve got access to everything, and she was kind enough to provide locations and dates of service.
It breaks my goddamn heart. And then always, ALWAYS, when the kid grows up and breaks contact the parent is surprised and indignant and has no idea why and then for good measure decides that the kid is ungrateful
I'm glad I haven't seen it. I grew up with the kind that hid their hate behind a curtain proclaiming love. I think they simply don't comprehend what it means to love in the first place. They don't know how. They don't want to know how.
The woman who operates it is a horrible bigot and hardcore Trumper.
She talks regularly about how she hasn’t seen or talked to her daughter in years because the daughter is (apparently) a liberal. Including missing the birth of her grandson.
Frankly I bet cutting off contact with my mother is the greatest gift I ever gave her. I couldn't be what she wanted, but I can be her permanent GIVE ME ATTENTION AND SYMPATHY banner in absentia.
Yeah, that would be true for my mother as well, except that she's also such an antisocial introvert that she doesn't have anyone left in her life to get sympathy from.
It was the greatest gift I ever gave myself, though.
Oh my mom has burned so many bridges she's apparently willing to sink her fangs into my father again after a decade divorced, but she still uses it. People from her old church used to find me on Facebook to tell me off, lol
A sibling of a friend of mine is actively dying of cancer and 3 of their 5 children have not spoken to them in years, and aren't changing that stance now.
I know the background story, and I 100% think the kids are correct.
Your number one job as a parent is to love your kid/s. The kid you HAVE, not the kid you expected or the kid you wish you had or the kid you made up in your head.
I’ve been a parent for 20+ years, and lots of parts of parenting have been hard … BUT NOT THAT PART.
Or just realized that whether they love that child or not, they don't like them, that's allowed, and just proceed on that basis being the best parent you can. My mother loved and disliked me, didn't know it can just happen, and kept trying to fix me because it had to be because I was bad.
No. I grew up being told over & over again "I love you but I don't like you," and their idea of love was just a tool to use for manipulation, & a way to try and kill *you* so that they could build the child they WANTED from your broken pieces.
It's either not love, or love is a meaningless word.
Comments
Loving the child you have instead of being mad they aren't the child you thought they would have: not actually hard.
(Clearly I should get offline for the evening)
I had dreamed of having kids since I was a kid myself, I had all kinds of ideas of what those kids would be like, and of all of those ideas maybe 10% proved even slightly accurate. And my kid? Is entirely herself and absolutely terrific.
And I say this as a parent and a person who wanted to have children.
he did very well in school, was not disruptive, so more or less poster child
... as expected, so did not get any praise or anything, like, ever
/do you know how much therapy you need with parents like that?
bc you got everything you needed, right?
except for the actual kindness and love part
My friend had few normal clothes as a little kid
Some of those changes you will get decades of cultural narratives preparing you for.
Some of those changes come straight out of left field. Being a bit off-balance is unsurprising.
You MUST choose one political side or another. Any nuance or ambivalence or complicated feelings is forbidden.
Anything else (e.g. mourning the loss of a connection you thought you shared, or acceptance despite having misgivings) is seen as a Sign of the Enemy.
I gave them a face full of "No, that's why you adopt a dog."
My brother surprised them. I did NOT! 😅
The parent? No.
(<3)
🤰"oh, i don't care i just want them"
years later🤬: "how dare you be a different gender than the one i thought you were"
I'll never understand that logic. you wanted a kid, you got one? be happy about that, and love them. let them be their authentic self.
Are there research papers on that topic?
myself wondering where a person finds the energy to hate their own child that much and also hold down a job
But even then, I will always love them and tell them that every single day. They are my family and they will always have a safe space at home.
The woman who operates it is a horrible bigot and hardcore Trumper.
She talks regularly about how she hasn’t seen or talked to her daughter in years because the daughter is (apparently) a liberal. Including missing the birth of her grandson.
It was the greatest gift I ever gave myself, though.
I know the background story, and I 100% think the kids are correct.
Your number one job as a parent is to love your kid/s. The kid you HAVE, not the kid you expected or the kid you wish you had or the kid you made up in your head.
I’ve been a parent for 20+ years, and lots of parts of parenting have been hard … BUT NOT THAT PART.
It's either not love, or love is a meaningless word.
I also don't deny mine.