Blaming your parents...or parents afraid they'll be blamed for their kids..

Okay this is my favorite subject on various levels. Now I am the father of an 11 yr old and a 2 yr old...both boys and amazingly enough both from the same woman who is my wife (I know amzing in this day and age.). Now I have been married 11 yrs. Pretty good. My older sister even longer...my younger brother a year or so less...my younger sister she's on her second marriage...my oldest married once a widow now. Now my Mom has been married umpteen zillion times (not actually, but her and Elizabeth Taylor are close in how many times). Now our mother was a working mom for years (she had six of us to raise and single during a lot of it or married to unreliable guys) and actually a work-a-holic. Dad worked but was drunk and was divorced when the youngest was 2....he never kept a job for very long...and was a dead beat dad after the divorce.
Their is actually zero confirmed alcoholics among us children...most of us have been married only once..the only one who wasn't took a long time to leave complete moron and drunk. There are rumours of drug use and etc. about some of us, but nothing that I can confirm. Yes some of us made some mistakes, but did not follow in our parents' footsteps. Now..I myself am a workaholic...I actually enjoy working and realise as long as I am at work I am making money and that is one less person in my own family group spending it. So basically we all came from an unstable background yet have achieved family stability. Of us all I'd say My older sister and I are the two most responsible, followed by the others. Now The older sister is kind of like the surragate mother to the rest of us...she does help when she can..even the various nieces and nephews, though I'd argue some of the help should be cut off because a lot of it seems to help, but actually doesn't...because it is wasted. Yes she has helped me also...but even she would have to say in comparison to others not even half or even a fourth as much. Now I can argue I have helped them ($80k of comic books I gave to her other relatives ripped off is a big help and the 80k was a conservative estimate of my collection back then..just think every Silver Surfer ever made or appearence by him including his original run in mint or near condition..the x-men from the new team til current, plus some of the originals, all of x-factor, and new mutants up to x-force, a lot of spider-men including the first cameo's and appearence of venom, same for carnage, the first year of spawn, wildcats, etc...a crapload. At the time in the early 90's the cameo and first appearence of Venom in Amazing Spider Man was at +$300 dollars and in my collection was 1 NM of each, which I had read...and at least three mints of each. Seems some other relatives said I had given them to them when I had not after I had left. Now also in that collection was a set of 6 xmen cards done by Jim Lee and verified and signed by him of his unofficial last run on doing the cards..these were to be released, but since he had left x-men, another artist's work was used for the cards that year and Jim Lee's were destroyed. Those were virtually priceless.)
Now the next generation isn't exactly perfect...and neither are we. But are our parents to blame for our failings and are we to blame for those of our children. In a word NO. Now even though our life was not perfect (mom went loonie after stepdad number whatever died and things went to pot.) we still were taught right from wrong and responsibility, though enforcement of it on some was not like it was on others. Another history lesson here..their were 6 of us 3 boys, 3 girls. Oldest boy different dad then the rest of us...it goes like B G G B G B in birth order..so number 3 and 4 are the most responsible...goes against what we've been taught about responsibilty. The oldest Boy died, but the rest of us are still alive. (That sounded cold but not given out too much information..one of my published poems was about him...titled "When Heroes Die"..and he was a hero to me for awhile..a natural athlete while I was a bookworm.) Now do I blame my parents for the problems facing me today. No, I do not and no psychologists could get me too. Why? Because unless you are totally pyschotic as in not living in this reality, not sociopathic..sociopaths also know right from wrong..they just don't care. So at some point in all our lives we know right from wrong and it is our choice to do what we do... no one elses. We cannot blame our friends, we can't blame mom and dad, we can't blame God, we can only blame ourselves.
But, you say, the children of alcoholics become alcoholics, the children of child abusers become abusers, spousal abuse begats spousal abuse, etc. Nope, wrong. And I'm gonna explain this simply. If you see something wrong and know how wrong it is...why would you copy it? Now I do drink...and I've had to throwaway alcohol because it got to old for us to drink in my home. We have had wine coolers sit in our fridge for 3 years and etc. Some alcoholic I've turned out to be..since I share my dad's name they assume I'm gonna be like him..actually a big part of the stress between family members and me. My wife and I have fought before...verbally. Now I can and have walked away from it..but she cannot for some reason...and does keep on. Do I abuse her? Nope...has it gotten physical before. I will admit yes it has. No other member of my family can say it has not in their relationships either..if they do they are liars. Now...does she act like her parents...yes she does, does she blame them..yes she does. Do I? Nope I know where she got the behavior from and realise it's her choice to act that way, though she doesn't, but then she reaches for excuses first. Now I have had a talk with the youngest about our parents and at the time he blamed them. I didn't and still don't.
Yes things could have been easier for us if our parents had done things more perfectly, hell if dad had of actually paid the child support mom would not have had tow ork so much and so on. But are they the fault of everything bad that happens to us? Nope. Now because of how we were raised some of us were treated more golden then others, but they still knew right from wrong. Except for one member of the family, everyone else does not seem to take responsibility for their actions and this includes actively lying about things to misplace the blame. My situation is partially my own creation. Actually anytime I want to I can fix my situation, but i do not believe in divorce and keep hoping one day I will be met at least halfway and things will improve. In that I am very stubborn. But neither mom nor dad put myself here I did.
Now will I blame myself if my children turn out badly? Nope. Why? I discovered long ago parenting is basically doing your best then crossing your fingers and hoping it worked. It's like the old ethicalquestion about three politicians and you had to cast the deciding vote among the three based on the information given.
Politician A)associates with crooked politicians, consults astrolgists, cheats on his wife, chain smokes, and drinks 8-10 martinis a day
Politician B) was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, rumoured to have used opium in college, and drinks a quart of whiskey every evening
Politician C) decorated war veteran, partial vegetarian, doesn't smoke, never cheated on his wife, and only drinks an occasional beer
Now who would you choose to be elected as the world leader based on that information?
Probably C....Politician A was Franklin D. Roosevelt..B was Winston Churchill....C Adolf Hitler
After a certain point your kids start making decisions for themselves...take for instance the big white box you keep pushing them away from telling them "No, HOT!!!"..yet they keep coming back to it until the day the stove finally burns them. You did not decide for them to take the action to get burned, but did try to teach them not too, yet one time when something else took you away for a moment they made it to the big white box and got burnt. Now people who say if a parent had been doing their job the child would not have been burnt are just stupid. Anyone who is honest and has had children and not being able to afford 24/7 nanny service or servents who just get to watch the child will tell you even one child can get away from you at times. It happens and not due to negligence. You can say well put a gate up...honey let me tell you..most kitchens have huge entrances and they don't make a stable enough gate that big...put them into a playpen or one of those fences. If they can make it to a stove and get burnt they will get by both those things. We are talking about children here even worse..small children with untarnished minds who's entire mental ability is centered around learning everything they can and pushing what they learn as far as they can. They are not stupid or even simple minded...they just have not through experience learnt the difference yet between a good or bad idea. They learn from watching and doing...they do not yet realise there are things they are not yet able to do or should not do...that takes teaching and some of it is self teaching first...including learning the hard way sometimes those big people should be listened too.
Small children are faster then you think, more creative, and they can be in one place one moment and another the next. Now try watching a small child,cooking, doing laundry, setting a table, etc. all at once. Sorry, but in the real world you do not get to do one job at a time...and you do not always have the other parent there to help.
NO this child starts learning boundaries and does pick up right from wrong. Sorry the nonsense about video games, tv, and etc. making people more violent are more likely to commit crimes is just stupid. It's the person who chooses to do whatever and then tries to blame it on other stuff. Think Ted Bundy using the pornography cop out... amazingly enough no one ever discovered any pornography in the places he lived nor did he take any souvenirs, including pictures. Now your child gets to be a teenager starts drinking and doing drugs..some people would say they're just testing boundaries, learnt it at home, or etc...BS they do it because they want to. No one can be forced to do anything they do not want to without physical violence or torture, or another form of extreme coercion. Most of my friends in school smoked pot...and respected the fact I did not. They didn't force me to or etc. Same with alcohol or etc. fact is after a certain point all children reach eventually they make their own choices..it does not reflect on the parents and should not. If anything it has been shown time and again parents who "protect" their children generally end up with worse adults. Think how bad most preacher;'s children are and etc. Worse are the children of hippocrates who act one way in public and another behind closed doors. But in the end it is the children who eventually decide things and nothing the parents may have done right or wrong. You have children from "perfect" parents who end up bad and then children from the worst parts of society and home lifes that end up golden. Becuase of decisions those children made with their lives.
The worst thing parents can do is try and hide what their children are from a false sense of how it reflects on them..all it does it makes things worse. Support them because they take drugs and don't work though of age...you enable. Cover their butts because of your position in society..wrong. I know a family that is horribad...but the father of this family's mother constantly bails them out when what they seriously need is for them to pay the full price for the decisions they made..but maybe by now it is too late. So parents just do your best and realise in the end they will decide.