Is. 8 Vol III: Will your children still love you when they're older?

The troubling paradigm of being a "good enough" parent

This is the third instalment of a four part series. If you haven’t yet, read: Volume One: Millennial Parents – Why are we the way we are? and Vol. 2: Has Millennial Parenting Gone Too Far? first. Then dig in:

It’s been lost to the ether of my TikTok history, but I’ll never forget this one video. The poster was a therapist, the kind of guy with a tough, “tell it like it is” blunt exterior that garnered him a sizeable following.

In the video, he tells the story of running into a young couple in real life. They’re about to have their first baby and they tell him their plan is to just “do their best.” Then they ask him to give his best advice to new parents.

The therapist kind of shrugs sheepishly and declines, but they insist. So he lays it on them and says something to the effect of: Your “best” is not good enough.

Well, we don’t often hear that. In a world of organic, gentle, screen-conscious parenting, where we are paralyzed at every turn about our decisions, we’re trying harder than ever – with less support and community than ever.

But it wasn’t meant to be an indictment on millennials for falling short on our parenting styles, nor was it an appeal for us to try harder to meet a “Pinterest mom” standard.

In fact, he works with a lot of boomer parents who did all the “right things” and are now flabbergasted to have little to no relationship with their grown children.

They insist that it’s not their fault and swiftly push the onus onto their children, often calling them ungrateful. These are the kinds of parents who throw their hands up in the air, exasperated, and say, “Well, I did the best I could!”

It’s a kind of catch all buffer that relieves them of any accountability. And it’s a total manipulation (see also: “Oh, I guess I’m the worst mom/dad in the world then!”).

As mentioned throughout Vol. I, a fundamental belief that many of our parents had was that they deserve respect. But what they meant by respect was obedience. Our parents wanted us to be grateful they did the bare minimum and obedient no matter what they asked of us.

It’s a style of parenting that has led to estrangement.

As a child, you are powerless. You don’t have any control over the circumstances of your life. Your parents can tell you that you are bad, you are wrong, you are the problem, and you don’t even have a point of reference to challenge it.

Look, a lot of our parents were breaking their own inter-generational curses. That’s important to acknowledge. It’s not nothing that they provided us with the necessities of life. It’s not nothing that they kept us free from a lot of the same physical harm they endured.

But the emotional harm they inflicted is real. And, ironically, they gave us just enough of the tools we needed to see it. When many millennials, myself included, began to have our own children, our framework for understanding finally grew.

When my daughter was still very young, I was pregnant with my second, she was having a meltdown. I was at the sink washing dishes, miserably pregnant and completely over-stimulated.

She toddled up to me, whine/crying loudly and pulling on my shirt, and I felt so annoyed that my impulse was to ignore her in what can only honestly be described as a form of punishment for having irritated me in the first place.

Yeah, that’s called the silent treatment. And it is to a child, in practice, the withholding of love when they don’t perform to your expectation. It’s the embodiment of showing your child that your love is conditional. And it’s how I grew up.

In that moment I knew that there were things within me that I would have to face, and overcome, if I wanted to be a better parent. The TLDR version is that, ultimately, the things that held me back from being the parent my kids deserved hinged on me severing my relationship with my parents.

That’s where a lot of millennial cycle breakers land. It’s painful. It’s misunderstood. And when you’re up against a dysfunctional society that excuses all kinds of abuse, you have to have a really thick skin about it.

Because society is where it stems from. We’re part of a society that tells us that obedience is respect. That our worth comes from production. That empathy is weak or performative. That oppression is okay if our comfort is at stake.

We were raised on these messages because our parents didn’t ask a lot of questions to dismantle them. Maybe they couldn’t. But we can, and we do.

What our parents gave us wasn’t perfect. And surely we must acknowledge that what we give our kids won’t be either. But the questions we are asking now, the cycles we are breaking now, is how the world will ever change.

We owe that to our children. The world is burning in every possible sense of the word. We OWE our children better. And I believe it starts at home.

With a style of parenting I learned about through Rythea Lee. Rythea is a non-coercive parenting educator who has kindly and generously agreed to be interviewed in the fourth instalment. She connects the dots between the dysfunction of our larger society and how that translates to our own little people.

Oh, and to answer the eponymous question of this article... Barring the worst abuse, and of course I cannot speak for everyone, a child will always love their parent. Call it nature. Biological imperative. Children are hardwired to love their parents and that doesn’t change with age.

We always need our mom and our dad, even when the roof over our head is the one we pay for. That’s what makes the mistreatment of our own children so egregious – and why we must make hard choices when we become the parent.

Rythea offers a path to a relationship with our children that empowers them to thrive, and that can sow the seeds of radical change and love within our society. So, can we open our minds to it?

Stay tuned for the last instalment.

The latest from Instagram…

Support a family in Gaza

Every day I wake up and the first thing I do is check my phone. I know it’s bad, but I need to know if Nour and her children are alive. Nour is a mom to two beautiful little girls in Rafah, and they are trying to get out.

Every day she shares the details of her day with me. The girls trying to get some water out of a dried up tap. The girls finding little pockets of childish joy amid the horror and fear.

I know it feels overwhelming, hopeless and quite frankly, confusing. There are so many people in need, how can we help everyone? I mean, we can’t. But we can make small contributions when we can. This is Nour’s fund. Help her if you can.

But if you can’t help with money, keep helping with hope. Keep advocating for peace. A ceasefire is imminent. A world where children are never harmed in adult bullshit is imminent. Keep showing up and building that world.