For those with children: Do you think you’re a better parent than your parents were?

[ThaVirus]

Discuss

[scho63]

Considering how today's youth acts, I'm saying a big fat NO.

Considering how today's parents think, I would say they believe a big fat YES.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I'll openly concede that I'm needlessly dogmatic here, but I'll never understand the "lets get married at the courthouse" folks.

It's important. ACT like it.

I've never known a couple to do the half-assed marriage thing where "Oh we're gonna just get the certificate signed and have a party later" where the marriage lasted. Now I don't know 50 people like that, but I think I know 5 or 6 and all of those folks got divorced within 5 years. And yes, I know that it's not universal, but I absolutely think the 'success rate' on those marriages is significantly lower.

Meanwhile myself and most of my friends got married fairly young; all by age 25. And all of us did the full marriage ceremony and what not. And all of us are still married, most of us over a decade later (I'm at 20 next summer).

I just think a lot of folks are strangely glib about what SHOULD be the most important decision you'll ever make in your life.

Then again, I'll spend months researching breeders before I'll so much as buy a dog. So there's probably an acceptable middle ground to be found.

But man, if it's that important, treat it as such.

Oooh, I can be your first. My wife and I have been married for 30+ years and we had a five-minute wedding with a justice of the peace and no witnesses.

As background, we had just moved for graduate school and we were living in an area where we didn't know anybody within 700 miles. It seemed like a financial burden to ask others to come to us, and our families lived 1,000 miles from each other so there wasn't an obvious "home base" to go to. Plus, I'm not big on churches to start with, and that's where a lot of "event" weddings are held.

I get your point, though I don't fully agree with it. I can see your logic, but I think it depends on the personalities. I've known of a few weddings where it was obvious that the odds were against them due to immaturity or whatever, but they wanted a flashy wedding in part due to that immaturity. But that also may be a function of my age, because when I was marryin' age, pretty much everyone in my home area did a church wedding due to cultural mores.

I'm actually pretty shocked at how common divorce has been in my peer group. When I think about my best friends from high school, a majority of them have been divorced, and these are not sketchy people. They were all mature solid citizens, but we may be running at a 50% divorce rate as a group.

[Fish]

Oh yeah. Unfortunately, it wouldn't take much. Father was very distant. My mother was pregnant with me at 19. They had no business getting married and raising kids. Divorced when I was 5 or 6. Didn't see my father for the next ~6 years. Moved around a lot. Went to 5 different schools before high school. Made it tough to maintain friendships. Mom had anorexia, and very self conscious. Needlessly starved herself, which resulted in my sister and I not getting much to eat.

Abusive step father entered the picture for a while. Had 2 more half sisters. Step father and step father's family would treat me like garbage, and spoil my half sisters. Stuff like them getting 10 birthday/Christmas presents and other sister and I would get 1. Fortunately, my dad finally reentered my life when I started high school, but it was still very distant. My mother was still very angry at my father, and tried to turn me and my sister against him. She went to the school and demanded that they start referring to me by my shitty step father's last name, against my wishes. Shitty small town school did so and changed my last name on official school stuff. Which ****ed me up. Father and step father eventually got into a fist fight in front of us kids. Some rough years for me, and there are large stretches of high school that I've simply repressed and don't really remember well.

My mother finally left him after the abuse got physical all the time. Went through the rest of high school with broke single mom supporting 4 kids. Step father was a farmer, and put everything in his parents name so he had no income and wouldn't have to pay child support.

Dad and I still stay in touch, but he practically never initiates any contact. I'm still close with my mom, but she's a mess barely living paycheck to paycheck. Expecting to have to support her once she's too old to work anymore.

It look me a long time to figure life out for myself and get my shit together. Lots of mistakes along the way. But one thing I promised myself was to give my child better. I can confidently say I've done that. Even though it didn't work out with her mother, we've always maintained a healthy relationship between the 3 of us. We never used our child to fight with one another. Never talked negatively of the other. We worked hard at all the things my own parents failed at. Hasn't been perfect, but my daughter is in such a better place mentally and emotionally than I was at her age. It's very obvious.

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I'll openly concede that I'm needlessly dogmatic here, but I'll never understand the "lets get married at the courthouse" folks.

It's important. ACT like it.

I've never known a couple to do the half-assed marriage thing where "Oh we're gonna just get the certificate signed and have a party later" where the marriage lasted. Now I don't know 50 people like that, but I think I know 5 or 6 and all of those folks got divorced within 5 years. And yes, I know that it's not universal, but I absolutely think the 'success rate' on those marriages is significantly lower.

Meanwhile myself and most of my friends got married fairly young; all by age 25. And all of us did the full marriage ceremony and what not. And all of us are still married, most of us over a decade later (I'm at 20 next summer).

I just think a lot of folks are strangely glib about what SHOULD be the most important decision you'll ever make in your life.

Then again, I'll spend months researching breeders before I'll so much as buy a dog. So there's probably an acceptable middle ground to be found.

But man, if it's that important, treat it as such.

Me, about to get married at the courthouse in a couple weeks..

[ThaVirus]

Originally Posted by WilliamTheIrish

Virus, I want to thank you for posting this thread. We've had some similar threads previously on this site. But this one struck a particular chord with me.

Perhaps it's me becoming a sentimental old guy, but I'm inspired to read what some of the folks here have overcome, to become better than the folks who brought them into the world.

And it's been rather cathartic to read these stories. Real humanity.

Thank you but I can’t really take credit. My current life situation has me thinking about this pretty much every day lately.

I do agree, though. We are learning a lot about our bros in the CP community here.

I mean, it is terrible what some of us have had to go through. Nice to have a place to vent about it at the very least.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by ThaVirus

Me, about to get married at the courthouse in a couple weeks..

Should I be buying airfare to your Bachelor party?

Oh, and congratulations.

[Stryker]

I think the wife and I did well with our kids - I am very proud of them and the wonderful grand children they spawned. However, my parents, whom have both passed, were exceptional parents. I could never ask for better parents and it is like brother said, they made us who we are today. I served my country, I have a college education and I work for an incredible hospital. So, no, they were better parents then we are but, only because they were my parents - I cannot rank higher than them because they MADE me who I am today. I know that they are very, very proud though of both my brother and I.

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by luv

As far as parenting goes, this.

Dealing with my mom's toxic insecure personality is seemingly harder as an adult, and shielding my son from it is a big part of that.

Originally Posted by Why Not?

I definitely can relate to that issue with my mother

Same here with some of my mom's traits. We have made it a point of discussion and for awhile it was very tensious but to her credit she has worked on some things and it has gotten better.

As parents we try to really focus on talking about how we approach certain topics and how we will discipline. If you can't get on the same page as parents, it won't work.

Biggest challenge is the setting we were raised in. I grew up in a town of 600 while we are raising our son in a city of 5 million. There's a lot of differences in that for all of us and I can't relate that to my upbringing, so it does make difference in situational parenting different.