The Blame Game: Did We Do Better Than Our Parents?

Life is tough.

Being held responsible for 100% of what happens during it is even tougher.

No one likes the spotlight only on them. We all long for some relief. A way to push off some of the burden and set it squarely on someone else’s shoulders.

Namely our parents.

They were old school. Their parents were tough on them so …

They didn’t listen well enough, and never had enough money, enough time, or enough interest to make a difference.

And when we stroll back through time during a moment of self-reflection, looking for solace or solutions, how much of what we see can we reasonably expect our parents to shoulder?

What’s fair?

They Didn’t Listen

Kids are not known for being articulate. For coming right to the heart of the matter. They stumble. They mutter and look away. They’re intimated by the larger beings surrounding them and rely on them for everything. So, the last thing they want to do is piss them off.

And yet …

They suffer. They question what they see and hear. They wonder if they’ll make it through alright. They’re growing and as they get older and bigger, they’re expected to take on more responsibility.

Clean their room. Do their homework on time. Mow the lawn.

They want to please and yet; they often don’t know how. But this doesn’t stop them from trying, they do. It’s just not always straightforward like a Dear Parent letter left on the kitchen table one morning.

The experts say the human brain doesn’t stop developing until we are 25. So, what’s a ten-year-old supposed to do with a brain that’s only halfway there?

How do children manage stress, learning, interactions with others, and keeping it all together while interacting with a world that seems far more complex than the old Leave it to Beaver days?

When mom stayed at home and dad was the “ruler” who returned from the “wars” every day with a ready smile, a hearty hello, and the need for a sustaining dinner?

The real answer is nuanced because that world didn’t exist. And today’s is equally challenging.

Nothing in life was ever that cut and dry. In Hollywood, sure, it’s all neatly packaged and ready for consumption.

But in the real world where actual kids lived and interacted with actual adults, conversations were hit and miss.

Emotions ruled. Good days and bad days were a crap shoot and who got sent to bed or sent out to play was a matter for the Gods and they were even less talkative than the children.

The old saying, you listen but don’t hear, can be applied to almost every conversation we have, unless we make the effort to understand what’s important and what isn’t.

Talking happens, that’s never in short supply. But communicating, where an idea, a problem, or fear is coaxed out of a child and heard doesn’t happen often enough.

The Blame Game

Responsibility is not a kind word. It’s neither warm nor fuzzy and though neutral in some respects it brings night terrors to many of us because the breadth and depth of responsibility can appear limitless.

As we age, we are handed back more and more of the duties that our parents were willing to carry simply because that was their job.

It was part of the covenant they agreed to when having us and whether they liked it or resisted it, for the most part, they’ve done a workmanlike job.

That is, until we got older or in therapy and begin to count the number of ways, we’ve screwed up our lives, and need to deflect, even if just a little, so our self-respect doesn’t take too big a hit.

Parents do their best, I believe this to be true. Some are better at parenting than others. Some start off slowly, leaving the young’uns to one parent while they wait for the teen years where their skillset seems to thrive.

Others seem to take to it and never miss a beat, shaming everyone they come into contact with and winning awards (perhaps not literally) but certainly in spirit for doing just about everything right.

And then the child ages into adulthood takes a wrong turn or marries the wrong partner and 20 years of parenting are chucked as we the parents stand under the eaves of our little homes watching the rain fall, wondering what the hell went wrong.

Maybe, It’s Just Me Afterall

A questioning process we eventually all go through, that closely resembles a life-sized version of Jenga where we keep adding and subtracting responsibilities until we either reach a level of equilibrium that we’re happy with or watch things tumble down around us as we become more comfortable assigning cause somewhere else - usually at the feet of our parents.

And in all fairness to both generations, parents do make mistakes.

First, there’s no manual that comes cellophane wrapped with each birth. As the child enters this world, they enter it pretty much on the same terms as a swimmer enters waters known for riptides - at their own risk.

Only a child has no choice in the matter, whereas the swimmer - well you get the idea.

Second, there are do-overs in parenting, usually given to child number two or three, while child number one gets to watch and wonder who made her the crash test dummy and hey, is there a written warranty anywhere?

Third, parents are genetically hardwired to try their best which works in favor of the child for most of the essentials in life.

Dad may miss many of your ballet recitals because of work but you’ll be well-stocked in tutus, shoes, and lessons for as long as you need them. There’s a trade-off in all childhoods that sometimes work out and sometimes doesn’t.

And during those moments of reflection, that tend to increase as we get older, we find that pointing a finger and assigning blame brings us relief for about eight seconds before unraveling and leaving us in worse shape than before.

Blame is inherently bad form. Whereas assigning true cause to a problem or deficit is not.

That one’s parents didn’t have the resources to send Junior to an elite baseball camp every summer didn’t mean they didn’t care about him. The same goes for daughter’s dance summer in Vienna.

It just means they were normal people, with normal limitations and were fiscally challenged like many others over the years.

On the other hand, if their twice-monthly trips for bridge tournaments were sacrosanct while you failed math and spent three summers with old Mr. Ellingsworth in hot stuffy classrooms because there were no funds for a tutor, then maybe you do have a right to complain or at the very least, stop putting it all on yourself - you like many others are not dumb, just in need of a little help.

Social Media and What It Says About Parenting

Social Media is a superior parenting aid or a weapon of mass disruption depending on how you look at it.

We, the older generations, had our own forms of social media. They frequently were stuffed into a talking box called a TV that was left on throughout the day to draw children to it, like moths to a flame.

It also came in the form of schoolyards and gymnasiums where kids “socialized” for long periods of time while moving and leaping and swinging until exhaustion set in and the idea of home, food and eventually bed seemed like a good idea.

This isn’t to say the childhoods of the older set were better and more refined - they weren’t. They were possibly more diverse, more outdoors, more unchaperoned, and free form than today’s - but maybe not.

Spending an entire day on a bike, away from home with a lunch sack was common and encouraged. Some of that happens today, but not much for obvious reasons.

A safe environment is required not just for play but for parenting and today’s environments are deemed “not really safe” even when they are because we have seen far too many examples of what happens when they’re not while watching TV, News, and social media.

But back to the point. Social media is an application superimposed on technology - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and others exist because technology fosters them and gives them the power to draw millions to them.

They are uniquely fascinating, time-consuming (a key element), and capable of influencing the users in ways we have not yet fully understood.

But they work.

They keep kids entertained, distracted, and otherwise occupied which allows other parenting things to take place.

But at what cost?

Seeing 30 pre-teems gathered outside a school is commonplace and expected.

Seeing them not interacting but instead holding smartphones, viewing videos, and texting each other while standing not more than ten feet away is worrisome.

Maybe they’ve just spent 60 minutes running and playing and performing all manner of interactions and are just tired, but maybe not.

Doing Our Best

Boomers today look back at their parents with love, amazement, fond memories and enough pain and resentment carefully distilled down into all sorts of emotional issues that resonate with each other but not so much with younger generations.

We all hear - In My Day - until we want to hurl and rightly so. It’s usually said right before judgment is passed. Before unrealistic comparisons between the 1960s and the 2010s create an even wider gap between the generations.

Perhaps we could all agree that most parents did their best and still do. That given the woeful lack of training, new parents relied heavily on old parents to learn what should and shouldn’t be done.

Often leaving out some of the “good stuff,” those rough and tumble moments that were actually beneficial, even if not always pleasant, because new parents refuse to repeat those f**king things that their parents did, even when they got a good result.

We all rely on shortcuts. On actions designed to save time, save money, save the wear and tear on our psyches without always checking the provenance to make sure they’re the best things to do.

The one thing most people across generations will agree to is that today’s life is more hectic, more high-speed, and more random than it was 30-50-70 years ago.

We are forced to know more; have less time to understand and perfect it and keeping up with technology is not just a mantra but an actual thought-provoking, calorie-burning, anxiety-inducing part of life that when we step back, way back from it, doesn’t really make things a whole lot better - does it?

Can we live without Google or Wikipedia? Can we survive without our appliances telling us what’s needed?

Are we capable of doing without a smartphone that can make documentary-quality movies for us to post on Facebook or Tik Tok?

Can we keep track of our lives without Apps showing us the way?

In all honesty, the answer to all of these is yes. But should we need to?

Now that we have them all, can’t we simply use them and not misuse them and gain the benefits without the downsides?

Social Media is there, visible and easy enough to blame for many things today. And it is the correct target for a lot of it.

Our parents are there, visible, and easy enough to blame for many things that went wrong in our lives and are the correct party to assign cause to because they didn’t do everything right. But most tried to.

No Blame, No Shame

Owning it, whatever it is, is en vogue. Self-help gurus claim resurrection begins when this is step one.

It ain’t that easy. Especially when we didn’t “do it” to begin with. When we weren’t able to say no, get out of the way fast enough, or pack our bags and leave.

Sometimes pointing the finger and saying - you did it - is cathartic. And even spot on.

But often the people that are responsible are gone - then what? How do we resolve old issues without old people to talk it through with?

Blame is passing responsibility off onto someone else because it’s too much, too expensive to own it.

Responsibility simply means, it’s your life and you’ll need to fix the problem even if you didn’t cause it.

If your dad really never went to a game of yours and it still hurts, then pointing the finger at your old man and saying - this could have been avoided - is a true statement. No need to shame.

If he’s there, talk to him. If he’s 95 and doesn’t remember, give him a kiss and talk to someone else.

Knowing you didn’t do anything wrong to keep him away, means a great deal. The true cause is also cathartic.

In the end, blaming our parents to ease our burdens won’t help if it’s not true.

But finally learning that being sent to grandma’s in Nebraska for five years wasn’t because you were an asshole at age 10 but because dad lost his job, mom was sick and they couldn’t cope - is huge. It wasn’t you.

The truth isn’t always pretty and neat and makes everything better. That’s not its purpose. In fact, it doesn’t have one. It’s just what is.

And most of the time knowing that, is all we really need.