Not all of us are in the marriage we dream of. Not all of us are paired with the perfect partner. We don’t always agree with the decisions that our co-parents make. Certainly this was even more true of past generations—perhaps your own parents were not exactly right for each other, perhaps one of them was a better parent than the other.
But guess what? We’re still responsible for what happens in our houses.
We’ve talked about the writer Adam Hochschild’s beautiful book Half the Way Home and some of the troubles he had with his father…and his mother who understood how sensitive her boy was but never seemed to take his side over his father. We’ve been talking about Rinker Buck (who also has a wonderful book). His father was the strict disciplinarian in his house growing up. It was his dad who wielded the belt, but his mother was not innocent in the matter—after all, she was the one who tallied up the (rather silly) offenses and handed them to her husband when he got home.
Only later did she come to regret her role in this, come to realize her complicity. “Rinker, I’m sorry,” his mother said as she was dying. “I wanted to say that so many times. I knew perfectly well at the time where you learned to say that word. You learned that word from Daddy, down in the barn.” Rinker didn’t seem to hold any grudges, but many children would have—and rightfully so.
Each of us is responsible for what we do as parents, but we’re also responsible for the dynamic that exists in our homes and in our relationships. Just because you’re the nice one, just because you do the repairing, just because you’re not as hard on your kids—that doesn’t mean that you’re not complicit in the stress or strain that’s being inflicted.
It’s our job to create a safe and loving and supportive home. We can’t make excuses—Oh, he’s just under stress at work. Oh, that’s what she learned growing up.
And this pertains to more than just punishment. It’s our job to get on the same pages as our spouse, our co-parent, their step-parent, our ex, whatever, and figure out how to do this right. If we’re struggling, if we sense something’s wrong? Well, we can’t deny it.
We can’t make excuses for it. We can’t just leave our children to fend for themselves with it. Because what they’ll end up doing is blaming themselves…and eventually, inevitably, you too.
