“Musings About Hating Your Parents (That Old Chestnut)” (A Poem + Bonus Material).

by M. Anton Smith

For many years I thought the old man was a bastard.

In fact, I think for a male younger than 35, this is the compulsory view.

No matter if your dad was Hitler-like or Christ-like.

When you get older you soon start to give these old fellas some begrudging credit.

These feelings of detente happen in piecemeal fashion over a decade or two…. or three.

There are numerous reasons for this realpolitik iceberg finally breaking the waterline.

The waterline that is ‘The Memories of Yesteryears Child-Parent Relationship’.

The first is by middle-age you have experienced the reality of how hard life is.

If you are someone who must work to live, then life is by definition hard.

Yes – for most of us just keeping the wolves from the present door & future doors –

is the prime task that must hoover up at least 75% of our available energy & attention.

So, this means that the ‘Child of the Adult’ is already scampering for the 25% balance.

If the Child has siblings, then this 25% gets splintered & reduced, often unevenly.

So, the children & of the true working classes – i.e. everyone who must work to live –

Be they the honourable ditch digger or the dishonourable lawyer –

Are scrambling over ever decreasing crumbs from the table that is available parental attention.

Worse that remainder parental attention is likely crabby-ness infused from a bad day/week/year/decade at the office.

The other problem from the working parents point of view is this:

Children are by nature immature.

This means Children are by nature annoying.

All frazzled working parents have to deal with this bold fact as well.

Of course, many Parents are negligent, sub-par & decidedly useless –

Some are even criminal in their ways.

Some Parents should indeed be ex-communicated by the adult child.

I am not denying these as-plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face truths.

I’m merely also acknowledging that the Child’s perspective is by nature warped.

If this warped analysis of the ills of our parents‘ parenting is never shone upon –

With the lights of reasonableness –

Then are we not simply punishing ourselves as now grown-up children?

Also, now as I look back as a child of the 80’s,

Being a latch-key kid had its benefits –

Mostly we latch-keys roamed those hills, rivers, streams are city streets like carefree bandits.

Conversely, woe to the children of the 21st Century:

Condemned to be hovered over by overly-neurotic-mega-safety-conscious parents.

Coddling vs Negligence – they are both bad for the future adult,

But at least negligence can result in adults with a tough but successful exterior, as much as drug addicts.

Parental Coddling I don’t think ever dissipates, short of serving at the front of a Big War.

This is why I belatedly realised that you may as well forgive the old man,

For his real misgivings as well as the imagined ones –

And don’t kid yourself that the two cases aren’t muddled up.

As the years left become less than those we have lived,

There’s no good reason to hold onto those warped child representations of our past.

Unless we value Pig-headedness over well-being.

& I ask you –

Who in their right mind would choose to do that?

The old man might have been a bastard –

The point is that there is enough reasonable doubt.

I may as well not convict.

And another way to look at the general problem of assesing you parents as an adult is this –

The long admired legal maxim:

It is much worse to convict a single innocent, than let free a hundred of the guilty.

So it should indeed be a high bar to ex-communicate your mother or father for life.

As a wise man once made up just now:

Pig-headedness is oh-so-fun when all around you are your fellow pigheads.

But all hell breaks loose when the bacon truck arrives through the farm gate.

The very same farm gate that had been safely locked your whole pigheaded life.

Yes there is a wicked pleasure to be gained in Pig-headedness –

But as sure as sliced ham it will lead to the slaughterhouse.

BONUS MATERIAL

[Note: I have written this piece after growing older & revisiting my feelings about my own thoughts of my parents, in particular my father. Given that we are all sons & daughters of Parents, we all are cursed to have by their nature, very emotional views of our upbringings. These words are simply (I expect) a typical re-examining of the parent child relationship through the eyes of the middle-aged person. Middle age usually brings experience & this means the middle-ager has become at least somewhat wiser. This extended engagement in the long battle that is the now many decades daily adult life helps us open our eyes wider to see a better view. I know many others my age will be able to sympathise with the ‘somewhat semi autobiographic’ views told. The average member of the ‘over 35 crowd’ should definitely reconsider the philosophy of forgiveness in relation to their Parents – simply because the truth maybe they are simply clinging to comfortable inaccurate views of their blanketed-but-still-there, inner child-self. – M. A. Smith]