Failed Parents

February 14, 2024

When you hear the phrase "bad parents," what do you picture? Alcoholics, addicts? Narcissists? An absent one and a single one? Affairs? Violence? Divorce and custody battles, power struggles? Something obvious I'm sure. Probably some scenario where something salient or tangible actively keeps the parent(s) from nurturing their child. These are all features of bad parents, it's true, but are they our first ideas because of their egregiousness or because the other features are so ubiquitous that we don't even register them?

Out of every possible shortcoming in society, few are as all-consuming and self-perpetuating as the normalization of parental failure. Parental bonds, or a lack thereof, are a core part of every human's life. Brains are meant to develop by absorbing everything in their environment, which includes every mannerism and reaction displayed by the parents, the people they spend the most time with. As default role models, parents exemplify everything a child expects the world to be like once they have conscious agency. Any missteps, flaws, biases, and traumas are unavoidably internalized by the child, as both something they should emulate and how others will treat them. In other words, all the parents' characteristics become the framework of reality itself, whether they like it or not, for better or for worse.

Judging from, well, everything that I can see, it's almost always for the worse. We live in a world where children are used as status symbols, trophies, proof of legacy, vicarious experience; reduced to points of selfish parental pride utilized in gossip around a backyard barbecue grill, just to fit in. A world where teenage angst and rebellion is not only common, it's expected and discredited as a trifle. A world where everybody post-ironically self-deprecates making fun of all our mommy/daddy issues. A world with a double standard imposed where children are too stupid to make decisions but also must have unwavering unguided common sense self-discipline. A world where generational trauma is universal and immutable, where the essence of growing up is surrendering to the idea that suffering is ceaseless and irreducible, where even trying to rise above is supposedly foolish and selfish. A world where parents don't acknowledge that emotional needs even exist.

Make no mistake, by criticizing the state of parenting, I am in no way idolizing "traditional" family structure. The nuclear family is just as guilty of ruining lives as any other stereotypical family archetype. A fascist microcosm where mothers are only permitted to feel satisfaction from home duties and the kids are problematic if they are anything except grateful and obedient. A structure where only the man possesses freedom, and you would be hard pressed to find any practical examples of a father in that scenario who doesn't abuse his absolute power. Superiority, entitlement, and the permission to neglect childrens' needs. Besides, the ideal nuclear family was always wealthy white American propaganda anyway. The same is true about the American dream, they were never real. All these tradcaths on Twitter posting images of half-naked women AI-edited to have more clothes and three kids are stuck in a massive cope. Patriarchal people have this cognitive dissonance where they think a family unit will make them happy and fulfilled, but only halfway realize their ideal dynamic was fake all along before saving themselves via denial.

Speaking of copes, it seems that parents love to talk about how little their lives matter. Society has placed a great deal of pressure on procreation. Evolutionary arguments have wormed their way into this topic and become synonymous. "It's only human to prolong the species," as the naturalists would say. Thus, in this widespread outdated belief system the only purpose of living is to reproduce. Once people become parents for the first time, you'll hear all kinds of stories from them. They're along the lines that their lives mean nothing anymore except to provide for their kid. That their purpose in life is done and there's nothing left to strive for. Selflessly sacrificing the rest of their lives. Extremely depressing on paper, but delivered in speech with pleasured sighs, starry eyes, and positive connotations. To me this comes off as someone naïve, lost, and purposeless trying to cross something off their bucket list, trying desperately to find meaning, not someone who is actually prepared to keep living and start providing. They only get so dreamy about it because they got the satisfaction of social role fulfillment, fleeting and inherently meaningless as it is.

Not every parent is blind to the machinations at work, though. However, those that knowingly contribute are arguably worse. Ignorance is one thing, it's another to give up. Many couples with children fall into domestic heteropessimism. In short, heteropessimism is disillusionment with the heterosexual relationship structure with no attempt at altering the structure, instead being complicit with it while arguing against it. When it comes to heteropessimism in the family unit, often the presence of children is the perceived remedy to the discomfort. Heteropessimists often defend their way of life by saying they can be upset and still be grateful for love, which is true, yet they are inadvertently already codepending on the children for love to gaslight themselves into ignoring the societal compulsion of cohabitation and childbearing in the first place. Parenthood is once again supposed to be the answer to feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and aimlessness. Hard to believe there's such a huge stigma around queer couples raising children when compared to heterosexual couples.

From what I can tell, most parents are in it for themselves. They hope to get something out of it. Conformity, fulfillment, purpose, love, etc. Very few are actually having children in order to consciously raise good people. When someone is going into parenthood with an expectation, that haunts the kid for their whole life. The pressure is put on them before they are even born, sometimes even before conception. The parents' goals are bound to be misaligned with each other, so there's more pressure and conflict that arises. It introduces a new bias that inclines parents to pick favorites, or furthermore force their children to pick sides. Children, of course, never asked to be involved.

Parents are usually too preoccupied, incompetent, or both to be receptive to their childs' needs. Hopefully I don't need to explain much why all these conditions make it exceptionally easy for abusive relationships to propagate. Parents model relationships of obligation, discomfort, miscommunication, codependence, apathy, and particularly neglect. Meanwhile, a bulk of parents treat their small children like cute pets rather than developing humans. People then mature with the reality framework that relationships and love are meant to be obligated, codependent, and neglectful, going so far as to be confused when they are not treated poorly by a loved one. Those people eventually become parents themselves and display the same things they learned from their parents to their kids, continuing the cycle ad infinitum. This cycle is unknown to most parents. This is expected and seen as an irrefutable fact of life. This is normalized.

Perhaps by now you've made an educated guess that I'm an antinatalist, you would be correct. However, maybe it would be more appropriate to label me as an antinatalism purist. Core antinatalism is the personal philosophical belief that it's unethical to nonconsensually bring a child into suffering. Personally I would never want to be responsible for forcing a child to experience suffering, nor force someone to experience the horrors of pregnancy, childbirth, or abortion. Nevertheless, I support people who are willing to put in the effort to be good attentive parents. I disavow most antinatalist discourse (cough Reddit) because it seeks to control people's right to reproduce and general bodily autonomy. That people have to receive mandatory sterilizations and abortions, and invent pejoratives for those who don't. Reckless and disgusting. Fascistic antinatalists often use these parental criticisms to justify impressing their beliefs onto others, proof that people can't think for themselves and need to be controlled for the greater good.

In contrast, the solution I propose is better parental education. I believe people would be better off if they were taught what good parenting looks like. I don't mean what schools already do where they thrust dolls onto students that scream all the time in order to scare them from ever having children. I mean how to be attentive to needs, how to meet them, how to communicate healthy boundaries, how to model correctly. Invariably, this would also require a better mental health system and another education system to go along with it. Unfortunately, a pipe dream given the current time, but certainly less of a pipe dream than a systemic omnicide.

Parenting is a frustrating topic for sure. I've spent years talking about it and debating it with dozens of people. Much like politics, those who are most fit are not usually willing to pursue the position themselves. Or, many who are fit and want to are still barred by some external power, like LGBTQ+ legislation. Normalized parental failures are at the root of so many issues, individually and collectively. I can only hope society changes in due time. Hopefully enough people are able to break their generational cycles, with or without the help of supplemental education.