Something has occurred to me this month after having some revelations with my middle son. I have been thinking about my dad more frequently than I normally do, considering that he passed away more than twenty years ago and I wonder what he might think about the blog advice I have provided over the past few months. It has prompted me to wonder about the decisions he made that created his life’s trajectory and how he parented me.
My dad’s adult history included being an exceptionally young Navy captain serving in the Pacific during World War II. At the conclusion of the war he returned home to marry his teenage bride. He also chose to retire from the navy (which he loved) and chose instead to go into his father’s business, which he felt an obligation to do. I wonder about the choices that he and my mother made conceiving four children in the first six years of their marriage, by which time he was only 28 years old and she was only 23! I was the second child two years after my brother and two years before my sister, who arrived two years before another sister. A third sister arrived many years after that, five in all.
As I reflect I can see certain parallels in the parenting of my children in the way my parents gave attention to me. As a child I felt my older brother got more attention than I received, and that my mother identified more closely with my three younger female siblings than she did with me. I never felt unloved, yet, I often felt not as loved as my siblings.
Upon graduating college, naïve to other opportunities, I also chose to enter the same family business as a third generation employee. My first wife and I had two sons, then a daughter, which was a unique coincidence to the birth sequence that my parents had. I also feel that I may have favored my first son with attention that my second son may not have received, and that my daughter became the favorite of her mom leading to a feeling of lack of attention overall by our middle son. The exact position I occupied when growing up.
Without going into the details of how this coincidental circumstance may have affected the specifics of the parenting of my biological children (I am blessed to have remarried the amazing woman behind this website, and been gifted by the presence of her amazing daughter) my conclusion seems to contain a strong and obvious lesson. As parents we are clearly imprinted by the millions of circumstances we encountered both within and outside of our family hierarchy.
Maybe if you are searching for clues about how to understand your relationships with your children, it may be as simple as examining the influence of the relationship you had with your parents during your childhood. I am grateful that no matter how old one is lucky enough to get, there is still so much to discover.