Editorial Note: This post is extremely long and rather raw. I go into a lot of detail about my childhood and my feelings on the subject. Without any explanation it would appear I am complaining, but in truth I am merely trying to give as clear a picture as I can to my past. I am aware of the potential for misunderstanding and have chosen to leave it this way for the sake of completeness.
I believe that we, as parents, make many decisions (either consciously or unconsciously) based on how we were raised; that the bulk of our "parenting style" is formed by things we experienced as children and how we felt about it then or how we feel about it now as we reflect upon our childhood.
I will provide a concrete example from my upbringing. My father immigrated to Canada when he was 25. Before that, his family ran a farm and lived a meager existence. When he was eight he was forced to leave school because the family needed more workers after his older siblings went off to war. My father had more than one memory of watching other children play soccer while he tended to the fields. He was determined to ensure that if one day he had children that they would be able to play soccer when they wanted to. Fast forward to my adolescence, I was not an athelete, but I did have an activity I enjoyed: music. Throughout my five years in high school, my father never pushed me to have an after school or summer job so that I could play in all the bands I wanted to. (As an aside, this was a huge gamble and not something I agree with looking back. It payed off because I was successful in academics and was able to earn some scholarships as well as getting accepted to a co-op program. Otherwise, I would have been in a tremendous amount of debt upon completing university.)
My childhood was pretty normal for the first little while. My mother stayed at home after I was born, and even after they were done having kids she remained home until both my sister and I were in school full time. For the next few years she worked part-time as a substitute teacher, but my older sister was able to get home and watch my younger sister and me until my parents arrived home. My mother was never well, even as a child. On the days when she worked, she was unable to offer much else to the family when she arrived home. Either my father or my older sister would pick up the slack. However, since her teaching was occasional, it had little impact on the big picture.
When I was ten my mother got back to teaching full time. I was oblivious to the impact at the time because my older sister shouldered the burden. However, everything changed when I was about twelve and my older sister went off to study at a university out of town. All of a sudden my younger sister (eleven) and I were responsible for a lot of things I believe we were too young to handle. My father cooked dinner when he was working the day shift and was home for dinner. When he was working the afternoon shift, one of us would prepare dinner for the rest of the family. Now, I'm not talking about putting a frozen lasagne in the oven when we get home; I am saying we, at the age of twelve or thirteen, were making roast beef or ham or chicken (it was the eighties and we were Italian - vegetarian meals were rare). On Friday nights we had to clean the entire house: bathrooms, vacuum, dusting - you name it - because on the weekends people might come over. My mother would arrive home late (by cab - she didn't drive herself) and fall asleep, often before eating dinner.
The high school I attended had a uniform. Since I would not wear the uniform outside school days, we had a limited number of shirts and pants. So, when I was fourteen I was washing and ironing my own shirts and pants. By this time, my mother's health had deteriorated to the point where she was mainly only able to perform the in-class teaching responsibilities. In the evenings, after (and sometimes instead of) our homework, my sister and I would mark tests and prepare cut outs for the next day's crafts. My mother continued to work, despite the drain it put on all of us.
I got my driver's license when I was 16. This opened a whole new world of responsibility since now I was my mother's chauffeur instead of my father (who had done so for the first 18 years of their marriage). I had to get my mother to work before driving myself and my sister to school. This in and of itself would not be an issue, save for the fact that my mother was never exactly prompt in the mornings, often leading to panic as we tried to arrive at school on time. In addition to driving her to and from work, I was also responsible for taking her to the hairdresser, the nail salon, the mall, wherever.
To summarize, by the time my sister and I were 15 and 16, respectively, we were responsible for the operation of the entire house. We cleaned it, we did the groceries, we made the meals, the only input my parents made was financial. Additionally, I was responsible for my mother's transportation, as well as my sister's (who never ended up getting her license - I suspect because she saw what it did to me). This is in addition to my studies and whatever life I chose/was able to have.
My relationship with my mother deteriorated rapidly as I became more and more trapped in her life, to the point that at 19 I moved out to go to university despite a more lucrative offer to remain at the local school. My mother, in a vain attempt to force me to stay home, threatened to cut me off financially if I left. Those of you who do not know me do not realize I am likely one of the most obstinate people on the planet when cornered. Subsequently, I refused any financial assistance from my parents until my final term of university, when (more as a favour to my younger sister than anything else) I allowed my parents to pay for my books.
To this day (obviously) I still have issues with a lot of this stuff. I'm not angry about it, and I have let it go as much as I am able to. I refuse to abandon it in the past, as I fear I will forget and make the same mistakes. Also, my relationship with my mother has never really recovered from the strain it took.
Certainly there was a benefit to all the responsibility I had thrust upon me. When I was finally a man with my own apartment I already had life skills many people had yet to learn, such as the proper way to clean a bathroom or how to prepare a proper dinner. I knew how to do my own ironing (something my father-in-law, who is over 60, has yet to accomplish) and how to wash my clothes without turning my white underwear pink. However, I feel that there is a difference between having chores and having an entire house to maintain and run.
To this end, I will do my best to ensure that my daughter has time to learn the life skills she needs, such as doing laundry or cleaning a bathroom, without making her perform these tasks as if she were a maid. I will encourage her to cook meals and will try to teach her everything I know in the kitchen. (In fact, MTM has already started this with her: the munchkin mixes muffins and is beginning to understand that things go into the oven to cook.) I will allow her to be a child and have a life that is her own. I will not make her feel like she is responsible for my happiness or for the success of the family. She will have enough of her own emotional crap to deal with without adding the burden of feeling like she has to take care of her parents and the family house.
One of the things my parents did right, at least in my opinion, is the freedom they afforded me. (In truth, the freedom I speak of is likely just a by-product of the above situation, but I will credit them with it nonetheless.) MTM was raised with a lot of rules and constraints, and she became a challenge when she hit adolescence. Because I had no real rules to rebel against (rather, I had tasks) I was never really a problem the way she was. This issue of how much liberty to give our children is a topic MTM and I discuss often. She does not want to be the strict parent she had as a teen, but she believes that being as liberal as my parents were would be the wrong answer too. I agree with her assessment, and between the two of us we have to find a place in between the two extremes (again, defined by our parents) where we are comfortable.
There are other examples of where my perspective of my childhood has affected my style as a father. My father worked a lot of overtime and weekends to try and give us the best possible life. I realize that now, but as a kid I just missed my dad and wanted to spend more time with him. So, I have tried to establish a working situation that allows me to spend as much time with her as possible (even though, as one reader pointed out, she will eventually reach an age where she doesn't want me around as much).
The real challenge is figuring out how to be the idealized parent we all want to be, while still being the good parent we all know we have to be.
