Thu 17 Jan 2008
How much of your parents do you see in yourself? Where are the similarities? What are the biggest contrasts? Has it any of it been intentional — and has any of it been despite your best efforts?
What have you been most surprised by?
Posted by Josh Millard7 answers so far!
For a frame of reference, I was born in 1979, my parents in ‘39 and ‘41.
I am becoming my father in that I listen to NPR, have gray hair (way more than someone my age should be burdened with), go around the house turning off lights (my family can only—despite many hours of attempted behavior modification experiments—flick switches up), obsess over my car’s gas mileage, add more and more nonfiction into my reading queue, watch sports and “smart channels” (PBS, Discovery, etc.) almost exclusively if an when I watch television and prefer scotch to any other hard liquor.
I’m certainly more liberal than my parents; specifically, I am more tolerant of other ethnicities. For all I know, they were just as liberal at my age, but I doubt it.
I have told my kids “because I said so.” That, more than anything, surprised me. Not so much because I swore I’d never say and here I was saying it, but because I felt it to be true. I felt that I am the authority figure here, damn it, and you’ll do what I say for no other reason than because it was I who said it.
I’m without a doubt the child of my parents. We share views on most things political and cultural, and we share some flaws.
But I have not completely become them. Whenever people predict that I will, there’s great comfort in noticing the ways in which neither of my parents are exactly like their parents.
I am absolutely turning into my parents. In my case, this is a good thing. I noticed it happening especially over the last year and a half, since I had my son. It’s funny you ask this question now because just today he was squirming around in his booster seat while he was eating lunch and I heard myself say to him, “Jack, put your feet in front of you and sit up straight.” This is something I heard repeatedly from my mom as I was a squirmy eater too. I seem to also be acquiring my mom’s thrifty habits we tease her about, like scraping every last bit out of the jar, or being unable to resist tinkering with every recipe. So when I find myself turning into her, it’s funny and it makes me happy.
My dad is one of the best people I know .. he’s smart, wise, kind and funny, and extremely generous with everything he’s got, including his time, and he looks for the best in everyone. I’d like to think I’ll become more like him in all those ways but it’s probably something I consciously emulate, or should try harder to emulate.
I have seriously overcome almost all of my mother’s shortcomings. If I were my mother, right now at age 26 I would have a five year old and be approaching my third marriage, this time to my Junior College Accounting teacher. He would have already convinced me to register republican and take massive amounts of hormones to control my “constant PMS.” Things would go downhill from there. In five years he’d be in prison for embezzlement and I’d be stuck holding the new baby and the back taxes.
Although I share my mother’s propensity for anxiety and depression, I deliberately deal with it much more holistically and effectively than she does, and I am much more focused on controlling my emotions than she is. For reasons unknown, I am not a dyed-in-the-wool codependent, defined and hypnotized by the men in my life. But for the most part, her upbringing and early adult mistakes have left her pretty ill-equipped to do any further character development, and I will never ever be like that. I am also much more educated than she is, and for that as well as every other gift I possess, like her social nature, her honest character and her award-winning legs (and I suspect her high sex drive, what with the men thing), and every freedom and advantage over her that I have, I have her love and hard work as a single parent entirely to thank. *Getting misty*
My father is a rotten asshole with an enormous temper, and for the piece of that I broke off genetically, which is substantial, I can only thank my mother once more for getting him out of my life so I didn’t pick up more of him.
“Ugh, I’m turning into my mother!” - Bizarro 1/17/08
I’m definitely turning into my mother — in some ways. I think the point at which we really grow up is when the idea of turning into one or both of our parents stops being terrifying and either feels comfortably inevitable or amusing or interesting. There are some unpleasant ways in which I’ll fortunately never emulate her because of genetic good luck, but I’ve embraced the remainder. And there are plenty of elements of myself (too many animals, never “growing out of” my youthful “phase” of devotion to music, etc.) that she’d be horrified to see have persisted into my middle-aged character.
The key parallel is in our solitude (I also had a relentlessly independent, solitary battleax auntie), and when I was a young slip of a thing, I used to find this trait inexplicably weird in them, but when I got to my mid-30s, I had one of those [foreheadslap] epiphanies where I belatedly grasp the obvious. Not only did I suddenly understand the attractions of rowing one’s own boat, but I looked back and saw clearly that I’d had this same tendency as far back into my childhood as I can remember. So to some extent, becoming “like my mother” is in some ways just becoming the person I always was but thought I wasn’t allowed to be.
I have some things in common with my parents: love of music, children, animals and nature. I’m a little more adventurous, which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the outcome. Think there are some generational differences, especially in regards to double standards between men and women.
I’m definitely more silly than my parents. My mom has shaken her head and laughed more than once about my “big imagination.” But they both tell me how smart I am (because I know how to use computers and cell phones and I read a lot) and they love me no matter what. I’d love to have my dad’s knowledge of literature. My mom used to write songs for the piano and I’ll find myself humming one of them once in a while. I can write poetry that could be turned into lyrics if I set my mind to it, but writing music is a whole ‘nother ball of wax.
I deliberately try to avoid laying worrywart vibes on my kids, as in my mom is apt to ask if I need a jacket or worry needlessly about some chance remark. So I’m consciously avoiding that type of stuff.