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When you’re a child, your experiences with life and other people are very limited. It’s only when you start going to school, hanging out with your friends, going over to their place, and having sleepovers that you get a ton more context about how others live. When you get that additional information, you can then start comparing how you’re raised and how your parents behave around you.
In some cases, you’ll realize that you have it pretty good or that there are lot of similarities between you and your friends. Other times, you’ll be envious of your friends because they have more freedom or support. Often, this will be the result of the parenting style that your and other kids’ parents have embraced.
Authoritative parents, for example, offer a balanced approach: they set out clear rules and expectations, but they also communicate openly, take their kids’ feelings into account, and give them love and support.
These parents’ children grow up to be well-adjusted, confident, and independent adults who are socially competent and do well in academics. However, children raised by guardians who embody authoritarian, permissive, or uninvolved (aka neglectful) parenting styles typically don’t do as well in life.
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Dad’s getting the cops called on them for watching/playing with their daughter at the park without their wife there as well.
Mothers having to go back to work early or at night to keep food on the table.
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Authoritarian parents tend to set very strict rules at home and they expect their children to follow their every command, which restricts their growth as independent individuals. These households are less nurturing and focus on high expectations.
Meanwhile, permissive parents are the opposite. They give their kids plenty of love, warmth, and support, but they do this at the cost of many (if not all) rules and expectations. These parents typically see their children as friends rather than, well, their kids to be looked after and raised with care.
However, it’s uninvolved parenting that potentially does the most harm. These parents are barely involved in their kids’ lives whether due to work, lifestyle, mental health issues, etc. So, their kids are generally left to fend for themselves, with very little support and few guidelines for what (not) to do. This lack of nurture and discipline leads to children developing problems with social relationships, emotional regulation, and academic achievements, though they may also grow to be more resilient and self-sufficient as a result.
#7
I didn’t know it was messed up until I told a therapist and the look on her face I was like ohhhh not normal.
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Verywell Mind explains that uninvolved parenting can lead to kids displaying deficits in cognition, attachment, emotional skills, and social skills. Furthermore, due to a severe lack of boundaries at home, they might not learn appropriate behaviors at school and in public, so they might misbehave more than others.
Generally, children raised by uninvolved parents can be more anxious and stressed, emotionally withdrawn, have an increased risk of substance abuse, and be afraid of becoming dependent on other people.
What are some things that you’ve personally experienced or seen in society or your family life that you now realize were far from ‘normal’? What did you do once you realized this? If you’d like to open up a bit about this, feel free to do so in the comments.
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And for those who are curious, my brothers and I have a tight relationship now. After enduring so much emotional, mental, and physical abuse from our parents; we got professional help to learn to cope with our feelings better and hang out together when we have the chance.
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From 5th grade (10years old) until sophomore year of highschool (15 years old) this boy asked me out and gave me unwanted gifts and poems for every holiday and school dance. All the teachers and my classmates knew it was going to happen. Literally every adult in my life told me I had to be polite when I turned him down. I didn't have to accept his gifts or go out with him, but I had to consider his feelings when letting him down.
Years later after surviving an abusive relationship, my therapist pointed out how no one considered my feelings back then. And that perhaps, living a third of my life being told I needed to care more about a boy's feelings than my own, worped my perception of my own feelings being valid and that I had a right to speak up for myself.
#16
Relatedly, the art teacher advised us all to wear shorts under our uniform skirts so boys couldn't upskirt us in the stairwells, and there was a nun who roamed the halls during her free periods to pop into other classes and make the teacher stop what they were doing and have all the girls stand up so she could examine the lengths of our skirts.
The school eventually shut down because the teachers kept getting arrested, but that took a decade after I graduated.
#17
Social media and the way it commodifies literally every human interaction for "likes".
The creation of art with the prime intention of making profit.
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