RAP #10: Lasting Effects of Parenting

From my personal experiences I believe that parenting is one of the most important

aspects of determining a child's outcome in life. I have seen the consequences of both poor and

good parenting within my own family and those friends of mine who have children. In my time

at Humboldt State I was fortunate to take a course on human development and that class

solidified my long held beliefs on parenting. I believe a lot of the issues people face today have

contributions from poor parenting. I have issues of my own that I believe I can trace back to

parenting decisions.

Growing up my parents were hippies who lived in the mountains. My parents where very

anti authority and, I will say probably inadvertently, filled me with a great amount of paranoia

and emphasized the role of privacy. This lead me as a child to be less social as early childhood

isolation left me without good social skills and the need to keep privacy lead me to speak less

and not form as close of relationships. This still resonates with me today as I am a very anxious

person, always worried about numerous problems. I have issues with sharing in my personal life.

I also get very anxious at the sight of police officers. My mother was also very “my way or the

highway” at times. This lead to me needing, for a long time, to seek approval of my actions. As

for my father he was an alcoholic and, though not violent, my brothers and I exhibit issues that

many with alcoholic parents express. These are things I only found out through therapy sessions

later in life.

As for my friends I have two examples of parenting and their effects, one good and one

bad. One pair of friends I have done an excellent job of parenting. They speak often to the child,

are caring, nurturing, and show an authoritative parenting style which from my human

development class I know to be the best of the three. Their child is very advanced, she is only
just about to turn 2 and has a wonderful vocabulary and attachment. Then there is another set of

friends I have who have done a poor job of parenting. As a baby the parents would just hold the

child and watch television, hardly speaking to the child. Raising him meant showing the child

what the parents loved which included violent television and horror movies. Now at 5 he has a

severely limited vocabulary, has aggressive tendencies, and will no doubt need much therapy to

undo much of the poor parenting. Though these are my observations I am not a child therapist so

I do not know fully if it was their parenting or individual differences in the child but from what I

have seen I believe it to be poor or good parenting. I believe this poor parenting also stems from

not receiving help for their own problems before having children.

As a final not I feel an problem that leads to poor parenting is the parents not resolving

their own issues before having children. If a parent was poorly parented, intervention is

necessary to not transfer those issues to the next generation. I believe if my friends who have

children now would have received therapy before hand they would have been more efficient

parents and lessen the chances of transferring issues. Once mental-health becomes more

accessible and less stigmatized we, as a society, can help mediate poor parenting and lend to the

creation of more rounded citizens with less mental-health issues. This, at least, would be the

hope. I am not naive enough to believe that increasing effective parenting is the only change

needed to help the populace, but it would indeed be a good start.