Parenting

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Sat Jan 17, 2009 2:19 am

Keep playing videogames.

Jimwth · Post by **Jimwth** » Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:44 am

Wow... This thread nearly persuaded me that to be a father is a far more difficult thing than I thought. I agree with BlueSky and DW, I think you should just be the closest friends with your kid(s) and things will be great. Sadly, I'm not a source of experience for this discussion: my kid's only 8 months old and I've yet to see how good a father I am/will be.

Demortis · Post by **Demortis** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 3:28 am

@Jim: Dont feel bad, everyone tells me I'm gonna be a great father and I dont even get to see my daughter and she'll be 1 in Feb.....

Jimwth · Post by **Jimwth** » Wed Jan 21, 2009 4:34 am

Demortis wrote:@Jim: Dont feel bad, everyone tells me I'm gonna be a great father and I dont even get to see my daughter and she'll be 1 in Feb.....

No, I don't feel bad. What I'm trying to say is when I wasn't even thinking about becoming a father myself, I've always seen parenting like something difficult and exhausting... When my son was born all of this proved to be untrue. You see, parenting came very easily for me so far, I just love my kid and that alone is enough for me to have time for everything that he needs. I only want to spare more time with him than I have now.

This thread nearly returned me to my thoughts that were in my head before I became a father. You should really try to see your daughter more often, Demortis.

BTW, my kid will be 1 in May

imawindowlickr · Post by **imawindowlickr** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:22 am

All parents damage their children.

Maharlika · Post by **Maharlika** » Wed Jan 28, 2009 6:51 pm

imawindowlickr wrote:All parents damage their children.

All parents CAN damage their children.

Though most parents won't deliberately do so if they did

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 2:58 am

Maharlika wrote:All parents CAN damage their children.

Though most parents won't deliberately do so if they did

Most parents don't "damage" their children at all. Although the parents obviously will influence their children a lot, the influence, and particularly the lasting effects of it, should not be overestimated. Other family members, school, peers and other adults that the children have frequent contact with are other important social relationships that have a major influence on the child.

Tricky] As scary as the thought may be to certain individuals wrote:
Unless you have a major neuropsychiatric disorder, is a drug abuser, a child molester or a spouse abuser or belong to a destructive cult or similar, you will most likely be a good enough father. That is, good enough for your children not to suffer from it. The difference between "good enough" and excellent is not that significant in the long run. It's easy to cause lasting harmful effects, but even though it's easy, most parents will not perform such destructive acts anyway.

To answer your question: parents and children usually have a life long relationship, so in that sense parenting does not stop until any of you die. However, the content and characteristics of the parent-child relationship normally changes a lot over time. These changes are not necessarily linear. There may be periods when for instance emotional support is more required, like during transition periods in the child or young person's life. Even small children typically show non-linear patterns of separation-attachment, independency-dependency, etc. If nothing special happens, most changes in the child and the parent-child relationship are gradual and flowing. A very, very broad and general idea is that peers have an increasing influence from school age and onwards, and that basic personality traits are set after adolescence, which means nothing really (not parents either), except extraordinary events, makes the basic personality change a lot. Not surprisingly, longitudinal multi-generation studies show that for instance at age 6, childrens behaviour is much more influenced by their parents behaviour, personality and values than it is at age 12. Peers have been show to have a much larger influence than previously thought, and looking at the adult individuals, peers have a larger impact than parents if we just look at the behavioural side. Since parents also have a genetic influence on their children (unless the children were adopted) it is always difficult to distinguish the effects of shared genetic background and shared behavioural background, and in many cases there are complex gene-environment interactions. It's also difficult to separate parent's effects from other, later effects - even though peers have been shown to have a larger effect than parents, it's difficult to estimate how much the parents behaviour influenced the child's peer selection. Just a very basic thing like the parents socioeconomic status and the choices that follows from that, will obviously have a huge effect of what characteristics a child's peers would show.
In any case, if my answer is not very conclusive, a general rule of thumb is: unless totally crazy, parenting behaviour doesn't make as large a difference as previously thought. Also, the more free and liberal a human being is allowed to act and behave, the larger is the genetic effect relative to the environmental influence (like parental behaviour).

Tricky · Post by **Tricky** » Thu Jan 29, 2009 3:59 am

Thank you, there are some things there I hadn't considered yet.

In my earliest years I was brought up fairly strictly catholic (with a dash of liberalism), but I always felt that at a certain age my parents just up and decided to let me go a bit, probably in that 6-12 area too. The way I remember it (or perhaps the way I have chosen to remember it), was that they were the ones to give me said space, to decide that watching cartoons on Sunday mornings was more fun than going to church or whatever. But now I wonder if maybe I was the one to make a choice instead.

It is an odd thing though. Lately I often hear my own late father when scrape my throat. And despite our differences, I do recognise we did share a certain ideology about to which extend one should support their fellow human during difficult times. The connection is there, so I suppose developing character yourself (as opposed to intentionally in your child) matters too. I'm not sure yet if I'm doing a good job, but I did choose the humanities as a field of study out of a certain dissatisfaction about myself. Certain events that made me realise qualities in me (say the humanitas), were lacking.

In other words, being a man of great integrity might shine through as well.