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The Luxury of Parents Being Friends with their Children


I've come across this wonderful article on the Elephant Journal that explains how some parents just seem to have a closer bond with their children than others.

I thought it was an enjoyable read and sincerely hope it would still be around for my future reference when the time comes that I would have my own children. As a mere observer (having only experience as the "child" and not the parent), I've wondered many times about the difficulty of parents having to tread the fine line between being the disciplinarian and being the confidante. I have heard the line "I'm not your friend; I'm your mother!" on TV or in movies before and it has always struck me as odd and discomforting. Can a mother not be a friend to her children, after all?

Thinking this, I would ponder on my relationship with my own parents and realize my naivete on the matter. As someone who would not immediately think of her parents as friends, I can infer from my experience on the side of being the child, that parents becoming friends with their children is easier said than done.

I do not wish to discount my parents' effort in parenting and raising their four children in a secure home. In fact, quite the opposite. While I very much agree with the article on the Elephant Journal, I wish to point out that having the time and energy to purposefully raise your kids to be your 'friends' is somewhat of a luxury.

My parents both grew up in poverty and very early in life, they've had to support their own parents and their many siblings. (My dad had 6, while my mother had 10!) Any concept of what a parent should and should not be to their children was easily lost in this arrangement. I doubt any of my grandparents have ever laid hands on a parenting book, as even family planning might've probably been a concept foreign to them. All focus and energy was spent simply on the struggle for survival. Never mind the dysfunctional relationships, so long as there is enough food to go around 12 hungry mouths for tonight.

Together, my parents both clawed their way out of poverty and worked very hard to provide for their children in a way that their own parents had not been able to for them. The sense of stability and security was a very real need that stared my parents in the face even before having their own children.

And so, the concept of good parenting to them was mainly characterized by provision and protection.

It's not to say that parents and children in poor families cannot become friends simply because they cannot look past the shortage of their basic needs. I only wish to point out, in the economical sense, that given difficult circumstances, the limited time and effort of some parents would have to be hugely allocated to the basic responsibility of providing for their children.

Striving to be friends with their children was simply not a conscious state of mind, because more urgent needs commanded their attention.

To give a concrete example, both my father and mother worked tirelessly while having us children in mind. They would sometimes leave the house early and come home late, at both times us children would still or already be sleeping. Other times, their energy would be too spent to spend quality time with us when they come home. Their long hours of being away at the office certainly did not work to promote a strong bond between us, but it worked to give us good education, sustenance, and a sense of security.

As my parents were increasingly able to establish a sense of stability, only then were they able to refine their focus on other aspects of parenting such as counseling and doctrine - aspects which have had to take a backseat when they themselves were being raised by their own parents. At some point, my father was making enough money to allow my mother to quit her job and focus on raising us.

This is a luxury not all parents can afford.

Though my parents exercised a mostly authoritarian rule that was simply based off of their own experience in the circumstances they grew up in, having their basic needs secured allowed them the luxury to explore a more hands-on parenting style. They now had the time and effort to purposefully raise their children to become responsible adults. But still, for them, this was a priority over raising their children to become their friends.

And rightly so. My parents have come a long way from their difficult circumstances. As any parent would wish their child, they were able to surpass their own parents in many aspects, one of them being parenting itself.

Now my parents have paved the way for me to be able to purposefully consider these even before I have my own children. Now, because of them that I do not have to worry only about my own basic needs, I have the luxury to plan ahead and ponder how I could provide for my children while raising them up to be responsible adults AND become their friend at the same time. I now have the luxury to prioritize developing a strong bond with my children and not have too many distractions to keep it as a conscious state of mind. My parents worked for me to have this luxury, that they themselves did not have.

And for that I am eternally grateful. Despite prefering to have done away with authoritarianism, I am certain that they simply did what they thought was best. When I try to imagine how they grew up and compare that to how they treat us now, I feel that they've done so much good than bad.

No matter the mistakes or faults that perhaps have created emotional distance or resentment between us, I know now that the blame cannot be placed on them alone. I know all they ever did was to love us in the best way they know how. And I would venture to say that also goes for many parents who seem disagreeable to their children.

What's more important to remember now is that my parents have done more than enough to allow us to take what works and not to repeat what doesn't work. As they have surpassed their own parents, they made sure that we, their children, would be able to surpass them as well and carry the torch forward. And I intend not to disappoint.

Yes, there were, and still are, moments when I would wish my parents could be more my friends than my 'parents'. But the fact is, they ARE my parents. And it makes me proud to say that they have raised me in a way that makes me cherish them as so.

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