Last week's posts on Fatherhood prompted an extremely thoughtful student to e-mail me regarding her own process with her family. She has graciously agreed to allow me to post some of our exchange. I think her articulation of her struggles is particularly clear and the questions she struggles with are familiar to many. For the sake of brevity, I'll post my response tomorrow.
Growing up with two parents who were both deeply hurt by their own dysfunctional upbringing I acquired the notion that what my grandparents did to my parents was wrong and deeply evil. I also thought that anything healthy or positive in their lives now was in spite of, not because of, the influence of their parents.
When my own parents separated and the problems in my family began to surface I labeled our family as dysfunctional too. To me that meant that I had been wronged and cheated out of what a child is supposed to have. It also meant that while I should be grateful that my parents weren't as bad and their parents, I had been damaged by their muck.
But, then something you wrote challenged me. You said that all families are dysfunctional in some way or to some degree. The idea that all parents hurt their kids (in other words, learning from yet another angle that nobody's perfect) prompted me to rethink that black and white yardstick I'd been using.
When I'm honest, I realize that my parent's influence has been responsible for shaping my life in many more positive ways than negative ones. If I accept that, then even though my home is not whole, broken isn't an accurate description either. Now, I can't be a miffed kid with a chip on my shoulder; gratitude is the justified response (something I think my mom has been begging me to realize for years).
And yet, my parents have hurt me, and I bear some of the consequences of generations of wrong-doing. Ahh, paradox! That unsightly guidepost of truth.
My question now is what does this mean? If all families are inevitably flawed, then why start one? Is there any hope there? Where is the line between normal disfunction and truly screwing someone up? And is there such a line or is it all shades of grey?
2 comments:
I really relate to the author's questions about "How screwed up do you have to be to be 'screwed up'?" These are the questions I ask so frequently about my family and myself. I feel like people that don't believe in sin as the cause of death and brokenness have had to make up different terms like "dysfunctional" to describe it.
We try so hard to figure out if we're within the bounds of normalcy of if we're "dysfunctional" or whatever other category. Those terms can be useful, but sometimes I feel like I need to stop worrying about whether or not who does deserve the dysfunctionality label and just say, "Yes, so I'm a sinner, I come from a long line of sinners... so what?" Ultimately, sin and grace, brokenness and healing, are what it comes down to.
I often seem to think Jesus can deal w/ my "sin" but not my dysfunctionality. As if the latter weren't part of the former's package deal!
Thanks for the family posts, Alex, and thank you, probable-real-life-friend for sharing.
Sin or no sin, we're all screwed up. That's the human condition. Literal sin is but one explanation as for the human condition.
Asking why we are is all great and all, but over-focusing on it has drawbacks. Rather, I think it is more productive to ask what you can do to make other people's lives, including your children's, better.
Don't beat them, don't insult them, etc..., in short, do to them how you wish you should've been treated by your parents (have you heard that before?)
But I think parents are getting better. If we think where children were from antiquity-1850s, they were treated as property and illegitimate children were oftentimes not even given a last name. 1850s-1950s, there was still a lot of residual "property" child rearing and parent-selfishness, but it is getting a lot better.
For me, I don't think I'm all that messed up. If I am, I don't really blame my parents.
I have a fundamentalist church for that ;)
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