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Sins of the fathers
By Jim Murdoch
My father made a lot of mistakes bringing me up. I swore when I became a father myself I wouldn't make the same ones. And I didn't. I made a whole bunch of my own. When I talked to my dad about some of the 'mistakes' he made what was abundantly clear was that he was reacting to his own upbringing although to be fair he wasn't brought up, he was dragged up. There was no dragging involved in my childhood, just a few swift kicks up the behind. Throughout my life I spent a fair bit of time in the houses of my friends and got to know some of their parents quite well. I was never on first name terms or anything but I got close enough to be treated as a part of the family. Since I was so critical of my own parents you would think that somewhere along the line I would have said: "I wish that so-and-so was my mum or dad," and yet I never did because I could see that I didn't fit into any of these other families any better than I fitted into my own and from talking to my friends it was clear that they were as dissatisfied with their parental units as I was with mine. There will obviously be someone out there – maybe it's you reading this little essay – who had the perfect parents and if it is you then I'm pleased. Just as long as you're not looking back on your childhood through rose-tinted spectacles. And there is a tendency to do that, to romanticise our upbringings. I never have. I've always seen clearly. I may never have had the right word for what I was seeing – words like 'hypocrisy' and 'double standards' – came later but I knew when I was getting a raw deal. My big mistake with my own daughter was to treat her as an adult too soon. The whole father-daughter dynamic got confused. I remember wanting so badly to grow up to not be a child that I assumed that was what was best for her. It was not. Childhood is getting shorter and shorter these days. And that's a shame. I don’t see us ever going back to a 'Swallows and Amazons' world (if such a world ever truly existed) but I don't think it would necessarily be a bad thing for our kids if we did. It doesn't look as if I'm going to be a grandfather – for a variety of reasons – but I can't say I'm upset about it. My daughter has turned out fine, quite a well-rounded individual actually all things considered, but I'm not sure her mother and I have equipped her very well to be a parent so maybe it's best that someone else picks up the baton and runs the next leg on our behalf.
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The website of author Jim Murdoch
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Wow. What a brutally honest, eye-opening account. Until I read this I never realized that others (probably everyone) set out to correct the mistakes of their parents, only to make their own. It just dawned on me that there most probably isn't any family out there that isn't dysfunctional in some way. Thanks for this essay Jim Murdoch.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Thank you for that. And like you I tend to think the word 'dysfunctional' is a bit redundant when it comes to families. But we live in hope or delusion - not sure which would be the most comfortable.
A brilliant and thought provoking essay Jim, much appreciated.As a father of three and now a grandfather of three, it seems to me that the vast majority of parents who are of a reasonable level of intelligence, all attempt to improve on their own parents efforts. Sadly, few succeed. Even amongst the highest echelons of society, we see spectacular examples of this failure.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Can't agree more, Brian. I'm amazed when I look at my own daughter. I keep wondering what I did right.
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