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I'm not sure making children the "central focus" of the lives of the parent will turn out to be as healthy as we think it in the current moment. I would agree i

I'm not sure making children the "central focus" of the lives of the parent will turn out to be as healthy as we think it in the current moment. I would agree if this qualified "[one of] the central focus[es]" and what you mean by "best possible" in terms of the cost the parent makes for the "best possible" instead of "adequate".

WillAdams 2y ago
Beats other options such as: - children are a burden to be complained of and minimized - children are a resource to be exploited - children are incidental and may be ignored - children are a way to increase one's social security payout
- haswell 2y ago
  - children are god’s future army and their entire purpose in life is to prepare for an afterlife by expanding that religion - children are inherently sinful; nothing they can do is good enough in god’s eyes; the most important thing in existence is to believe in this particular story and to dedicate one’s life to this belief I truly believe it was love for their kids that drove my parents to instill such an extreme and harmful worldview. Primarily because of some pretty major unresolved Traumas with a capital T in both of their lives. Decades later, I’m still unwinding what remains a complex relationship in therapy. The point of this anecdote was just that there’s a subset of us who had parents extremely focused on their kids and who really did invest the time into focusing on what’s “best”. They just saw the world very differently, in ways that turn out to be extremely harmful, and I’m a messy product of that.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    Love is not love when it does not realize that the person being loved is their own unique individual self. Moreover, as I tried to express, that the function of a parent is to help that child become the best version of themselves, hence my noting: >...realization that each child is a unique person with their own potential, and hopes, and dreams... That your parents labeled how they treated you as "love" does not make it an act of lovingkindness (to pull from my wife's Master's thesis) --- it is important that people should evaluate things without considerations for labels applied by others, and then arrive at a reasoned, impartial perception which is valid in terms of logic and correlation with the facts of the past. (Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg? A: Four, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.) The drunken and enraged parent who claims, "This will hurt me more than it does you." as he unstraps his belt is lying to himself and to the child, and it is important for the child to realize that --- understanding the self-deception which makes such an act possible may be helpful, but it is more important to understand the facts of the matter --- by way of contrast, the toddler who bites another person has to be slapped because their intellectual engagement does not yet admit of other people having feelings (which is why they are able to inflict pain since they do not realize that others will feel pain), and since they are on the cusp of that realization, explaining afterwards along with some natural consequence will help guide them to that realization.

WillAdams 2y ago

Beats other options such as: - children are a burden to be complained of and minimized - children are a resource to be exploited - children are incidental and may be ignored - children are a way to increase one's social security payout

haswell 2y ago
- children are god’s future army and their entire purpose in life is to prepare for an afterlife by expanding that religion - children are inherently sinful; nothing they can do is good enough in god’s eyes; the most important thing in existence is to believe in this particular story and to dedicate one’s life to this belief I truly believe it was love for their kids that drove my parents to instill such an extreme and harmful worldview. Primarily because of some pretty major unresolved Traumas with a capital T in both of their lives. Decades later, I’m still unwinding what remains a complex relationship in therapy. The point of this anecdote was just that there’s a subset of us who had parents extremely focused on their kids and who really did invest the time into focusing on what’s “best”. They just saw the world very differently, in ways that turn out to be extremely harmful, and I’m a messy product of that.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Love is not love when it does not realize that the person being loved is their own unique individual self. Moreover, as I tried to express, that the function of a parent is to help that child become the best version of themselves, hence my noting: >...realization that each child is a unique person with their own potential, and hopes, and dreams... That your parents labeled how they treated you as "love" does not make it an act of lovingkindness (to pull from my wife's Master's thesis) --- it is important that people should evaluate things without considerations for labels applied by others, and then arrive at a reasoned, impartial perception which is valid in terms of logic and correlation with the facts of the past. (Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg? A: Four, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.) The drunken and enraged parent who claims, "This will hurt me more than it does you." as he unstraps his belt is lying to himself and to the child, and it is important for the child to realize that --- understanding the self-deception which makes such an act possible may be helpful, but it is more important to understand the facts of the matter --- by way of contrast, the toddler who bites another person has to be slapped because their intellectual engagement does not yet admit of other people having feelings (which is why they are able to inflict pain since they do not realize that others will feel pain), and since they are on the cusp of that realization, explaining afterwards along with some natural consequence will help guide them to that realization.