I also come from something of a broken home/family, but my personal trajectory in life
looked fine until about halfway through my first marriage.
(Parents split when I was little, I was raised by my dad.)
My dad went to some pretty great lengths to shelter and protect me (and my siblings) from "the world." He taught me a LOT about right and wrong, discerning the actual truth, etc. "Overprotective conspiracy theorist" - that's my dad according to most people I knew growing up. I was raised to believe in God (albeit not Christian) and with a fairly strict sense of morality. My dad did a lot of things "right" and very much in-line with the general consensus (around these parts) of how girls/young women should be raised.
Some of the things he did right, in my book:
- Planting "seeds of truth." This is to say, even if you don't think you can adequately explain something in terms that a child will be able to understand, if it is an important truth, you tell it to them anyway, in a form that is concise and memorable and
authoritative. I can't even tell you how many of my dad's "sound bytes" have come floating back to me after
actual decades of not giving them any thought, while my brain was beginning to grasp at related concepts. Some of them have left me quite stunned.
- Homeschooling, and, along with that, allowing my
desire for socialization to drive the degree to which I socialized and played with other children (aside from my brothers) - rather than allowing the prescribed "NEED TO BE SOCIALIZED" per globohomo standards to dictate that I be basically
thrown to the wolves every freaking day.
- SKEPTICISM. I was taught to question everything, basically. Trust nobody until and unless they've given you a good reason. "Propaganda" is a vocabulary word I learned when I was four. I was taught to see the globohomo establishment for what it is (although it wasn't called that when I was little, lol), taught to question authority... and to never let the feds in if they knock on the door.
- Lots of affection. My dad is not a super affectionate or emotional person (he comes across as standoffish; probably a bit aspie), but he pretty much regarded parental affection/comfort/etc. as a basic human right and a grave responsibility.
- I was NOT EVER taught to "respect my elders" or "respect authority" or "respect XYZ." I was taught that respect is earned, and that "unearned respect" is actually called FEAR. I remember my dad having it out with my grandpa (his dad) one time, because grandpa was demonstrably WRONG about something (a matter of safety, no less) and my dad wouldn't let it stand. Grandpa thought it was out of line and "disrespectful" for my dad to correct him in front of me, and my dad wasn't having it. This is one of the most valuable lessons my dad ever taught me: everybody gets baseline
human respect, but nobody gets a
free pass for doing things
unworthy of respect just because they're old, or because someone else said to listen to them.
Now for what he did WRONG:
- His relationship with my mother.
- Substance abuse/addiction.
Both of these can be filed under "damaged people doing damaged things." My parents had their own familial dysfunctions and traumas. They were both very much a product of their time, and many of their poor decisions were a matter of having never learned better. I suspect there are a lot of things God won't hold against them, when all is said and done.
That doesn't change the fact that these decisions and behaviors have far-reaching material consequences. Whatever it is (alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, etc.) might seem like
"just one small vice, and I can compensate for it by doing everything else right..." - but it's NOT. There are no small vices. Even if the vice itself is hidden, the effects spill out all over everything.
Both of my parents modeled a highly dysfunctional way of relating to other people. They used substances
recklessly in ways that impaired their judgment and their baseline ability to protect and provision. Their weird relationship (lived together but kept separate rooms, never married, openly screwed around on each other, fought a lot, very turbulent) did not give me any reasonable foundation to build on. ESPECIALLY since neither of them ever went back and condemned that lifestyle or cited it as a reason their relationship failed. The addiction gene apparently skipped me, but when my first husband wanted to have an open marriage - wouldn't you know it, the fact that I'd been aware of my own parents doing that nonsense when I was a kid, set me up to rationalize it instead of balking at it.
As a parent, it's not possible to "hide" addiction and immorality from children in such a way that they are not impacted. Even if they are ignorant of the specific activities and details - and even if they are
unsuspecting - the way these behaviors influence EVERYTHING in the complex web of cause-and-effect related to parental decision-making is
fundamentally disastrous.
One of those "concise truths" my dad imparted when I was too young to understand, but which hit me hard later, was when he told me that the whole "point of it all" is for every generation to try to be better than the last (in terms of correct living and being a good person), and to teach the same to their children. I think his words were "I try to do better than my parents did, and I hope you try to do better than I did."
It's a good sentiment, but in the spirit of doing better than my own dad did, I'll say that the idea of your kids "doing better than you did" should NEVER be used to justify your own incorrect behavior. It should never be used as an excuse to not get yourself as right with God as you possibly can. You can't just pay lip-service to righteous living. Kids can FEEL hypocrisy in their bones, I'm convinced.
(I could probably write a much longer post about my mother, but I'mma leave that one alone for now...
)
