… they may not mean it but they do.
Phillip Larkin got it spot on! It doesn’t matter how good a job you try to do with your kids, you will never be the perfect parent and the sooner you understand that, the easier parenting will be.
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.”
When I was at school, my English teacher introduced me to the poet Philip Larkin. She never realised at the time just how important that introduction would be for me later in life.
I never had an easy relationship with my parents. They have always described me to family members and even strangers as the ‘difficult child’, but the older I get the more I realise that actually, I was pretty good really. I never drank, never stayed out late, I wasn’t really ‘into’ boys and didn’t even lose my virginity until I was much closer to 21 than 16. I was a good girl.
But I was mouthy. I was independent. I was strong willed and I had character. My mother wanted me to be. She spent years telling me to ‘stand up for myself and never take any crap from anyone.’ The only problem was, I counted her in that ‘anyone’. When I didn’t agree with her, I told her. When I felt she was being unfair, I was the first person to tell her so. I was never a ‘bad’ kid, but I questioned her. I questioned everyone. I was inquisitive and I wanted to know ‘why’. My parents made me that way.
I was a RAF Brat, so respect was a massive deal in our family when I was growing up. You never spoke until you were spoken to, you always look ‘Sunday Best’ perfect before you leave the house and you never ever air dirty laundry in public (sorry guys, this is as public as it gets!).
You see, my mum wanted her kids to be ‘better’ than the kids she knew growing up. She wanted us to have a better upbringing, a better future, a better life. She wanted everyone to look at her perfect polite children and believe that she had done a great job – probably better than her own parents had done.
She had done a good job. I wish I could tell her that now. But not for the reasons she was so intent on doing it for. I am the eldest of three, and most of the time she raised us alone while my father travelled for work. We were clean, fed and watered. We were happy, alive and had personalities.
My father was the same, it wasn’t just my mother. He wanted everything for us that he never had. He wanted to spoil us, but keep us grounded. Show us the world but instill a sense of family and ‘coming home’. He wanted us to explore, but from the comfort of his safe castle walls. They wanted better for me and my siblings than they had for themselves.
But doesn’t every parent?
Now I have children of my own, I understand. I want to give my children a future and up-bringing that I didn’t have. That has never been a criticism on my parents or theirs. It’s just a fact of life.
My parents were super strict and pernickety about cleaning, so I strive for a laid back life for my kids where they never worry about mummy going mad at them for making a mess (often fighting my own OCD and Anxiety). The only thing is, I wanted these things because I didn’t want to be my parents. In truth, respect is still massively important to me and I am desperate for my children to understand that. I have OCD tendencies left over from my fussy parents, but in truth I want my kids to understand how to look after their things. To clean up after themselves. To respect their surroundings. It is one of the biggest internal battles I fight daily.
So I battle against myself. I battle against the legacy passed down from my parents and fight the ghosts of my parents’ decisions each and every day.
They have filled me with their expectations; the expectations they were filled with by their parents plus the added expectations they wanted to make them better parents than their own. They added extra… just for me!
“Man hands on misery to man.
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time we soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.”
I realise now that the likelihood is they were trying to steer clear from the mistakes their own parents made, but as a teenager all I could see were the mistakes they were making themselves!
My mother was desperate to give me the independence her father never allowed her. She made me strong, head-strong and argumentative. I questioned everything. I wanted to know ‘why’. I was ambitious and tenacious and was ready to take the world by the balls. I was everything she wanted to be when she was a girl.
But while my mum was desperate to see me have that freedom, she wanted the closeness that she had with her mother. She wanted to see me fly, by only whilst standing on her wings. They were best friends. We were not. She made me independant and sacrificed the mother-daughter relationship in the process. Her father was stern and strict, and she wanted to be stern and strict but she needed friendship at the same time. It never worked. But now I realise it wasn’t all her fault. Its human nature.
The older I got the more we butted heads. The more independent I got and the more education I received, the more distance grew between us. The same was true of my father. They had created me exactly as they had hoped. Strong, independent, happy and ambitious – but in doing so they had created exactly what they could not cope with. A young woman who could not be controlled, kept in a box or be told what to do, think and say. For parents who needed control of absolutely everything in their lives, I was a nightmare. A difficult child. The black sheep in their perfect white flock.
“Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.”
We don’t talk much these days. The distance between us grew from miles to oceans. Our attitudes differ so drastically and my life choices are not in line with theirs. But I disagree with Larkin’s last stanza. “Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.”
You see, my English teacher was right to show me that poem when I was a teenager. During my angst as a teen I clung to the first stanza. I blamed it all on my parents. “They fuck you up your mum and dad.” I clung to that and blamed our separate lives on the fact that they had fucked up.
As a grown woman, a mother of two and stepmother to one; a wife and an educated woman, now I see the ‘whole’ picture. I see the whole poem. They never saw it coming and they tried the best they could. Nothing will change and there is far too much water under the bridge to ever mend the fences, but now I see it. I understand. And in a way, it has lead me to forgive. Not forget, but forgive.
Each day I try so hard ‘not‘ to be my parents. And in trying so hard, I fuck up. I make mistakes. I tell my kids to be creative then get angry because they make a mess. I fight with my instincts as a mother because I am desperate not to BE my mother – when in all honesty, that’s all she was doing herself in her own way.
Reading Philip Larkin’s poem now as an adult, I have decided to take note of the whole picture. Now I take the lessons I have learned and apply them to my relationship with my children. I understand that I will mess up, and I know that they in turn will want to be better than me with their own children.
I only hope that I have realised in time enough to limit the ‘fuck ups’ that I pass down to my girls – and to teach them this poem as early as possible – so they too learn that parents are not flawless. They never can be and never will be. Because they are human. They have imperfections and they have no idea what they are doing. There is no handbook and no one is perfect.
I have stopped living my life trying not to be my mother, and started living my life being the best mother I can be. That is the very best I can do. It’s the best any of us can do.
We are human, we will make mistakes, and that is ok.
