Another Short Story About Me

Continuing my series of vulnerable autobiographies, here’s part three. (Part One) (Part Two) I have often criticized my parents for being terrible parents, and horrible human beings. Perhaps some of this is the residue of teen angst, but I think many, if not all of my complaints are valid. I’ll even be honest enough to admit that there were some good times, and good things about my parents. I’ve talked about getting my work ethic from my dad.

That said, I still think my parents were not even close to acceptable parents. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t malicious. They were simply unprepared for the task. Sure, others have had it a lot worse. I’m not saying my parents were the worst parents in history. I’m just saying they weren’t good, and shouldn’t have had kids.

My dad was 24 and my mom was 20 when I was conceived. One of the first jokes I wrote was that a condom had a 99% success rating, and I am that 1% failure. While humorous, it is inaccurate. My parents are Catholics, and thought condoms were against god. Oddly enough, they didn’t use that logic to prevent their unwed fornication. But it’s all good. They got married before I was born, so they got by on a technicality. God wouldn’t check. Right?

I was conceived on St. Patrick’s Day. What can I say, my family is Irish. To be fair, my dad never really drank much. He had the same bottle of whisky my entire childhood. He’d have maybe two shots a year. Sometimes he’d have beer or wine, but he never got drunk. He recognized our family’s predilection for addiction and shared my fear of inheriting that gene. My mom drank even less than my dad. So I can’t say they were drunk and didn’t pull out. They had been dating for three months, so I think it’s fair to assume they were IN love when they MADE love.

My dad often said that in his high school yearbook, he mentioned wanting a large family. I don’t remember if my mom had any plans about kids. I know that she wanted away from her own mom, and was the type that did whatever her man told her to do. They both came from a religious background that encouraged, if not commanded, reproduction. Even if you were to remove the religious aspect, we still live in a culture that says you’re not a complete adult until you have children. Regardless of what kind of adults those children become.

In any case, my parents remained ill equipped to raise children. My dad was a tyrant and my mom was an emotional train wreck. My dad often had to travel hours away in order to find work, leaving my mom alone to raise the family. Many people have made this work. My parent’s didn’t. My mom had a nervous breakdown when I was 4, and my grandma (my dad’s mom) rebuked my mom for “doing that to her grandchildren”, as if my mom was purposefully not able to handle three children before her brain was fully developed.

The fatal flaw that my parents (and a fuckton of other people) make is the assumption that once you have children, instinct magically imparts the wisdom necessary to raise children. This is quite false. In reality, these people rely on wishes and hoping for the best.

One could argue that no one is a perfect parent. I agree. But I’m not talking about perfection. If my parents were half way decent, I wouldn’t have this much of a problem with them. Even in the 80s, there were plenty of books on how to raise children. Enough studies had been done to show what was effective and what wasn’t. My parents didn’t do their research, demonizing it as “pseudoscience” or “pop psychology”. They had the tools, and chose not to avail themselves of it. Thus they relied on their own abilities. Which they didn’t have.

When I am about to make a large decision, be it a purchase, or a career move, I do my research. I look up reviews from multiple sources. I weigh the pros and cons. I consult others for their objective opinions. I imagine I’ve already made the choice, to try to anticipate the consequences. I think most people do this. It’s the logical, rational way to proceed. Why not apply this to raising children? Just because humans are hardwired to procreate, and we naturally have the ability to do so, doesn’t mean we have the resources both emotional and financial.

I’m not saying you have to be rich to have kids. I’m not saying that rich people are better parents. I AM saying that it helps. I AM saying that there are certain requirements we should expect of parents. I AM saying that these can be objectively measured and assessed.

Don’t shake your kid. This should be common sense, but the statistics show that over four children die EVERY FUCKING DAY due to abuse. This isn’t the bronze age where children died of disease, hunger, or environmental causes. This is the modern day, where children are dying specifically because of their parents inability to control themselves.

Love your children. Another thing that should be common sense. Yet parents seem to pervert the concept of love to allow them to do whatever they want under the umbrella of “doing it out of love”. Yeah. Slap your kid around to show them you love them. Let’s see how that turns out. I’ve talked about this before, so I’ll move on.

Any decision you make is judged by the consequences. Even if you do something for the right reasons, it can be wrong. I have no doubt that my parents had children because they wanted to be the best parents they could be. So did Andrea Yates. Yes I’m likening my parents to a psychotic murderer. This is a liberal use of hyperbolic comparison. My argument remains. Some people are not fit to be parents. This includes my own. They aren’t necessarily bad people. They are simply not qualified. It goes back to the argument I’ve been making for years. You need to pass a test to get a license to drive a car. You need building permits and frequents spot checks to remodel your house. You need to pass a test to become a citizen. You need a test to graduate school. But when it comes to having children, fuck it. Pop out as many as you want, and AFTER you’ve fucked them up, then the government steps in.

Perhaps this is why I am so overly critical of parents. Maybe I hold parents to too high of a standard. Or perhaps, the standard has fallen so low because of people like my parents, and I’m one of the few speaking up. There are good reasons to have children. There are bad reasons. That is mostly irrelevant. The important thing is that some people should reproduce and some shouldn’t. My parents are a member of the latter group. And while they had four subsequent children through which to perfect their technique, I am the one dealing with the consequences of my childhood, not them. So yes, I don’t like my parents. I think my dad should be in prison for child abuse, and my mom should have at least spent some time in jail for neglect. My parents did make sure we were fed and had a roof over our heads.

THAT IS NOT ENOUGH.