Can you “parent” if you never had any real parents?

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After watching a family interact for most of the afternoon at the restaurant, I was amazed to watch the “parenting techniques” that the mother and father were using with the children.  They were discussing plans for the weekend and although there was disagreement, it was contained by smart parenting moves… So, I began thinking….

Can you parent if you never had any parents?

…where do you learn?….

….don’t most people learn from their own parents as role models?

…and if not from their parents, at least from some relatives that love them?

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So, what do you do if you are someone like me?  Someone who is among the 3.4% of the public who has no contact with any family member. Someone whose “parents” ranged from at best, short-term and temporary;  to at worst, abusive and hateful.

What does someone like me do?

If I consider what I learned from “parents” in my life, this is what I come up with from my bioparents and lots of foster parents:

Lessons learned from Bioparents:

• be selfish
• be cruel
• lie
• use kids for your own pleasure
• don’t stick around
• kids are stupid and gullible
• you can sell kids or their bodies for anything you need; there is always a perv waiting for a kid
• you can make kids do anything if you scare them
• kids don’t need anything
• when kids get tough, beat the crap out of them
• its funny to watch kids hurt

Lessons learned from Foster parents:

• be selfish or be giving
• be cruel or be kind
• lie or  be honest
• use kids for your own pleasure or give of yourself for the kids
• don’t stick around
• you can make kids do anything if you scare them
• they need the minimal
• when kids get tough, get rid of the kids

So based on what I learned from tons of parents, as a parent I should be a hate-filled, violent, inconsistent asswipe who doesn’t give a flying fuck about anyone but myself.

Great.   Another legacy for a child growing up in abuse and then in foster care…  Imagine what i could pass down from what i have learned.  See the cycle?

Were the positive placements I had enough?   Enough to allow someone with so many other negative experiences to parent positively?   Who knows….

what i do know…

i’d rather kill myself than parent based on the overall messages i have learned…

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