Your Mom Is Not Perfect

She can be amazing, but perfection is the wrong narrative.

The №1 brand in the entire world isn’t Apple, or Exxon, or Google, or anything like that … it’s motherhood. That’s the most tied up in “should-be good” feelings, the future of our world, and everything that we’re taught is supposed to matter greatly to us. We deify the busy mom — the super woman! — and we cast aspersions, however real or not real, on people without kids (“selfish!”) or moms who mess up a lot. This has been the process for generations; it will be the process for more generations to come. This is, essentially, life.

I hate seeing families not be as close. It happens to all families in some small degree — adolescent rebellion, etc. — and then it probably happens to about 1 in 2 families at the high level (divorce) or some other level (death, etc.) It’s sad. Families are the true cornerstone of society; it’s not corporations or law or anything like that. It’s families, neighborhoods, and connections. That’s what makes us, and keeps us, human. We’re social animals.

Here’s the thing people often forget, though: for families to grow, and generations to improve on each other, you actually need to realize your parents have some flaws. Let me explain.

I wrote about this once before — if your parents’ marriage is bad (or good), will yours be bad (or good)? No one really knows, although there is a bunch of research about it.

I like to observe people, and often I do so in a horribly flawed way, but often I’m also moderately successful. (Phrased another way: I’m a human being.) Here’s what I’ve seen on parents and children as each side gets older, and admittedly this isn’t scientific per se: