By Henry T. Close

There is no question but that your parents failed you as parents. All parents fail their children, and yours are no exception. No parent is ever adequate for the job of being a parent, and there is no way not to fail at it. No parent ever has enough love, or wisdom, or maturity, or whatever. No parent ever succeeds.

This means that part of your task - like that of every other person - is to supplement what your parents have given you, to find other sources of parenting. You need more mothering than your mother could give you, more fathering than your father had to offer, more brothering and sistering than you got from your siblings.

The problem is complicated by the demands our society makes on parents to be good parents. They are supposed to be 100 percent adequate, and it is a terrible disgrace if they are not. If they are successful, their children will reward them with devoted love, obedience and success; if they are not, their children will turn out to be unloving, disobedient, and unsuccessful. This is the prevailing conviction of our society. But when parents buy this notion, they put themselves in an impossibile position. They try first to be 100 percent adequate, and then when they inevitably fail at this, they try to appear 100 percent adequate. In either case, they cling to you, demanding that you get all your parenting from them, thus reassuring them that they have been good parents. They may also demand that you be loving, obedient, and successful, since this would be living proof of their success as parents. They thus find it difficult to let you grow up - that is, to find other sources of parenting. This means that you will have to grow up inspite of them rather than wait for their permission. They will not make it easy for you, and you must do it on your own.

To grow up, it is necessary for you to forgive your parents. But you must forgive them for your sake, not theirs. Their self-forgiveness is up to them, not you, and they cannot afford to wait for you to forgive them anymore than you can afford to wait for them to forgive you. When you do not forgive them, it means that you are still expecting all your parenting from them. You are clinging to them in the hope that if you can make them feel guilty enough, they will finally come through with enough parenting. But this is impossible, and in order for you to be really free to find other parenting, you must forgive.

"On Parenting" appeared in Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy IV (1968) and is taken from Raising Kids O.K., Babcock & Keepers 1976