One of the most impressive things I can think of for a parent is something my father (Edward M. Curley) accomplished. His father abused his wife and kids; actually beat them up when he was upset and/or drunk. Then, when my father was around 12, he left them to fend for themselves and disappeared for 40 years.
But, not only did my father never beat us up or hit his wife, he only ever spanked us if it was for a lesson. He broke that cycle of child abuse and that has to be one of the hardest things to break. I have felt the deep-rooted desire to hit a kid many times and if I had grown up in an environment where I was beat up, I wonder if I could refrain from hitting a child during any of those many times s/he was completely misbehaving. But, I don’t have to struggle with that because my father broke the cycle and taught me that physical punishment should only be used when trying to train or accomplish something, not out of anger or spite.
I’ve often thought that every person would do well to try to improve on one thing s/he thinks his or her parent(s) did poorly. I’ve told each of my four kids this – that one of their jobs as a parent will be to improve on what my wife and I have done as parents. But, in no way did I ever think I could match the improvement my Dad did. And I didn’t need to. There are many other ways I’ve thought I improved on parenting from what he did. Some are:
• Played with the kids a lot more
• Participated in their lives a lot more (births, events, competitions)
• Talk with them a lot more (as a confidant)
These were things my Dad didn’t do, but that I do at least better than he did. Obviously they are nowhere near as important as his breaking of the abuse cycle.
Then the other day I began reading The End of Faith by Sam Harris. He made an interesting point in how difficult it is to break away from religion and it started me thinking that maybe the biggest improvement I made isn’t on the day-to-day tactical sense that those above are, but rather in my breaking away from religion.
Religion is so out-dated and detrimental to society and so difficult to break out of that my going from the hardcore Catholic school boy (I was an alter boy and frequently lead the rosary during my lunch hour) to the Humanist advocate I am, is just about as difficult as my father breaking out of the child abuse cycle.
I know that there are many (very many) good religious people. But as a whole, religion has been responsible for more atrocities in the world than anything else. Most recently is the total destruction of the World Trade Center and the resulting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite what politicians say, these are totally about religion – do you think the Taliban would have attacked the WTC without Islam? And think about the Bible and Koran that both basically say that if another does not believe in God as this book says (and you believe), then you must kill them. The Islamists are just living by the book they believe in – in some ways that is more admirable than the Christians who say the Bible is the word of God, but then don’t live by it.
Anyway, Religion is so archaic and unneeded and in fact damaging that we have to as a race stop the irrational faith in it. But, taking that step is very difficult. When you grow up in a family that totally believes and has total faith (something you believe with no evidence), then it becomes very difficult to break away. It is also scary for many people to think that they aren’t going to live past death and that they have nobody to rely on but themselves. This stance of course would make everyone stand up and be responsible for who they are without relying on some deity, but it is still scary to most and one of the reasons they can’t easily break away from it.
So, I’m now wondering if maybe I did improve on something really big instead of those little things. Not that I wasn’t happy with them – I didn’t say that every generation had to improve to the level my Dad did; that is pretty much impossible.
Your job of course is be to improve on something that you think is important in the way of parenting. It doesn’t have to be huge, it just has to be something – if for no other reason than that this will make you think about what good parenting is and who you want to be as a parent.
