Parents

 

There is a strange, almost mathematical rhythm to the way we relate to our parents. Not a neat, polite equation - more like a drunken sine wave that staggers across the decades, bumping into resentment, gratitude, embarrassment, and finally an uncomfortable recognition when you catch yourself saying something and think, Oh God. That was my mother.

It’s tempting to believe our relationship with our parents is fixed. That it is either good or bad, loving or damaged, close or distant. But in truth, it’s more like a long serial drama, with shifting genres, recast roles, and the occasional mid-season crisis. The same characters, yes - but wildly different interpretations depending on how old we are when we’re watching.

Let’s start at the beginning.

From one to ten, we need them. Completely. Utterly. In ways that feel so obvious they barely register. Parents are not people at this stage; they are infrastructure. They are gravity, oxygen, heat, and snacks. They are the ones who make the monsters go away, who know where your shoes are, who have the magical power to fix things with plasters and lies.

At this age, parents are gods. Fallible gods, perhaps - they occasionally burn the toast or forget something important - but gods nonetheless. They know how the world works. They have answers. They can do things like drive cars and use the phone without fear. If they say something is true, it is carved into the universe. Children do not yet understand that parents are improvising most of this.

Then comes ten to twenty. The great reversal.

This is the era when we realize our parents are not gods at all. They are, in fact, deeply embarrassing. They listen to the wrong music. They wear the wrong clothes. They say things in public they should absolutely not say. They exist too loudly.

Teenagers don’t just dislike their parents; they reject them as a survival strategy. Independence requires friction. To become yourself, you must push against something solid. And parents, poor things, are right there.

Everything they do is wrong. Everything they say is suspect. Advice becomes interference. Concern becomes control. Love becomes oppression. The teenager’s primary emotional register is outrage, and parents are the nearest available target.

What’s fascinating is that parents often haven’t changed much at all. What has changed is the lens. The child is now trying to build a self, and parents represent the old order - the rules, the limits, the version of you that existed before you knew who you were. They must be opposed, if only temporarily.

From twenty to thirty, things get interesting. This is the age of conscious rejection. This is where we don’t just dislike our parents - we actively define ourselves against them.

“I’ll never be like my father.”
“I’ll never make the mistakes my mother made.”
“I’ll do it differently.”

This is the era of declarations. Of moral clarity. Of certainty.

We move out, make our own choices, choose different values, different careers, different partners. Sometimes this is healthy. Sometimes it’s reactive. Often it’s both. We tell ourselves we are finally free, while quietly borrowing their furniture and phoning them when something breaks.

Parents at this stage are tolerated. Occasionally consulted. Frequently dismissed. They are now relics of a worldview we believe we have outgrown.

Then, somewhere between thirty and forty, a subtle shift begins. Usually unannounced. Often unwelcome.

We start to understand them.

Not excuse everything. Not romanticize the past. But understand.

We see the pressures they were under. The limited options they had. The social expectations, the money worries, the compromises. We realize they were not villains or heroes, but people doing the best they could with the tools they had at the time.

This is often triggered by responsibility. Careers. Relationships. Children of our own. Suddenly we are tired in new ways. Worried in new ways. Making decisions without guarantees. And we realize, with a small internal wince, that our parents were navigating something just as uncertain.

We begin to see them not as obstacles to our identity, but as human beings with histories, regrets, and fears that predate us.

From forty to fifty, something even stranger happens. We start to marvel at them.

How did they cope with all of this?
How did they keep going?
How did they survive things we are only now beginning to understand?

We notice their resilience. Their endurance. The quiet strength we once mistook for rigidity. We recognize sacrifices that were invisible at the time. We hear stories we were too busy to listen to before.

At this stage, parents become archives. Living records of another era. They remember things we don’t. They carry family stories, cultural shifts, losses, victories. They become, in a way, witnesses to our own lives.

And finally, fifty plus. The final, inescapable twist.

We become them.

Not all at once. Not in the ways we swore we wouldn’t. But in fragments. In phrases. In habits.

You hear your parent’s voice come out of your mouth and freeze mid-sentence. You give advice you once rolled your eyes at. You worry about the same things. You tell the same stories, convinced they’re new.

And here’s the truly unsettling part - you finally understand why they did some of the things they did.

This is not a failure. It’s a continuation.

The great secret of adulthood is that no one ever stops becoming their parents entirely. We only integrate them, argue with them internally, revise them, and carry them forward in altered form. Even rejection leaves a mark.

Our parents shape us not just through what they did right, but through what they got wrong. Through what we accept, what we resist, and what we quietly inherit despite ourselves.

And perhaps that’s the point.

The relationship with our parents is not a straight line. It’s a long, looping conversation that lasts a lifetime. At different ages, we need different versions of them - and different versions of ourselves.

In the end, the real work isn’t love or hate. It’s understanding. And the moment we truly understand them is usually the moment we realize how little time there ever was to do so.

Which is both funny, tragic, and deeply human.

Keep Writing!