One of the saddest aftermaths of that Bean Dad asshole’s bullshit yesterday and my vomitus overshare afterwards:
The sheer volume of people raised by toxic parents who said they never had kids because they worried they couldn’t raise a child well.
Abuse has a long tail.
1/
If that is you and you are still at a stage of *deciding* whether or not to someday have kids, just know that you can indeed be a good and loving parent.
You inherited nothing. Toxicity isn’t written into your DNA.
2/
Parenting is ‘will’ more than ‘skill’.
If you have the will, you will find (or can learn) the skill.
I think being a product of some dysfunction can be, ironically, a strong foundation for becoming a loving parent.
I’ve had a couple Guinness so I am just the right level of disinhibited to lay out why I am white-hot with incandescent aggrievement about that dumb Bean Dad mother****** and the people defending him.
Buckle up. Turbulence may occur in flight.
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If nothing else, this will allow people to understand me better. Some will like me more; some will like me less. I do not remotely care which camp people fall into.
I had a fucked up childhood. It was an insidious kind of fucked up. Not physically abusive in a way that “counts”.
I spent weekends hostage to a depressed, alcoholic father in a small New York City apartment.
In summer, if the apartment windows were open when I came back from the schoolyard across the street and I could hear music playing too loud, it was going to be a long night.
3/
I grew up in New York City. By 8 years old, I was on my own after school; home alone with my sister two nights a week; cooking dinner in a gas oven by myself; and doing my own laundry.
The people in my mentions talking about how “Bean Dad” was just “teaching”...
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...his 9-year old a valuable life lesson by refusing to show her how to open a can have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.
Bean Dad could have written a post about his day that said “taught my daughter how to use a can opener and then we did a puzzle together.”
2/
He *could have* walked his child through getting to the root of their actual problem - being hungry - and solving it.
He *could have* used his internet access to teach his child how to seek information to solve problems.