Everyday Canvas

Parents and Children

Prompt: How much do you think the life-stories of parents affect their children? To what degree has the story of your parents affected you, if it has?

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To start with, the genetic blueprint is passed from parents to children; however, these genes can be turned on and off by the environment and experiences. There is even a newly coined science for this: Epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of how individual genes can be activated or deactivated by life experiences. Without going too deeply into scientific detail, epigenetics claims that people who are abused as young children are more likely to have genetic changes that make coping with stress more difficult. Epigenetics also claims that we’re not completely at the mercy of our genes, but are better affected by our health and lifestyle decisions and habits.

In the same vein, I am finding that I have all my grandmother’s familiar diseases, but their effect on me is much milder than it used to be on her. This might have something to do with what the epigenetics claims as well as the progress of medicine.

I think, scientific data or not, emotional factors play a much more important role where the parents’ effects on children are concerned. A child is like a sponge and his parents’ stresses can affect a child’s makeup, such as mood disorders, addiction, and even learning problems. Children of divorce and children whose parents experience serious relationship problems may suffer greatly with guilt and their own relationship problems later in life. On the other hand, children who are accepted for who they are and experience a blissful family life end up becoming happy individuals.

My parents were very much in love, but they couldn’t possibly get along, and their relationship ended in separation. Although I blamed all of us, even though I was six when they separated, I was very careful in my later life not to repeat my mother’s mistakes as she was the parent who raised me. In fact, most people who know my family comment on how different I am from her, personality-wise, yet does that mean that I am totally different from her? Not at all, but when I feel an acerbic reply or misunderstanding rising up from within me, I restrain myself and somehow manage to come up with a positive attitude. To say the least, this was very difficult to achieve during the earlier years, but it became a habit eventually. Also, my upbringing was overly strict. In contrast, I acted on the slightly lax side with my children. In my case, I acted or tried to act unlike my parents, mostly the one parent who raised me, but I hope I managed to keep her good sides, too, at least to some degree.

So yes, parents, their life stories and who they are, do have a say on their children’s ways, and whether we accept or reject our parents, we always carry them inside us in some way.