Most of the time, I give parents a lot of slack and huge loads of grace. The job of parenting is an enormous one, and most work hard at it. Now and then, however, I have to wrestle with the simple fact that just because a human being can reproduce does not guarantee that he or she will function as a mature and competent parent. Parenting is a huge challenge to the maturity of the parent at every stage of the process. Parenting is about growing up for the parent, and some folks never get that.
Some parents really do want a parent-child relationship as long as they can be the child.
I know too well the anguish of children who learn early that the only way they can survive is to suppress their own valid, childhood needs in deference to a parent whose needs must come first. I ve seen those tiny people, acting like adults before their time, thwarting their own needs for emotional and sometimes physical nourishment and sustenance so that an infantile parent can have what he or she wants. I ve observed the chilling dramas of gifted children who figure out at an incredibly early age how to adapt to an environment that is rigidly organized around the needs of adults. I know how children learn to gratify a parents narcissism. Children learn early if they must work around the character defect or self-indulgence of a parent in order to protect themselves in a system that violates the rights and privileges of childhood.