You aren't your parents, and you aren't your kids.

When you were born, your parents were already adults. Okay, maybe they were teenagers -- God forbid! -- but they still had been in the world for a while and had figured out some things and hadn't figured out other things. They had bonded with each other and had you. So you come into the world, an absolutely powerless being, at the mercy of these people you don't know and who don't know you. Whatever they've learned is passed on to you or not, depending on how much they're invested in being parents. At any rate, you grow up and learn about the world in your own way, and then you measure that against what you learned from your parents (or parent if they got divorced). You weigh it all, not sure if you're right about your calculations, and then you make own big decisions -- about school, work, a mate, etc. -- and set about doing the best you can to have a good life.

And then your parents weigh in. If they're nice people, they won't interfere too much: they'll trust that you've absorbed good lessons from them and are making sensible decisions about all these important issues. If they're not so nice -- maybe damaged, maybe just selfish -- they may try to put pressure on you to make decisions that have more to do with them than with you. If they didn't take school seriously, they may advise you to go out and get a job -- without telling you that you'll probably be stuck in low-paying jobs forever. They may even pressure to have kids too early or to spend more time with them because they're bored/lonely/miserable/etc.

Resist it all. They brought you into this world without your permission. You owe them nothing.

You are your own person, created by them but not in debt to them, and you have to decide for yourself what is important in your life. It's scary to think about but very freeing, too.

Okay, so you've chosen a job -- maybe or maybe not your life's work -- and you've also chosen a husband or wife. You find a place to live together and make it a home. You have sex -- a lot more during these first months than you'll ever have again the rest of your lives, so enjoy it -- and you start having children. The natural order of things, and you're right in the midst of it:
congratulations!

So here comes the hard part: You have to remember all that stuff about not owing your parents
anything. Your little one is not going to owe you anything. He or she will grow up, with your nurturing and your help and your advice, to be a totally different person from you or your mate or his or her grandparents. A new person experiencing the world for himself or herself, for better or worse. You had some influence, to be sure, but your job is done.

Now what?

Which brings me back to my main point: You aren't your parents, and you aren't your kids. You are you. Try to separate yourself from your parents at some point. Be polite to them, even caring. But understand that they were already grown-ups when they had you, and so they brought their own issues -- with themselves and with each other -- to your upbringing. Trust them when it seems to make sense, but also learn to trust yourself. You've been out in the world a while, and you've seen how people treat each other and react to each other. You have some opinions about how life should be lived, right? Right.

And, if you're a parent, you've tried to bring up your child in a way that you think will make him or her a useful, cooperative, kind -- and maybe fun -- person. Unless you've really screwed up by putting your own interests first -- and you know if you have -- you should feel confident and happy to let your child go out into the world. Yes, our children will require more help from us when they venture out on their own -- financial help/emotional help/etc. -- but it's important that we make them feel good about taking that first step . . . and insist that they take it! That they -- gulp -- leave us.

And when they leave us, what are we left with? Ourselves. You. And me. Not our parents, not our children. Just us. Just you. Just me. Are you okay with that?

Good luck!