I’ve noticed that people sometimes get offended when I say that many of our adult problems are rooted in childhood. The moment I bring it up, it’s almost like something sacred gets touched.. people take it as a personal attack on the love their parents gave them. It threatens a worldview that so many of us were raised with: that parents always act in our best interest, and therefore, talking about harm equals blaming them.
But here’s what I really mean and what I want to make clear: Parents don’t have to be evil monsters to cause damage.
A parent can be loving, affectionate, protective… and still unknowingly hurt their child. Not because they lack love, but because they were operating within beliefs and norms that shaped them.
I’ve come to understand that, as a species, we’re still very early in learning how to parent emotionally. We’re only beginning to understand children’s psychological needs. The very concept of “childhood” as a developmentally unique stage is actually recent in human history.
Just to put things into perspective:
-- In medieval Europe, children were often treated as miniature adults, expected to behave, work, and respond like grown-ups. Childhood wasn’t seen as a separate phase of emotional development.
- Corporal punishment..hitt!ng, $panking, and phys!cal discipline was considered completely normal for centuries and was used both at home and in schools.
- Even in the early modern period some parenting manuals taught that a parent should “break a child’s will” early in life..not because they were cruel, but because society genuinely believed that suppressing the child’s individuality was necessary to raise an obed!£nt adult
- it is only in the 20th and 21st centuries that psychological research has begun showing the long-term effects of such parenting..like heightened @nxiety, depr£ssion, relationship difficulties, and emotional dysregulation later in life
So when I talk about childhood affecting adulthood, I’m not talking about blame. I’m talking about cont£xt.
many of our parents loved us deeply.. and still ended up hurting us because the world hadn’t yet learned what children actually need to feel safe, seen, and emotionally supported. They inherited their parenting models from generations that didn’t understand neuroscience, tr@uma, attachment, or emotional development
So for me, acknowledging childhood is not about accusing anyone.
It’s about finally acknowledging our reality.
It’s about understanding where our wounds came from so we don’t carry them blindly for the rest of our lives.
It’s about taking our healing seriously, so we can reclaim our lives rather than living out patterns that were formed before we were even old enough to speak.
It’s about freeing myself to live differently.
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