The Book!

Enmeshment is a description of a relationship between two or more people in which personal boundaries are permeable and unclear. This often happens on an emotional level in which two people "feel" each other's emotions, or when one person becomes emotionally escalated and the other family member does as well.

Time or money! Which is more important?

If someone sacrifices time with their family to gain financial independence, are they a bad parent?

 

What about the parent who believes time spent with their kids is more valuable than anything, so, they end up enmeshing their children raising them with undefined boundaries?

 

Sometimes I wonder, who wrote the book? Who says there is only one way to be a successful or effective parent? And why do so many people push the Good vs. Bad parent narrative.

 

Let’s unpack this for a minute!

 

Someone building a career devotes 10, 12, 16 hours a day, five days a week, often weekends too. continuously missing events, holidays, and weekend. Promises made, promises broken! When home, they are distracted, rarely present, and so stressed that they are not patient and easily irritable.

 

Now, I reflect on the person living a street life. Every day they are back and forth, in and out of the house. Nights they are out late because peak hours for them are between people getting home from work and last call at the bar. They have seen incarceration and seem trapped in a loop.

 

Which one is better? Or do the different circumstances reflect the same environmental outcomes?

 

Being raised by a single mother, I longed for the nuclear family! I believed that because my family structure didn't resemble Full House, The Cosby’s, or The Huxtables that there was something missing. I was somehow less for it, and it was my parents’ fault.

 

Thinking about it now, this is a one in a half to two century old narrative about what the AMERICAN FAMILIAL structure should be that may not reflect current realities. It is a narrative that is pushed in homes and schools as kids are continuously bullied for it.

 

It has taken me years to understand that the Good vs. Bad parent narrative is complete B.S.

 

Most people attempt to do what they can in and with the situations that they are given. This is a narrative we should teach and one I can stand behind.

 

I don't know who wrote the book, but isn't it about time it is revised?

 

1NF@MOUS!