"As best I can figure it, the real dad role models for late '00s are Steven Keaton and Jason Seaver"

Huh?

"If you're a woman and were spanked, in other words, you're more likely to be a spanker. But if you were are a guy and were spanked, you are less likely to spank."

Hey Brian, can you clarify this? Do you mean that there was no correlation between mom and son, i.e., guys who were spanked are less likely to spank than women who were spanked? Or do you mean there was a negative correlation, i.e., guys who were spanked are less likely to spank than guys who weren't spanked?

I've always been conscious of how much my parenting style mirrors my mom. She gave me the great gift of zero guilt over working and not being Martha Stewart, of realizing that it's not just ok but healthy to give your kids (reasonable) freedom and responsibility. But I just recently realized that I inherited something from my dad, too: my tendency to talk waaaaay too much to make sure my kids understand everything. :-)

Great topic. I have my own anecdote to share -- DH was slapped and spanked as a child (his mom was young, naive and they were in India). He is most definitely against hitting children or spanking them, but also today, forgives and has a loving relationship with his mom. We have a 4yo and a 1yo, and both love their gentle, affectionate dad.

I was spanked as a child and my mom was frequently cross. I have slapped the hand of my 4yo once (he gave me such a wounded look) and spanked my 1yo once (I felt horrible). I can also be cross with my kids, something I'm really working on. But my mom also was not very affectionate (I try hard to be physically affectionate and hope to continue to be even as my kids age. She did read often to us and valued education highly, as well as "culture" (museums, art, classical music, etc.). I value those things too. She also gave me a great example of someone who loved her work (I love mine too).

In a round about way isn't Brian saying that 20-30 years ago most dads were not as hands on, so their children tended to mimic their mother's parenting? I suppose this is changing as men become more hands on.

I couldn't even remember who Steve Keaton and Jason Seaver were, so that shows you how much I paid attention to TV Dads. I was more aware of how parents of my friends treated their kids than TV parents. My husband seems to have picked up a lot more of his father's parenting traits than his mother, and he didn't pay attention to TV dads either. Frankly, I think the TV dad comment is bizarre - do/did people really parent according to fictional TV dads??

I think the reference to sitcom dads was slightly tongue in cheek. There were few dads even in those days who were around that much - so those were the only role models.

My husband and I try to do things as opposed to our upbringing as possible. Okay, so that's not entirely true (mom valued education and culture, ensured that we did lots of activities).
But I grew up in a house where yelling was the norm, like, a lot, and it wasn't the best household to grow up in - I really didn't necessarily want to start a family til I met my DH, really. We both got lots of freedom and independence growing up, which we think is extremely important.
But mostly, I try not to emulate my upbringing. As mentioned, yes, there are some things that I do think were good, but mostly, not. And certainly I wouldn't want to emulate my dad.
My DH, well, he sees how strange his upbringing was, even now. He was pretty much ignored because he was a boy, and his sisters apparently needed more 'help' (talk about a self fulfilling prophecy).
My mom was extremely critical, and it wasn't so nice. I try to not criticize my children, or ridicule them, and I do see how I do it and am certainly trying to change it, every day. And I call my kids on it too.

I hope government money was used to fund this groundbreaking important research.

Like atlmom, I view my Mom as a lesson in what NOT to do. My Mom was/is a completely unaffectionate, not dependable, flake. She left my Dad and me when I was two years old.
My Dad, on the other hand, raised me with the generous help of his Mother. My Dad was and still is affectionate, understanding, dependable, stable and an all around good guy. I guess my parenting style reflects his and my Grandmother's (although that woman would pop a kid with whatever she happend to have handy - wooden spoon, frying pan, broom, magazine...whatever).
If I had to pick a TV family to emulate, it would be the Huxtables. When I was a little girl, I wished for a Mommy like Claire.

If I had to pick a TV family to emulate, it would be the Huxtables. When I was a little girl, I wished for a Mommy like Claire.

That is too funny. I always liked Elise Keaton. BTW, the Keatons were from family ties and the Seavers were from growing pains.

Anyway, I think men and women are doing a lot less spanking today. I think it is just generational. I think our parents slapped first and spoke second. I think it is the reverse today.

I think most people, myself included, take what they liked from their childhood and try to repeat it and disregard what they didn't like. Some days you are just trying to make it to the next day-coasting through life with out a plan or a philosophy.

I have to admit that I have never actually spanked my kids but I have hand slapped a few times. I feel terrible about it. But I think on average very young kids do seem more out of control than they were in my days. Not that spanking is right. But my generation had the deep seated fear of being swatted and kids today just don't seem to care about time outs.

I try hard to NOT be like my mother. She was very much into spanking and critical and affectionate. Despite that, she was a much better mother than my father was a father.

I guess I am trying to go it on my own - keeping my own childhood in the back of my mind as I work on my parenting skills. I am trying to model the kind of parents that I wish my parents were. I hope I am successful. I probably won't know until the kids are grownup.

I'm not a mom yet (will be in about 2 months!) but my husband and I have talked a lot about how we want to raise our family. Basically we plan to take the good and forget the bad from each set of parents - as I think everyone does. For my own part, one of my biggest things is not to raise my voice (my family yells a lot and is loud in general).

You take the good, you take the bad, the Facts of Life... Sorry, it was just sitting there. Best of luck.

BB

i don't think we give too much thought about rejecting or accepting our parent's habits.

we talk to our friends, read, listen and try to do what makes sense to us.

some of that mirrors what are parents did and some of it doesn't. of course how we were raised influences how we act, but we try to be fairly mindful of our actions.

we're in our late 30's, so quite a bit removed from living at home. also, we're physically far away from our parents. so maybe those two facts help explain why their behavior isn't more present in our minds.

It is easy to be hyper-critical of parents but in most instances unwarranted as the vast majority do their best and there are no classes (or weren't in those days). In some ways this is another doh! study - it's rather obvious that most people learn from their parents parenting (or lack thereof).

As for things I would do differently I have vowed not to force my kids into many activities like piano lessons, boy scouts, specific team sports, etc. while encouraging them to engage in productive pursuits (always a fine line). I think my parents were also clueless about alcohol and pot use - always a difficult problem to address but one where you absolutely cannot put your head in the sand. Finally I know that we are more lax about TV viewing but this will hopefully change as the children age.

Certainly there were some things DH and I learned about parenting from our mothers in spite of their various problems and failures (for anyone who wants background, there's a decent summary in last Thursday's blog at 5pm, so I'm not repeating it today).

The most important thing was that I was *not* going to be a full-time stay-at-home mom. I'm way too much like my mother, and I'd have ended up in the locked-room-with-padded-walls next door to hers. Mostly, I try to follow the example of my paternal grandma, who put in a lot of time raising me and my siblings while our mother was in and out of various mental institutions.

For DH, his first 5-6 years were pretty good, and I think he draws from that, and from the foster-mother who saved him when he was 15, and ignores everything that happened to him and his sister in between.

DH's older sister has also been a parenting mentor and role model for both of us. Her son's a college sophomore, and a terrific young man, and her ideas and methods of discipline have worked with our kids too.

"we talk to our friends, read, listen and try to do what makes sense to us.

some of that mirrors what are parents did and some of it doesn't."

Hear, hear. Our parents were not the starting point for any of our parenting decisions or styles. We didn't want to be reactionary and simply NOT do whatever they did, so we discarded that data and started fresh with seeking guidance from objective sources.

Speaking of data, I'd like to see the data on which the conclusions of the researchers is based. I suspect the conclusions are the research equivalent of horse manure.

@anon - I suspect the way I was raised has a great deal to do with how I have approached being a parent myself, even 40 years later. I'd have to discard myself to completely discard that "data".

BB