What's a Parent's Role?

Take our Authoritative Parenting Test

Find a family therapist near me

Good intentions on the part of parents do not prevent painful consequences for their children.

Taking responsibility for how we have parented is not the same as accepting blame or condemning ourselves.

Regret about the past becomes valuable when it changes how we relate to our young adult child in the present.

A considerable challenge in the work that I do with my patients is helping them to distinguish between responsibility and culpability, which is often a difficult distinction to make. Something done deliberately is different from something done accidentally, and an accident resulting from negligence differs from an accident that was truly unavoidable.

But just because we are not culpable does not mean that we have nothing to think about, nothing to ponder—and nothing to regret. This is particularly relevant when it comes to parents of young adult children.

Let’s examine the relationship between 50-year-old Donovan and his 23-year-old daughter, Inez. Their relationship has grown uncomfortably distant over the last several years, and they finally agree, at Donovan’s urging, to make some time to sit down with me and sort things out.

Inez tearfully admits, “You were a tyrant, Dad, you pushed me and pushed me in school and I never........

© Psychology Today