Parenting as your own parents parented can be an extremely foolish approach. Especially when you allow this approach to give you yourself license to parent stupidly. It's lazy, taking no analysis whatsoever into account.
Let's say you were parented by a dad who was easily angered and subsequently was perpetually "energized" by that anger, and thus, he behaved - more often than not - like a monster.
This is assuming that parent (father) had a normal brain which absolutely could choose to NOT elevate anger hierarchically as his "trigger" emotion. He just wouldn't choose to do it.
As this man's child, you were likely abused whilst living out your childhood terrorized.
So, why not choose to examine your anger-fueled dad's approach for the benefit of your own children? Why not develop a disdain for the very triggers that ushered in so much damage to you and your siblings?
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What I've found is two-fold whilst attempting to answer these questions.
1. Anger can feel quite masculine for some men, therefore it can become categorized as a behavioral right.
2. Children who are abused, within certain environments, can become adults who absolutely cannot acknowledge that abuse under any circumstances. Therefore, it's as if it simply never happened, yet the damage / precedents from the abuse is no doubt still there.
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If you happen to be a child of one of these generationally anger-fueled dads and you have children yourself, one approach too is to look farther upstream at your grandfather's (dad's dad) temperament / actions. By choosing to put your focus there, you're doing the work your own father couldn't / wouldn't.
And know this, this approach can be taken even if your grandfather is six feet under by you working to find out who he was via those who knew him who are still living, and using that knowledge therapeutically. Sometimes, we have to do the work our own parents should be doing for the sake of our own family's well-being.
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