Despite loving them deeply, I'm finally ready to talk about the normalized parenting behaviors from my boomer parents that left me and countless others in therapy for decades.
Growing up, I thought my parents hung the moon. They worked hard, provided everything I needed, and genuinely wanted the best for me. Yet here I am at forty-something, still unpacking the damage from behaviors they considered completely normal.
If you're from Generation X or a millennial, you probably know exactly what I mean. Our boomer parents did their best with what they knew, but some of their "parenting wisdom" left scars we're still healing from today.
My mother was a teacher and my father an engineer, both brilliant in their fields. They gave me opportunities they never had. They also gave me anxiety, perfectionism, and a complicated relationship with success that took years of therapy to untangle.
Sound familiar? Then you might recognize these seven behaviors that were somehow acceptable back then but would raise serious red flags today.
1) Making everything a competition
Remember when your parents compared you to every other kid in the neighborhood? "Why can't you be more like Sarah? She gets straight A's." Or "Your cousin just made varsity. What sport are you good at?"
In my house, being labeled "gifted" in elementary school turned life into an endless competition. Every report card, every school project, every extracurricular activity became a chance to prove I was living up to my potential. Or failing to.
The message was clear: Your worth depends on how you stack up against others. Not on who you are as a person, not on your effort or growth, but on whether you're winning or losing some invisible race.
Studies now show that constant comparison damages children's self-esteem and creates adults who struggle with imposter syndrome. But back then? It was just good parenting. Push your kids to excel by showing them who's doing better.
I spent my twenties constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering if I was achieving enough, earning enough, succeeding enough. The competition never ended because the finish line kept moving.
2) Dismissing mental health as weakness
- "You're fine, just toughen up."
- "Stop being so sensitive."
- "In my day, we didn't have time for all this feelings nonsense."
These phrases were the soundtrack of my teenage years whenever I tried to express anxiety or sadness. Mental health wasn't a thing you worked on. It was a luxury for people who couldn't handle real life.
When I had panic attacks in high school, my parents told me to take deep breaths and stop being dramatic. When I suggested seeing a counselor in college, they asked what I could possibly have to be depressed about with all the advantages they'd given me.
The irony? Both my parents probably could have benefited from therapy themselves. But admitting you needed help with your emotions was seen as failure, not self-care.
This mindset left an entire generation unable to process emotions healthily. We learned to stuff everything down until it exploded in our thirties and forties, usually in the form of burnout, anxiety disorders, or relationship problems.
3) Using shame as a teaching tool
Public humiliation was a parenting strategy, not child abuse. Getting yelled at in front of your friends, having your mistakes announced at family dinners, being told "wait until I tell your father" as a threat hanging over your head all day.
I still remember the time I got a B on a math test and my mother told everyone at her book club how disappointed she was. The other mothers nodded sympathetically while I sat there, face burning, wishing I could disappear.
The lesson I learned? Making mistakes makes you unlovable. Better to never try anything risky than face that kind of shame again.
Psychologists now understand that shame doesn't motivate better behavior. It creates adults who are terrified of failure, who can't handle constructive criticism, who apologize constantly for existing. But our parents thought embarrassment built character.
4) Expecting emotional labor from children
How many times were you responsible for managing your parents' feelings? "Don't upset your father, he's had a hard day." "Be good so mommy doesn't get a headache."
In my house, I learned early to read the room, anticipate moods, and adjust my behavior to keep everyone calm. If my parents fought, I felt responsible for mediating. If they were stressed about money, I felt guilty for needing new shoes.
Children aren't supposed to be their parents' emotional support system. But boomer parents often treated kids like mini-therapists, dumping adult problems on young shoulders and expecting comfort in return.
This creates adults who struggle with boundaries, who feel responsible for everyone else's happiness, who burn out from trying to fix problems that were never theirs to solve.
5) Treating success as the only option
Failure wasn't just disappointing in my house. It was catastrophic. Getting into a good college wasn't a goal, it was the bare minimum. Having a stable career wasn't an achievement, it was expected.
When I left my financial analyst position to become a writer, you'd have thought I announced plans to join the circus. The disappointment was crushing. All those years of education, all that potential, wasted on something creative and unstable.
The pressure to succeed at all costs meant never taking risks, never exploring passions, never discovering who you actually were beneath all those expectations. How many of us chose careers to please our parents instead of ourselves?
Recovery meant learning that my worth wasn't tied to my salary or job title. But confronting my parents' disappointment and realizing I couldn't live for their approval took years of work.
6) Invalidating children's experiences
"You think you have it hard? When I was your age..."
Every struggle, every complaint, every difficult emotion was met with a story about how much worse they had it. Your problems weren't real problems. Your feelings weren't valid. Your experiences didn't count.
Broke up with your first love? Well, they didn't even date until college. Stressed about schoolwork? Try working in a factory at sixteen. Feeling lonely? At least you have your own room, they shared with three siblings.
This constant invalidation taught us our feelings didn't matter. We learned to minimize our own experiences, to feel guilty for struggling, to believe we had no right to be upset about anything.
7) Making love conditional
The silent treatment when you disappointed them. The withdrawal of affection after bad grades. The sudden warmth when you achieved something worth bragging about.
Love felt like something you earned through achievement, not something you deserved just for existing. Acceptance came with conditions. Support depended on performance.
This creates adults who are never sure they're truly loved. Who constantly seek validation. Who tie their self-worth to external accomplishments because that's the only way they learned to earn affection.
Moving forward without forgetting
I adore my parents. I understand they did their best with the tools they had. Their generation faced different challenges, held different values, operated with different information about child development and psychology.
But understanding doesn't mean accepting that these behaviors were okay. It doesn't mean passing these patterns on to the next generation. And it definitely doesn't mean we have to forgive everything.
Healing means acknowledging the harm while holding space for the love. It means breaking cycles while honoring where we came from. It means doing better without completely condemning those who came before.
If you recognize your own childhood in these behaviors, know you're not alone. An entire generation is doing this work together, unpacking the baggage our well-meaning parents handed us and deciding what to keep and what to leave behind.
The gift we can give ourselves? Permission to feel angry about what wasn't okay while still loving the imperfect humans who raised us. Both things can be true. And both things need to be true for us to heal.
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