Every parent sets out with the simple, powerful intention to be a good one. Yet, it seems an inescapable part of the human story that no matter how hard they try, their child will one day hold some resentment against them. Is it even possible to raise a child without eventually becoming the source of their pain? This paradox often becomes a central theme in psychotherapy. Many of our behavioral and cognitive patterns are forged in childhood, and to understand our present selves, we must often revisit our "inner child" and the relationship we had with the people who raised us.

But the root of this resentment is often not what we think. It’s not always about a single traumatic event or a malicious parent. More often, it’s a quiet misunderstanding that spans generations—a conflict born from a world that changes faster than we can adapt. We, as adults, often judge our parents' methods not by the standards of the world they lived in, but by the standards of today. And when the rulebook for parenting has been rewritten five times in the last century alone, this cycle of resentment becomes almost inevitable.

A Century of Shifting Ground

The conflict between generations has always existed. The young believe their elders are out of touch; the old believe the youth are foolish. But the 20th century amplified this conflict to an unprecedented degree. It was a century of immense upheaval—global wars, societal restructuring, and technological revolutions that dramatically altered the fabric of family life. Each major shift brought with it a new definition of what it meant to be a "good parent," leaving a trail of generational misunderstandings in its wake.

Turn of the 20th Century: The Gospel of Survival

Imagine a world, just over a hundred years ago, rooted in agrarian life. Families were large, work was hard from a young age, and child mortality was tragically high. In this society, what made the Smiths "good parents" and the Joneses "bad parents"? The criterion was brutally simple: survival.

Families commonly had 10, 15, or even more children. The great scientist Dmitry Mendeleev, for instance, was the seventeenth child in his family—a number that wasn’t considered extraordinary at the time. A good parent was one whose children physically survived into adulthood. If the Jones family had 15 children and 12 reached reproductive age, they were celebrated. If the Smith family had 12 and only three survived, it was seen as a failing. No one demanded that parents provide a formal education or foster a child’s individuality. The single, all-consuming goal was to drag your child across the finish line of survival.

The 1930s: The Demand for a Literate Worker

Just 30 years later, the world had changed. Industrialization swept across nations, pulling families from rural villages into burgeoning cities. This migration had two immediate effects on the family. First, families shrank. You can raise a dozen children on a farm, but not in a cramped room in a city tenement.

Second, a new requirement emerged: education. The new industrial state needed literate workers who could operate machinery and read instructions. Suddenly, it wasn't enough to simply keep your child alive. A good parent was now expected to provide at least a basic education. State-run nurseries appeared, allowing women to return to the workforce just weeks after giving birth.

The seeds of a new kind of resentment were planted. An adult in the 1930s could now look back at their parents and say, "You never taught me to read. I had to struggle through night school, and now I can never have a real career." The ground had already shifted beneath their feet.

The 1960s: The Dawn of the 'Enriched' Childhood

By the 1960s, another monumental shift occurred: an unprecedented growth in the quality of life for many. With more economic stability, separate apartments, and social guarantees, the expectations for parenting expanded yet again.

It was no longer enough to ensure survival and basic education. A good parent in the 1960s was expected to provide an enriched childhood. This meant extra-curricular activities—sports, music, or art clubs. It meant buying toys, not just letting a child play with sticks and stones. It meant dressing a child in clothes they might actually like.

Still, the focus remained on creating a productive member of society, guided by doctors and state institutions. There was little to no discussion of a child's unique personality or inner emotional world. But for an adult in the 1960s, a new list of grievances could be leveled against their parents who raised them in the harsh 1930s: "You sent me to a nursery when I was two months old. You never bought me a single toy. You just didn't care." They were judging the parenting of a desperate era by the standards of a prosperous one.

The 1990s: The Collapse of Ideals and the Worship of Money

The end of the 20th century brought another cataclysmic change for many parts of the world: the collapse of an entire political and economic system. This wasn't just an economic crisis; it was an ideological one. The ideals that had guided generations vanished, leaving a profound emptiness. For parents of this era, it was like being cast out into space without a map. They didn't know what to do with their own lives, let alone how to prepare their children for an unknown future.

The state, which had once played a significant role in raising a child through youth organizations and shared ideology, completely retreated. The responsibility fell 100% on the parents. In the ensuing economic chaos, a new religion was born: money. The primary measure of a good parent became their ability to provide financial security.

A child in the 1960s could say "I want to be a railway worker" and be encouraged. But in the 1990s, a child saying "I want to be an artist" would likely be met with panic. "An artist? How will you eat? Go become an economist or a lawyer; that's where the money is." Parents, haunted by their own financial precarity, prioritized survival in the new market economy above all else. They had no framework for nurturing a child's individuality when their entire world had just been upended.

Today: The Rise of the 'Perfect' Personality

This brings us to our current era, where two long-term trends have finally converged. First, the trend of shrinking family sizes has reached its apex. Second, the investment required to raise a child—financially, emotionally, and developmentally—has soared to its peak. We now have very few children, and those children are very "expensive."

This has created a new, modern ideal: the parent as a cultivator of personality. Today's good parent is expected to do it all: provide economic well-being, ensure a top-tier education, and, most importantly, create the perfect environment for their child's unique personality to blossom. We are pioneers in raising children with a deep focus on their individual desires, inclinations, and emotional needs.

And here lies the heart of modern resentment. Adults today, armed with this new philosophy, look back at their parents—who were raised in a world of collective consciousness and brutal pragmatism—and ask, "Why didn't you listen to me? Why weren't you interested in who I was?" We are demanding that people who were bartering alcohol rations for cereal just to feed us should have also possessed the advanced psychological knowledge of a world they couldn't have imagined.

This isn't about absolving past generations of their mistakes. It's about understanding them. Our resentment often stems from this temporal dissonance—from judging the past by the rules of the present. Perhaps the first step in healing is not to forgive, but simply to see our parents not as the parents we wish we had, but as the people they were, products of a time and place we can now only try to comprehend.

References

• Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (1962). This groundbreaking work argues that the very concept of "childhood" as a distinct phase of life is a modern invention. Ariès shows how, over centuries, societal views on children shifted from seeing them as miniature adults to recognizing them as beings with unique needs. This supports the article's central theme that standards for "good parenting" are not fixed but evolve with broader social and historical changes.
• Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (1979). Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory provides a powerful framework for understanding the article's points. He introduces the "chronosystem," which encompasses the major historical events and societal shifts that occur during a person's life (like industrialization or economic collapse). His work confirms that these large-scale changes profoundly impact family dynamics and parental behavior, explaining why parenting styles differ so dramatically from one generation to the next. (See particularly Chapters 1 and 4 for the core concepts).