My parents divorced when I was 8.
My dad proceeded to parade women in and out of our lives, and then moved in with someone who was a friend of our mom's.
My mom remarried within a few years, to a man she met at a bar. As soon as she married, my dad remarried.

While mom was determined to stay married to her alcoholic husband, regardless of how horrible things were at home (my step-father to this day), my dad continued to run around with women and remarry a few times.

It's no wonder I have trust issues with men, and have myself been married a couple times.

My dad was a country boy, and he was harsh as a parent - yelling, hitting, etc. He only knew what he'd been taught growing up, sadly.
My mom was overwhelmed with 3 girls, and she was very passive/aggressive with us. As time went on, she mostly just let us run wild:(

I am a strict parent, but very loving. Things I do that my parents didn't do? I tell my son I loved him, a lot. I still do. I made him study, I gave him boundaries and enforced rules. I talk to him, as a friend but mostly as a parent. I let him talk, about whatever he wants, and I listen. I treat him with respect. He's 21 and a well balanced, smart young man.

As for SD, I do not parent her if I can help it. And I don't pretend to be her friend either. I am an adult in the household, and will step in if necessary, but she is DH's responsibility.

My parents were together for the neighborhood of 40 years until my mom passed away several years ago.

I actually wanted my parents to get divorced. I remember packing my mom's underwear in a grocery bag when I was 5 so she could leave him (my idea). My dad had/has a bad temper and you would never know what would set him off. I do know that he was physical a few times with my mom, but I don't believe he was regularly "beating" her or anything. I also remember a time when my mom brought us home from a movie and she had picked him up a big mac meal for dinner (which he normally liked) and he got so irate that he smashed the burger into the window of the car while we were inside crying. I also remember trying to get him to leave her alone when she was hiding in the bathroom from him.

I always feel bad for her because she always used to say that since women lived longer than men that she would get her revenge by living well then. Of course, life doesn't give you what you ask for and she developed dementia and died after several years of decline.

Dad??? OH, healthy as ever at 87. He has mellowed a bit as he got older but he can still be very judgemental and opinionated and will be very belittling if you don't agree with him. My dad is very smart and can be very personable but there is some history that I can't fully get past with him.

To be honest, I think my mom fed into the dynamic of their relationship to a certain extent. My brother blamed them both for "screwing up his childhood". He claims he can remember very little of it. I don't know... I think my mom did the best she could. My dad probably is too. I think there is some depression that runs in his family (his mom killed herself).. so that may be part of his black mood periods.

It was bad though, my dad could be raging at my mom and the phone would ring and he could pick it up and be all "mr nice guy" to who he was talking too. He thought that divorce was a sign of failure, and I think that's a big reason why my parents didn't divorce.

My mom generally was more the care giver to us. However, she had a certain matter of factness that wasn't typical of moms. I remember she told me once not to have kids because they were "horrible". To be fair, I am sure my brother and I caused our share of gray hairs but I do think that she wasn't as maternal as other moms.

I don't know though, you have the upbringing you have and it's up to you to move forward and live your life the way you want to live.

WOW, mental illness is real. A lot of mom's out there are mentally ill and their kids suffer tremendously because of it.

My parents divorced when I was 2. About 2 years later my dad moved to the other side of the country. My mother is one of the sweetest, kindest people you could ever meet. I WISH I was more like her. She NEVER said a bad word about my dad (even though as I found out later, she was devastated when he left cheated on her and left, had to be admitted to BSU for a couple of days) yet, she never spoke ill of him to me... EVER. She worked hard to provide for us and I never went without. She remarried when I was 10. My step dad was a wonderful person as well, but quite particular, almost OCD so when I got to be a nasty teenager, we butted heads a lot. I moved out 3 days after I graduated because he and I got into it, but moving out was the best thing I could have done, because we ended up being very close. He died 8 years ago and we had actually just gone shopping and had lunch (just the two of us) a few weeks prior. I'm glad we were all good, as I probably would have carried a lot of guilt if we were not.

My dad remarried but I never met his wife until I was 14. They came for a visit and my wonderful mother actually let them come to the house because I wanted to show them my horse. I remember it clear as day, she had cookies and offered drinks etc. but then just left us be.. there was no weirdness, no feeling uncomfortable. I don't really call my dad's wife my stepmother, I just refer to her by her first name. She is an absolutely lovely person and has always treated me very kindly. In fact when my step dad died, she and my dad actually sent one of the largest arrangements to the funeral home. That's just the kind of people they are.

I know I am blessed to have all these wonderful people in my life. I feel like I parent BS6 along the same lines as my mother did. Although I think I have a bit of a shorter "fuse" than my mother. I truly have often thought that I hope that BS6 has good things to say about me when he gets older. I hope I'm making a positive influence in his life!

I was an unplanned pregnancy, the result of a drive in movie, when my mom was 17 and my dad didn't believe in abortion. My mom says that he loved me before the alcohol took over. I remember being six and finding my mom tied to a chair, her face beaten and bloody. I untied her and she said to get our stuff cause we were leaving and never going back. I remember thinking, "yeah right. We'll be back. We always come back." they had gotten back together and broken up over and over and over again. But we never did go back. We moved in with my grandparents, my mom, and I, and my three siblings. My mom worked at Winn Dixie and took night classes and weekend classes and got her AA degree from Junior College and then got accepted and went to Pharmacy School. My dad would find out what town we had moved to and would hide out in the parking lots of Winn Dixies until he found her and he'd beat her up and then we would move again. I went to 13 different schools as a child until he died in a car accident when i was 12. That's when my mom was able to go to Pharmacy School because we didn't have to fear him and move anymore. I would find letters from my dad written to us that my mother hid. She definitely PAS'd us against him. But I get why she did. He was abusive and an alcholic. He never paid any child support. I remember she would complain about that. I remember having to visit with him in Community Centers with a chaperone when he wasn't in jail and that we were coached not to tell him our teachers name or school names so that he couldn't find us and kidnap us, something he would threaten to do.

My kids have very loving relationships with their fathers. I'm grateful for that. and I love my mom. She is awesome. She is a fierce warrior.

My parents did not like each other, and I was aware of that at three.

My mother lost her father quite young, and had serious daddy issues. She was highly strung, married three times to much older men, and was never really happy. She had bouts of depression and suffered from agoraphobia that worsened as she aged. She craved drama and allowed my siblings' addiction problems to consume her and affect me. I left home for uni and always kept a safe emotional distance from the toxicity she shared with my brother and sister.

My father was elderly and died when I was 12. He was an astute businessman, but a playboy who enjoyed gambling and skirtchasing. My older sister was his favorite, I was mom's, and they both used the kids as weapons to hurt each other. Mom especially used me as her confidant and encouraged me to hate my dad.

It the span of a year, mom divorced dad, remarried, and my dad died. My SF gave me the attention, love, and discipline that I needed, and I'll be forever grateful for that. He was tougher on me than either of my parents, and I would have been a far lesser person if he hadn't been in my life. He died of cancer when I was twenty.

I never wanted bios, but approached steplife with a open mind since I had had a positive experience with my SF. I was naive, however, about SM/female skid issues and how steplife can change in an instant. I also didn't pay nearly enough attention to DH's FOO and the deeply dysfunctional dynamic they had. I thought I could compensate for DH's parental and social deficits. BIG MISTAKE, and how I eventually ended up here.

My Mom is wonderful. Always has been. She was very strict with me and my 2 siblings. She had to be. We were all treated fairly. If one got punished we all got punished. If one did good we all got the reward. My Dad was an alcoholic and killed himself in his truck next to our house when I was 13. My mom did not remarry until we all were out of the house. She had boyfriends, some were idiots but none lived with us and my Mom never allowed them to tell us what to do. There was never much interaction with her boyfriends and us kids. My mom remarried to a wonderful man they have been married 28 years now. We (My Stepdad and I) had one altercation and I was in the wrong. He stood up for my mom and really told me how it was. At the time I am sure I didn't like it because I was a young adult and knew everything... right? But now I know he was right. We are a close family and I think that is what bothers me so much about my SD. She doesn't want to be included or she doesn't feel included enough...

My parents divorced when i was 5. My dad was an alcoholic and my mom leaving him was the catalyst to him getting sober. When drunk he was a very mean man. After he got sober and got his life together he became a very good father.

My mother remarried very quickly to an amazing man who she is still married to. My step father is a very caring, supportive and loving man. I hope to some day be as great of a step parent as he is.

My dad's second wife was not as great. she was very judgmental and a mean spirited woman. I was very glad when my father divorced her.

My parents are still together but their marriage has always been as dysfunctional as it gets. My mom got hooked on prescription pain pills and fought that for nearly a decade. She didn't really kick the addiction until she got grandkids. They are MUCH better grandparents then they were parents, my dad especially.

My parents are strangely complete opposites that came together and made for the best parents myself and my sister could have hoped for. I'm pretty sure my dad is on the autism spectrum (super smart, high IQ, great business sense built on computers, self made millionaire from having nothing but the clothes on his back when he immigrated to America from Taiwan, and unfortunately completely and utterly socially inept.) my mom loves to talk, to laugh, to live, in the field of theater and journalism before having myself and my sister. They were both older when they met, my mom having been married once with no children. Where my dad is quiet and broody and hands off because he's awkward, my mom is engaged and passionate. They travel everywhere together. It's like a strange Disney movie. They had their ups and downs but have been together almost 30 years. My mom usually translates my dad for us because he's a mystery and many of the things he says and does can be misunderstood so you might get upset if you didn't know him or didn't have my mom translate him.

They also love us beyond rhyme or reason and we never once doubted it. I think part of the reason they were such good parents, was because when they found out my mom was pregnant, my dad went out and bought a bajillion child raising and development books... And had my mom read them and then defaulted to her on how to raise us. So we grew up in a family that had excellent communication and analytical skills.

However, you mom sounds like my dad's mom. So it's amazing my dad turned out okay. Manipulative and bitter and would hurt her children if it meant getting what she needed emotionally. My grandfather (who remained married to the psycho until his death) bought a cake for my dad when my dad went to visit his parents (they still lived in Taiwan) and asked my grandma not to eat it before their son got back, my grandma got pissed and forbid my dad to touch it when my grandpa brought it out (my dad was in his 50's at the time) and knowing how explosive and mean his mom could be, he declined the cake and his dad was sad. His dad got hit by a motorcycle and died the next morning.

She also locked my mom out of the house when it was raining, loved it when she pit my dad and his brothers against each other and their wives. The last few years my dad banned her from having contact with my mom because she gave my mom severe depression (my mom was her caretaker) and refused to let them meet even on her deathbed and told her she burned that bridge a long time ago.

These people are toxic and don't even realize it themselves.

I also read a lot and model my the skills I'd like my daughter to learn after my parents lessons to me. For example, my parents would take us to high end restaurants and business functions from age two--my mom and dad never wanted us to be impressed by a guy who could "buy" us with fancy dinners and jewelry so desensitized us to it so when we did look for a partner, it would be for the worth of their character (my mom would tell us this so we never felt like we were entitled to nice and fancy dinners--they were lessons. So for example we have taken BD to restaurants people normally wouldn't take a three year old and even though it causes DH a lot of anxiety (which it shouldn't since BD is quiet and well behaved and we have people coming up to us telling us they didn't even notice her.)

DH is more of the emotionally reactive one but far more passionate as a parent than my more structured goal style parenting. He defaults to me on child development because he says he prefers BD to turn out like me than him since he doesn't have great communication or coping skills since both his mom and dad were damaged in their own ways.

I was scapegoated by my family as the one who caused ALL of the problems. My mother kicked me out when I was 16 and then she, dad and my brothers packed up and left town. I was placed in foster care due to abandonment (lots else happened but this is it in a nutshell). After my foster care placement I found out that "dad" was not my real father but my SF. It then made sense why he openly professed his hate for me and favored my 2 little brothers. I learned that biodad was not much better, he abandoned my mother when I was three. Mom was BM #4, he left her and went back to BM #3.

Biodad passed away recently and amazingly we developed a close relationship over the years. Mom on the other hand resented that I had any relationship w/biodad and carried on a campaign of hatred for him even after his death. My relationship w/my ignoring narcissistic mother has always been like I'm the dog chasing after her, and she's the parked car. Always wanting a "real" mother but getting nothing but abuse and abandonment in return. It seems like she has been trying to punish biodad by being abusive to me. I stopped carrying the relationship and today we don't speak, it's been that way for about 1.5 years now. No calls, letters, nothing yet she sent a christmas box last year. I sent her a thank you note but did not reengage any further.

As a SM to adult skids I thought being a supportive friend would be cool but that was shot down by the ss's real fast. Now I'd just like them not to be @$$holes, but for ss31 that is unrealistic. Mostly I've disengaged, thankful to my own mother for teaching me how to do it so well. My focus is eagle eye on those who are the most important in my life, my kids and hubby.

My parents were married for almost 60 years - but not happily. Not horribly miserable - just not all that suited.

My mother was an energetic, get things done person who truly cared about others. She felt responsible for the world. But she had a terrible inferiority complex about being born into rural poverty with little education. She always cared too much about what "others"thought.

My father (who had been abandoned at 2 and then again at 15 by foster parents) had no clue as to how to be a father or to be responsible for anyone. He was very intelligent but lazy. It didn't bother him if his family literally had no food to eat. If he forgot to pick me up from work and left me stranded in a horrible neighborhood for hours he had no remorse. But he was not mean or cruel - just clueless.

My relatives (I had a dozen aunts and uncles plus their spouses) often remark about what genetics were involved in producing myself and my siblings. I graduated from a top women's college and got my MBA from the top program in the world and had a fabulous international career. My brother is practically a billionaire and has 7 estates around the world. And we were raised in abject Appalachian poverty - even toothpaste was a luxury for us.

I think I got my intellect from my dad, but I got my work ethic and compassion for others from my mother.