Remember when you turned forty and suddenly everything your parents did wrong seemed crystal clear? I sure do.
I was sitting at my kitchen table, going through old photo albums after my father’s funeral. There I was, forty-three years old, mentally cataloging all the ways he’d fallen short. The emotional distance. The work obsession. The way he’d push us toward “practical” choices without asking what we actually wanted.
Fast forward to last month, and at sixty-something, I’m watching my adult sons navigate their own parenting challenges. And you know what hit me?
Every single thing my father got wrong was his attempt to fix what his own father had gotten even more wrong. The whole chain suddenly made sense, like dominoes falling backward through time.
The judgment years come first
When you’re in your thirties and forties, you’re usually deep in the trenches of raising your own kids or building your life. That’s when the contrast becomes stark.
You see yourself doing things differently from your parents, and it feels like vindication. “See? It wasn’t that hard to show up to the school play.” Or “Look, I can have a career AND ask my kids about their feelings.”
I spent years in that space. Working in human resources for three decades, I’d helped hundreds of people work through their workplace issues, many of which traced back to family dynamics. Yet there I was, convinced I had it all figured out with my own boys.
The irony? I was making my own spectacular mistakes. Like pushing my older son toward a “sensible” career in engineering because it made perfect sense on paper.
Good money, stable future, respectable profession. Took me years to accept I was doing exactly what my father had done to me, just dressed up in different clothes.
The revelation that changes everything
Something shifts after fifty. Maybe it’s watching your kids struggle with their own children. Maybe it’s losing a parent and suddenly seeing them as a whole person rather than just Mom or Dad. For me, it happened gradually, then all at once.
I started noticing patterns. My father’s emotional distance? His father had been completely absent, working multiple jobs just to keep food on the table. My dad’s version of love was at least being physically present, even if he couldn’t quite figure out the emotional part.
My mother’s anxiety about money that led to constant penny-pinching? Her mother had lived through the Depression and passed down a bone-deep fear of scarcity. Mom loosened up compared to her mother, but the echo was still there.
As a psychologist friend once told me, “We’re all just trying to give our kids what we needed most and never got.” The problem is, our kids might need something entirely different.
Three generations to make you
Here’s what really bakes your noodle: you can trace most of your quirks, fears, and patterns back through at least three generations. Sometimes more.
Take my relationship with work. I thought I was better than my father because I made it to most baseball games and school events. But I still worked constantly, checking emails at the dinner table, taking calls during family vacations.
Why? Because my father had modeled that work equals worth, and his father had modeled that a man who doesn’t work himself to the bone isn’t really a man.
Each generation loosens the grip a little, but the original imprint remains.
I started therapy in my sixties (my wife had been suggesting it for years, and yes, she was right). One of the first things my therapist asked was about my grandparents. At first, I thought, “What does my grandfather who died when I was twelve have to do with my anxiety about retirement?”
Turns out, everything.
Why this matters more than you think
Understanding this generational chain isn’t about letting anyone off the hook. It’s about finally seeing the whole picture.
When my sons were young, I genuinely believed that if I just worked hard enough at parenting, if I read enough books and tried hard enough, I could break every negative pattern and raise perfectly adjusted kids. What hubris, right?
The truth is messier and more forgiving. We’re all products of imperfect people doing their imperfect best with the tools they inherited from other imperfect people. Once you really get that, something shifts.
You stop taking it so personally. The criticism from your mother about your parenting? She’s hearing her mother’s voice. Your father’s inability to say “I love you”? He probably never heard it himself.
Breaking the chain (sort of)
Can you completely break free from these generational patterns? In my experience, not entirely. But you can soften them, redirect them, and most importantly, make them conscious instead of automatic.
The key is awareness. Once you see the pattern, you have a choice. When I finally recognized I was pushing my son toward a career for the same reasons my father had pushed me, I could stop. It wasn’t easy, and it took some uncomfortable conversations and apologies, but it was possible.
I’ve mentioned this before, but therapy helps tremendously with this work. Having someone neutral help you trace these patterns back through the generations is like having someone hold up a mirror to your family tree.
The other thing that helps? Talking to your kids about it. Both my sons know about the patterns I’ve identified, the ones I’ve tried to break, and the ones I probably passed on despite my best efforts. That awareness alone changes things.
Closing thoughts
Yesterday, I was walking with my grandchildren in the park, and my grandson asked why his dad (my son) worries so much about money when they have plenty.
I could have given him a simple answer, but instead, I thought about the chain: his great-great-grandmother who saved tin foil during the Depression, his great-grandmother who hid money in books, his grandmother who clipped coupons obsessively, his father who checks his bank account daily despite having a healthy savings.
Each generation got a little better at managing the fear, but the echo remains.
So here’s my question for you: What patterns are you carrying that go back further than your parents? And more importantly, which ones will you choose to soften for the generation coming after you?
