There’s a phrase that floats around when people talk about difficult childhoods: “They were doing their best.”
It’s meant to be comforting, I suppose. A way to soften the edges of painful memories or explain away behavior that left scars.
But here’s what nobody talks about: acknowledging that a parent was “doing their best” doesn’t erase the bone-deep weariness that comes from growing up in a home where love existed alongside harm. Where effort didn’t translate into safety. Where good intentions paved a road to outcomes nobody wanted.
Research from psychologists confirms what many adult children already know: “doing their best” and “doing no harm” are not the same thing. Parents can be products of their own trauma, limited by their own capacities, and still create environments that fundamentally shape their children in difficult ways.
This unique weariness comes from an impossible position: fully grieving what was lost feels ungrateful when effort was clearly present. Anger seems unjustified because “they tried so hard.” The result is carrying both the damage and the guilt about acknowledging it.
Let’s talk about what this particular kind of tired feels like.
The weight of invisible harm
When people think of damaging childhoods, they often picture dramatic scenarios. But some of the deepest wounds come from what psychologists call “good enough” parenting that actually wasn’t quite good enough.
A parent works three jobs to keep the lights on but arrives home so depleted there’s nothing left for emotional connection. Their effort is real. The loneliness felt by their child is equally real.
Another parent micromanages every aspect of a child’s life, terrified of failure, inadvertently teaching that child they can’t trust their own judgment.
According to research on helicopter parenting, even when done with loving intentions, excessive control can lead to decreased self-confidence and increased anxiety in children. The parent’s fear becomes the child’s limitation.
The draining part? No clear villain exists. No one to be straightforwardly angry at. Just a parent who tried and a child who still got hurt.
When anxiety masqueraded as protection
Some parents parent from a place of fear rather than confidence. They hover, restrict, and intervene constantly because they’re terrified something will go wrong.
Walking to school alone? Not allowed. Not because it was actually dangerous, but because Mom couldn’t handle the worry. Trying out for the team? Out of the question because Dad was afraid of injury. The unspoken lesson: make yourself small to manage their anxiety.
Studies on parental anxiety show that when parents project their fears onto children, those children often internalize doubt and become overly cautious adults. The message received isn’t “I love you” but “You can’t handle life without me.”
Adult life then becomes an endless loop of trying to convince yourself of capabilities never tested in childhood.
The burden of being the emotional caretaker
Sometimes “doing their best” meant a parent who leaned on you for support they should have gotten from other adults.
Marriage troubles got shared in too much detail. Moods required careful management. The skill of reading a room developed before understanding what a room even was.
This dynamic, which psychologists call “parentification,” happens when children take on adult emotional responsibilities. And it often comes wrapped in language about how close you are, how mature you’ve always been, how much they can trust you.
The result? Adults who are excellent at managing everyone else’s feelings and terrible at identifying their own needs.
Particularly draining is how this often looked like love from the outside. A “close” parent-child relationship. Special. When really, boundaries were nonexistent and childhood was spent servicing someone else’s emotional needs.
When their trauma became your inheritance
Many parents who were “doing their best” were themselves survivors of difficult circumstances. They grew up with harsh discipline, so they thought being slightly less harsh was progress. They experienced neglect, so providing basic needs felt like abundance.
But trauma doesn’t always heal through effort alone. According to research on parenting patterns, sometimes “doing your best” should have included seeking professional help when your best wasn’t sufficient.
The weariness here is generational. Processing not just your own childhood but theirs too. Doing the healing work they couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
The impossible bind of gratitude and grief
Here’s where it gets complicated: both things can be true at once.
A parent worked hard. They sacrificed. They loved in the ways they knew how. And also, what they did hurt. The home they created wasn’t safe in ways that mattered. Their limitations became wounds.
When this gets talked about, people often respond with: “But they did the best they could with what they had.” As if that fact should erase the impact.
What this phrase misses is that intentions and impact are not the same thing. A parent can have been doing their best and their best can still have been harmful. Both statements can coexist.
The drain comes from carrying the knowledge that gratitude is expected while simultaneously trying to heal from experiences that shouldn’t have happened.
The invisible labor of recovery
Growing up in a home where the parent was “trying” often instills the idea that fixing yourself is just another problem requiring effort. That healing is one more thing to manage through sheer willpower.
So the books get read. Therapy gets attended. Work happens on attachment style and communication patterns and the tendency to people-please. The day starts with depletion because the full weight of recovery is carried alone.
Meanwhile, the parent who created some of these patterns gets to remain comfortable in the narrative that they did their best. No reckoning with impact. No apology or acknowledgment of harm because their intentions were good.
All the work of healing falls on one person while the other gets credit for effort.
What makes this different from clear-cut abuse
With obvious abuse or neglect, at least there’s clarity. The harm is nameable. People believe it. Anger is allowed.
But when a parent was “doing their best,” understanding is expected. Forgiveness. Maturity about it.
The abuse label doesn’t quite fit because there was no hitting. They provided food. They showed up to school events. They cared, just poorly or inconsistently or in ways that hurt more than helped.
This ambiguity creates its own form of depletion. Being stuck in a gray area where the pain is real but not quite legitimate enough for others to fully recognize.
The pattern of apologizing for your feelings
One common outcome of this type of upbringing is adults who apologize before expressing any need or boundary.
“I know you were doing your best, but…” becomes the preamble to any honest conversation about how growing up felt. Preemptively absolving the person who hurt you before even naming the hurt.
The internalized idea: their effort matters more than your experience. Their intentions should outweigh your pain.
Constantly minimizing yourself to make room for their good intentions creates its own weariness.
Breaking the cycle without breaking the relationship
Some people reach a point where stepping back from the parent who was “doing their best but not doing well” becomes necessary. Others find ways to maintain connection while holding firm boundaries about what they will and won’t accept.
Neither path is easy. Both require work the parent likely won’t do themselves.
Staying in relationship often means accepting that they may never understand the full impact of their parenting. They may never apologize. They may continue to lean on “I did my best” as a shield against accountability.
Healing can’t depend on them finally getting it.
The permission you don’t think you’re allowed to have
Here’s what needs to be said clearly: acknowledging both effort and harm is allowed.
Recognizing that a parent worked hard while also recognizing that their approach caused damage is possible. Appreciating their sacrifices while also grieving what was needed but not received is valid.
Holding compassion for their limitations while still insisting on the right to heal from the impact of those limitations makes sense.
According to research on childhood experiences and development, a sincere acknowledgment of harm and willingness to change patterns can help repair relationships. But that repair often requires the parent to move beyond “I did my best” to “I see how my actions affected you.”
If they can’t do that, healing is still deserved.
Final thoughts
The weariness of being raised by someone who was “doing their best” comes from holding contradictions that others don’t want to acknowledge.
Love and harm can coexist. Effort and damage can be simultaneous truths. A parent can have tried hard and still created wounds that need tending.
Naming this doesn’t make anyone ungrateful. Needing more than their intentions doesn’t make anyone cruel. Prioritizing healing over their comfort doesn’t make anyone selfish.
The road forward involves accepting that this particular weariness might linger for a while. The work of untangling good intentions from poor execution, of separating their effort from actual experience, of learning that better was deserved even if they genuinely tried.
It’s okay to be tired. This kind of recovery is legitimately draining.
But it’s also worth it. Because somewhere on the other side of this work is a version of self that doesn’t apologize for taking up space, that trusts its own judgment, that knows the difference between effort and actual care.
That person is worth the weariness of getting there.
