Bradshaw Essay
Becker, Edward
Professor Teresa Tarazi
English 1A
8/25/2014
Bradshaw Essay “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”-a famous quote from George Santayana but also an apt assessment of John Bradshaw’s view on the poisonous pedagogy of parenting fostered by millennia of patriarchal infallibility. Perhaps a better way to say it would be “Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.” I have recently become a father for the first time and people tell me that being a parent changes everything. Every day I find this to be truer but by far the most important change that I have seen is the unconditional love I feel for my son; a love that drives me to provide the best but also to be the best in how I interact with and am an example for my young progeny. I look back to how my father raised me and I tell myself that I won’t make the same mistakes with my son—I will make entirely new ones for sure but not the ones that he made. With my father, it took a lot of pain and some loss but after all was said and done, we have a stronger relationship and I have a better outlook on life and family. Any child of divorce automatically has a different (but not necessarily more difficult) set of challenges than a child in a two-parent household. “If the marriage component is dysfunctional, the family members are stressed and tend to adapt dysfunctionally” (Bradshaw 32). I would counter that the same goes for an ended marriage. I grew up in two single-parent households (my mother and father divorced before I was born). As I now know my parents, I frankly can’t understand why they ever got married in the first place. My mother is a liberal special-education teacher and my father is a conservative retired county employee. My mother is permissive and opposed corporal punishment and my father is strict and spanked me when I was bad. My father’s way of raising me reflected an “Acts of Service” love language, according to Dr.
Professor Teresa Tarazi
English 1A
8/25/2014
Bradshaw Essay “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”-a famous quote from George Santayana but also an apt assessment of John Bradshaw’s view on the poisonous pedagogy of parenting fostered by millennia of patriarchal infallibility. Perhaps a better way to say it would be “Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are condemned to repeat them.” I have recently become a father for the first time and people tell me that being a parent changes everything. Every day I find this to be truer but by far the most important change that I have seen is the unconditional love I feel for my son; a love that drives me to provide the best but also to be the best in how I interact with and am an example for my young progeny. I look back to how my father raised me and I tell myself that I won’t make the same mistakes with my son—I will make entirely new ones for sure but not the ones that he made. With my father, it took a lot of pain and some loss but after all was said and done, we have a stronger relationship and I have a better outlook on life and family. Any child of divorce automatically has a different (but not necessarily more difficult) set of challenges than a child in a two-parent household. “If the marriage component is dysfunctional, the family members are stressed and tend to adapt dysfunctionally” (Bradshaw 32). I would counter that the same goes for an ended marriage. I grew up in two single-parent households (my mother and father divorced before I was born). As I now know my parents, I frankly can’t understand why they ever got married in the first place. My mother is a liberal special-education teacher and my father is a conservative retired county employee. My mother is permissive and opposed corporal punishment and my father is strict and spanked me when I was bad. My father’s way of raising me reflected an “Acts of Service” love language, according to Dr.
Cited: Bradshaw, John. Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-esteem. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1996. Print. Chapman, Gary D. The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate. [New ed. Chicago: Northfield Pub., 1995. Print.