How much can we blame our parents?

Nature verses nurture is a difficult topic. I have known some people who grew up in abusive homes who turned out the complete opposite of their parents. And other who grew up in wonderful homes who grew up to be huge ass-hats. So the way I see it, is that we are influenced by our parents but ultimately, I believe we decide in which direction we grow and that may have to do with our own personality.

For example. I know someone who had such and upbringing as you describe above but who grew up in a separated home. He was loved by both parents but there was neglect by both parents because they had a lot of their own issues. The child was a first born grandson and lavished upon by the extended family. Especially because of who his parents were.
So needless to say this individual (who was very intelligent) went down the wrong path.
Always using his parents as to the cause for how he was and is. He clearly knows what is right and wrong and keeps choosing wrong. Some things he decided not to be like his parents. He is in a long committed marriage and cares for his children a great deal. Only he is terrible when it comes to long term goals and commitment to employment. When he loses his job its never his fault. It’s always the employer.
Funny enough his father has always been well employed and always goes to work without complaint and till this day is still always helping him out of sticky situations. Like rent. Food and utilities bills.
His parents were selfish people but they had him way too young and were not ready to raise him well.
My point. Is the same way he decided not to raise his children in an environment of neglect or a separated home. He could’ve also decided to do everything he needed to make it a financially stable home as well. But he continues to blame his parents for his misfortune.

I believe we are a combination of two things. Who we are and who we are raised to be. We ultimately are the author of our own lives. I’m not saying that real mental damage can not be done to an individual, but I believe there are different degrees of damage and once you know something is wrong and you knowingly do it, the onus is on you. Not how your were raised.

Now as for your parents. It really is hard to say if they are truly loving or purposely hurtful. I think that is something you need to discuss with your parents. Tell them how you feel when they say certain comments but ask them for the truth. Not sugar downed tales. It’s possible the comments come from the fact that money may be tight and instead of telling you they can’t afford your lessons they let it eat away at them. So if you talk about quitting, or changing course. They will rightly feel they squandered their money. When people live pay check to pay check, pay 50 bucks for something your kid may not be sure they may want to do can be quite the kick in the gut.

Without your parents, you wouldn’t even be here wondering if you can blame them for yourself.

In my opinion, people ought to thank their parents for keeping them alive until they can design their own lives, and then go do it.

There are many social “bad habits” I see around me, and one of them is blaming your parents because you are a loser-not implying YOU the OP are a loser.

But people who believe that are destined to be losers, because they believe it and use it as an excuse.
IMHO.

if you are looking for someone to “blame”; while you are brushing you teeth this morning, look in the mirror. That is the only one to “blame”.
After you leave your family’s home it is on “you” not “them”.

I agree with others that at a certain point, you are what you have to deal with and there’s not much point blaming someone else. However, and this is a big however, it is really good to understand how your parents shaped you and to resolve the traumas from your childhood so you can love and accept yourself fully. It sounds like you got a lot of mixed messages, some of them pretty painful, from your parents and talk therapy could really be of benefit to you. You have expressed on other posts problems with relationships and I would guess many of them (like most of ours) stem from unresolved issues around your parents.

The sooner you figure out the relationship between your parents’ parenting of you and your issues, the easier it will be for you to grow and thrive. (By the way, I’m in my 60s and still working on issues from my childhood.)

Although not diagnosed, my mother was bipolar and too often overreacted to actions by me and my sister that she saw as challenging her authority. Her childhood was horrible, and the poverty that our family experience exacerbated her unrealistic feeling of needing to be always in control. Of course, I could not have understood this when I was a child and young adult and I blamed her for many of my shortcomings.

When seeking the causes of one’s liabilities, blaming is a default response. However, by making conscious the unconscious motivations for one’s behaviors it is possible to alter them and avoid making the same mistakes your parents made, which include blaming others for their actions. You recognize that they acted as though they hated yet also loved you. Such inconsistency will generate emotional perturbation that impacts one negatively.

Who should one blame when a storm or fire destroys their home? A number of factors are responsible for such disasters, most of which were beyond one’s ability to control or mitigate. Similarly, circumstances of parents’ lives shape their personalities and character. Being unconscious, their ability to modulate their impulses was limited. While parents’ emotional reactions to their children’s behavior may often have been unfair, it is likely that they did the best they could.

There are many studies covering the Nature vs. Nurture question.
Here is one that studied identical twins over 50 years. Nature vs.Nurtue Debate 50 year twin study .

“A culmination of more than half a century of research collected on 14.5 million pairs of twins has finally concluded that the nature versus nurture debate is a draw. According to the plethora of data, both have nearly identical influences on a person’s behavior, which suggests we need to stop looking at ourselves as a result of nature versus nurture, and instead realize we are a combination of both.”

I imagine the factors as multipliers.that range from 0 to 1 where 0 is the worst and 1 is the best. Our lives are the result of multiplying the two together and multiplying that by environmental conditions completely out of our control. The person with the best genes and the best upbringing, can still be hit by a bus.

I think a better question is: When does your own life actually become your responsibility. If your parents were total hairballs that did things you couldn’t stand and you are repeating those things, whose fault is that? If your parents fault, for how long? If your parents gave you everything growing up, did you learn how to earn your way in life or did you learn that someone else would always take care of you? When reality hits, how long do you get to blame someone else before you actually have to take responsibility for yourself? If you are a criminal because your parents were criminals, is that an excuse or a cop out? Or did you really not know you were doing something against the law? At some point, everyone is either responsible for themselves or they deserve whatever bogus life they get.