Do you blame your parents?

by sleepy 26 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  dedalus

  Like Englishman said, it wasn't my idea to be brought up in this shit. So yeah, I blame them, mostly for being emotionally or intellectually weak at the time. They were pretty young and vulnerable though ... but that doesn't explain to me why they persisted in it when it so obviously made me miserable. Thank goodness my mother is out, though I admit I wish she'd been honest about her "real" feelings back when I was basically reciting them to her.

  But I try not to hold onto the angst. It gets old.

  Dedalus
• 

  Simon

  I blame my parents. They should have looked into it more before inflicting it on me. A big factor in our leaving was not wanting to bring our kids up the same way.
• 

  Angharad

  I dont blame my parents, but I'm glad my kids will grow up out of it.
• 

  iggy_the_fish

  Yes, because they deserve their fair share of the blame.

  I blame my parents for having an unhappy marriage which lead to my Mother finding comfort in the JWs. I blame my Mother for falling for the rubbish she was told and exposing me to it and telling me that my Father was soon going to die at Armageddon. I blame my Father for NEVER ONCE talking to me about why I was going to meetings or trying to stop me (is this normal for the non-JW parent?). I don't know which parent's action makes me more angry.

  I also blame myself and the WBTS, but this thread was about parents so I'll restrict my rant to them.

  Iggy the fish.
• 

  plmkrzy

  No.

  I try to embrase all my expierences good bad and horrible. Anything and everything I have and will live through gives me wisdom I can't learn from any book. Bitterness has always been the only thing that has held me back in life. My ONLY regrets are that I didn't learn to shake things loose a long time ago. But then again being able to say that means i've grown a little more.
  I like the direction i'm going in and someday I hope to be even Normal

  http://ourworld.cs.com/pwmkwzy/home.html
• 

  r51785

  At first I did not blame my parents, but when they returned to dubdom after being out for over ten years than I realized that some people are either:

  a. really gullible
  b. enjoy belonging to a mind control cult

  So yeah, now I blame them.
• 

  mouthy

  Thank you - so many of you said you DONT blame the parents- You dont know how greatful I am to hear this-I brought my kids into it- one still there - one dead- but that is one thing I feel so guilty off- making them JWs- My son never became one- but it caused a riffed between us because I was always trying to "get him in" Thank God I was out when he died.He was glad also.
• 

  Valis

  I'm just glad I had time to catch up on holidays, have kids to celebrate them with, become educated, start saving for my retirement, travel, not be afraid or spooked when I walk into a cathedral, be a part of other religious ceremonies, travel far and wide (not as a pioneer), visit New York (not The Tower of Bethel). I can't imagine being a JW for 40 or 50 years and then suddenly leave, only to find out all the things I had missed out on. No savings to fall back on. No education to really understand all things worldly, or help break the feelings of guilt and the morasse of prejudices/misconceptions about people, history, religion, etc.. My parents have some blame to take, and I think they are reaping some of that which they have sewn now. For instance, my brother was home schooled, because he had gotten into trouble w/some of his idiot friends. So they get all this home school crap and they actually expect a 16 year old kid to stay at home by himself and do the work. He got into even more trouble after that and wound up in prison. Now he's a mental/emotional wreck and they are shelling out the dough for psychiatric treatment/medicine. I think its interesting how the thread on happiness among JWs and this thread are closely related. Dumbing yourself down awaiting that end of the world that "will come like a thief in the night"....so busy avoiding reality in fact, (three times a week + service), that no time is set aside for becoming a well rounded/learned person.

  Sincerely,

  District Overbeer
• 

  Carmel

  I only feel sorry for my parents that were ill equiped to deal with the sales pitch that the JUU's brought to the door. They were poor, uneducated and suckers for the sensational reward of being "right" and living forever, blah, blah, blah. So comforting when you are part of the have-nots of society, that the dubbies come and tell you that you will "inherit the earth", quote you scripture taken literally to support their spin while at the same time taking a slap at the other religions.

  It's the very reason I refused to encourage my kids to adopt a particular religion until they made an independant search of their own into what is or isn't reality for them.

  My parents survived on social security at about the same level materially that they were accustomed to before "retirement" so they never knew what could have been. Unfortunately, neither of them ever connected the dots. Wish Fred had been around to edooocate them.

  carmel
• 

  NeonMadman

  How's this for a twist on the topic: Yes, I blame my parents (actually my father and grandparents, who raised me) to some extent for my involvement in the JW's, despite the fact that none of them were ever JW's themselves and that I wasn't raised as a JW.

  No one in my family ever went to church when I was a kid. I think by the time I was 12, I had been inside a church maybe 3 times, and never the same one twice. There was effectively no religious training in our house as I was growing up, except for the most superficial sort, i.e., 'If you're good, you'll go to heaven when you die, if you're bad, you'll go to hell'. Then there was, 'If you're really bad, the devil might come for you in the middle of the night and spear you on his pitchfork and carry you off to hell right then'. Pretty fearful stuff for a little kid.

  Anyway, there was this big fear of God and fear of the devil combined with no religious training and an undeveloped baloney detector. Can you see why, as a teenager, I was a sitting duck for a cult? I tend to think that if I had been raised with even a semi-normal amount of religious training, I might have been able to discern what a load of crap the JW's were pushing.

  The reason I was raised by my father and grandparents was that my mother had died giving birth to me. I think that was the biggest tragedy of my life. She was a born-again Christian, a Methodist, and a Sunday School teacher. She was also, from everything I can gather, a normal young woman. I think she would have been a healthy influence on my life, had she lived, and that she would have provided enough training in the Bible and religion so that I wouldn't have felt a big spiritual emptiness as I entered one of the most impressionable periods of life. Also, I think she would have taught me enough of the Bible that the JW's wouldn't so easily have pulled the wool over my eyes.

  And when the time came for normal teenage rebellion, I'd probably have rebelled by sowing wild oats like a normal kid instead becoming a cult zombie. Not that I'm saying that everything I would have done in that case would be something I'd condone now, but, frankly, I think that direction is mentally healthier than being a JW. Besides, I'm sure I'd have grown out of it after a few years.

  So there you have it. I don't hate the memory of my father and grandparents; I've long since forgiven them for the dysfunctional setting I was raised in. But the question was whether I blame them, and, yes, I see no alternative to laying at their feet a lot of the blame for my ending up in a cult.

  Tom

  "At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew go out and round up everyone who knows more than they do"
  --Bob Dylan