My parents are absolutely fantastic, they will always listen, do anything possible to help me in any way, and only ever think of what’s best for their kids.

They are calm, considerate, reasonable, smart, loving, and a great team.

I will never meet anybody else as fantastic human beings as them.

I can’t imagine having parents that are awful people, that must be such a terrible burden and impediment to healthy growth for a child :-(

Nice yes

Listen no

Parents are humans with their own flaws and backstories. They’ve had (presumably) 20 years of the worlds bullshit flung at them before you entered the picture. Can they be nice? Sure. But as you become an adult try to forgive them for the times they failed. Chances are they were doing the best they could with what they had at the time.

As a parent I try to listen with an open mind and admit when I’m probably a little biased. I still get called out and grump about it.

If there’s anything you want to share, I’m willing to listen.

One of them doesn’t listen at all. He’s also dead so I’m willing to overlook his blatant lack of enthusiasm.

This problem is easily solved by not having children.

My parents aren’t perfect. But they are amazing people. And excellent parents.

But I’ll still never ever forgive my mother for giving away my ps1 and all my games.

Yeah, my parents have always been really kind and supportive. Probably wasn’t until I was in my early 20s that I realised what a privilege it is to have parents that try to understand and help me with my problems.

For almost all of my life I’d have said no. But after over a year of family therapy I think I now have a mother who sometimes listens. She needs to follow it up with an emotional guilt trip, but she does actually sometimes listen first. Baby steps I guess, but it’s more progress than I expected. And my father is… well… still my father. No chance there.

I have a complicated relationship with my dad, but that has more to do with our personalities clashing and his wife not really being a fan of mine. If I needed something from him like I had an emergency or was hurt in prison, etc., he would be there for me.

My mom and I have a really good relationship. We’re very close and have been since I was a kid. I could tell her anything and come to her with any problems and she would try to be there for me.

My parents were quite liberal with raising me I can call both of them by their first name, talk to them quite casually, etc. I I call my dad “dad” and his first name interchangeably.

Lost the birth parent lottery hard.

Won the in-law lottery like you can’t believe.

My actual parents are raging mentally-ill disasters who are far too consumed by their own shit to realize they have kids, or that kids aren’t meant to be used as crutches and emotional punching bags. They love me in name but not action, and are generally disintereted in me unless they think they can use me for something. They have no idea who I am as a person, frequently forget where I live (same place for 6 years) and what I do for work (4 years), and couldn’t pick my spouse out of a lineup (7 years). I haven’t given them grandkids, I left a prestigious sounding but financially unwise program to do generic business admin, I live far enough away they can’t “invite” me over to do tens if thousands of dollars in free labor anymore, I won’t let Mom call me out of the blue to scream and insult me when she’s having a bad day, and I won’t “loan” them money, so from their perspective, what’s the point of me?

In my early marriage I used to HOUND them with calls trying and failing to get 5 minutes of their attention - they’d literally answer and then set the phone down and ignore it or just talk to anyone else and ignore me with the phone to their ear - the problem was so bad I could barely get them to commit to meeting my now-husband until we were already engaged, and even then it was a fight (it took multiple months of proposing a time every weekend to even schedule them for a video call - in person was off the table. They have regular jobs and schedules). So I stopped trying around 6 years ago and said I’d answer when they called, but they could call me.

In the 6 years since I believe we’ve had about 7 phone calls or so, and about as many texts - that’s for both parents total, not each. Not Christmas or birthdays, not to actually catch up, just Mom wanting to yell - she used to start the call already angry, THEN start asking questions about my life until she found something to yell about. She used to frequently do this and accuse me of lying if I didn’t report sufficient failures, then have a go at me for lying. Eventually blocked for my own sanity. Dad getting caught by his siblings not even knowing where I lived at a family function and trying to cram all the trivia about my life into a short phone call so he could go back to the party and save face (this actually happened twice). Dad calling and without prompting comparing my mom to a man-eating tiger with a taste for my flesh personally (literally), then asking me to unblock her anyway because now she was treating HIM that way (“I feel for the tiger keeper, but I am not the tiger-keeper’s meat shield.”). 100% promise rate from Dad that he’d call again next week and then not hearing from him for well over a year - just recently got a text because he heard from a different relative that I bought a house and got caught looking bad again - he did not want to talk more.

My MIL frequently accidentally refers to me as her child and then trips up when she tries to refer to my spouse - “auto complete” in her brain says the spouse of a child should be an in-law, but they are also her child and in fact is her ACTUAL child. She also adds me to her Total Kid Count (high) and when she has to walk someone through the timing on That Many Kids, realizes she put one too many in there. When I want to call “my mom”, I call her. We just bought a house, and I prioritized one with a guest room for her frequent visits (every time: “Is it ok if I spend a day seeing my siblings when I’m I’m town?” “Of course?? When has it ever not been??” “Well I did say I was coming to see you two!!”). She calls just to chat multiple times a week and I know I can tell her anything. She’s not perfect, but she literally taught me what unconditional love looked and felt like, and has been there for me through every win and loss I’ve had over the last 7 years. She is the envy of our married friend group.

My FIL is great and we get on well, but I think it’s a standard positive in-law relationship. When I want Dad advice, I call an old family friend who fell out with my folks over them generally being the people described above, to make an extremely long story short. We try to talk once a week on a schedule - but he’s busy with a family of his own and a demanding career in addition to the gaggle of my siblings he volunteered to Dad-up, so it’s more structured. It’s always meant a ton to me that he still prioritizes carving out that time just to be a listening ear and a friend. He’s been a great example to me of what it means to be a self-accountable, good person in every way, what admitting you’re wrong and changing for the better looks like, and how to just generally be a kick-ass community member. He’s the one who gets the Father’s Day call around here.

All this to say, just because your assigned parents are a couple of slouches doesn’t mean you’re cursed to never have that parental support - even if you don’t cut contact with your assigned parents, please give yourself permission and space in your life to find some better ones. I highly recommend joining some hobbies - especially old person hobbies - or volunteering to make those connections. We all know it’s important to have peer friends, but Older Mentor Friends are also so freaking critical - my knitting group ladies got me through SO MUCH before I had that solid support system, and they’re still a huge wealth of knowledge, community, and support.

It gets better, dude.

I’m fortunate enough to have really great parents. Like exceptionally great. I get legitimately really sad for others when I hear that they don’t have awesome parents. I can’t imagine going a day without talking to my mom. She and I talk every morning to make sure we both get up and get ready for the day. My stepfather and I don’t talk as often as my mom and I do, but he has been my only true father figure.

My biological father was an absolute piece of shit for most of my life, but he got his shit together and I see him as a good friend now. He and I talk almost every day, mostly about pets or work.

This thread is kind of depressing to read. What a privilege it is to have supportive parents.

Makes me realize that I shouldn’t put off having a quality phone call with my parents so much. There will always be more work, but there won’t always be more quality time with them.

I’m lucky to say both my parents are like this. They have flaws, for sure, and it would probably worry them if I started unloading on them suddenly, but they wouldn’t judge or be angry at me, that’s for certain.

If anything I need to filter what I say to protect them, they’re both quite prone to worrying too much for things that aren’t very important.

I have two great parents

My best friend has one, with the other one being an violent alcoholic

My SO has a brain damaged (literally) father and a hyper conspirational spiritual mother.

The more I learn about everyone else’s parents the more thankful I get

I have one bio parent I can do that with, and I know I’m privileged to have that. To be able to confide, ask questions, seek advice, break down, or even just play cards together provides a certain level of mental safety I didn’t experience otherwise.

I only hope I can provide even a fraction of that to others; everybody deserves safe people.