In the words of Bart Simpson, TV has betrayed us.  We are a generation of adults, dissatisfied with our childhoods.  In perfect harmony, we complain that we were mentally, physically or otherwise abused as children.  Our parents  - who loved us and did the best they could for us -  just simply couldn’t compete with June Cleaver.   Our fathers didn’t always know best.  And our parents never, ever gave us the freedom to roam as Timmy and Lassie had.  If we were punished, it was never the gentle, lenient punishments meted out by the perfect television parents.  We were grounded, spanked, made to do chores, write sentences and numerous other sadistic things our parents came up with.  Sometimes our parents even went so far as to punish us for things we didn’t do but they thought we did! 

Can I just point out what a load of tripe all those abuse allegations are?   June Cleaver had a bevy of screen writers making sure that every move she made and every word she uttered were perfect.  Father always knew best because he had an entire studio of helpers keeping him on track.  Our parents, on the other hand, were just winging it by the seat of their pants.  They were looking at their kids and wanting what was best for them.  They were looking to our futures and trying to be sure we were properly trained to live productive lives.  They were determined to teach us respect for authority, respect for education and decent work ethics.   They were determined to give us the hopeful future we are trying to give our own children. 

I can agree that our parents made mistakes.  They punished us in anger sometimes.  They may not have told us they loved us enough.  They may have gotten so tied up in the necessities of daily living that they forgot the emotional needs of their children.   But I would like to submit to you that most of what we are calling abuse and neglect were neither of those things.  They were mistakes in parenting on the part of our mothers and fathers.  And our calling them abuse trivializes actual abuse. 

It’s time we all realized that television families can’t be used as a standard for actual families.  It’s time we start realizing that parents don’t have to be perfect.  And it’s time we stop blaming them for our mistakes!  What happened in your childhood was years ago.    Get over it!   If we can actually look back at our childhood’s and say ‘that is why I do what I do today’, then we know why we’re making our mistakes.   If we know why, then we can learn from it and control ourselves.  So let’s take responsibility for who we are and what we’re doing.   And – most importantly – let’s turn the tv off long enough to look around and see what we have.  Maybe it’s better than we realized.