When I was a child in the sixties I had two parents and so did all my friends.
My parents, especially my dad were much older than all my friends parents and I had step-brothers and a step-sister who were the same age as many of my friends mums and dads. My actual, big sister was glamorous and grown up with her winkle-picker shoes, beehive hairdo and boyfriends.
This made me different, not very, but definitely different.
Nowadays, looking at any group of children the configuration of their families will probably all be different from one another.
Children still find ways of making themselves and each other feel different, but who their family is made up of is rarely the reason.
Always though, families have had difficulties, often around communication.
I remember my dad hating my sister's make-up. To him it meant she was making herself look like a tart! When he was young in around 1920, this was probably true and he wasn't really in touch with the youth culture of the sixties.
At the time, she didn't recognise this, why should she at age 16? And it didn't occur to him how the values and pressures were different for her than they had been for him just after the First World War. There was no discussion about this, he just shouted at her. I can still remember it.
Expectations on dads were different then, but I feel it is a great shame that his inability to see the world from her perspective or to talk to her about it was part of what made their relationship so difficult.
The fact is; it's the parents who are the grown-ups and they are the responsible ones. Once their children are old enough to hold a conversation, it's a parent's responsibility to ensure those conversations happen (most children are eager for this, think of all those questions they ask you). Parents are the ones with more perspective on life to use to make decisions and judgments. Young parents may not have much but they will still have more life experience than their children; and we all grow by what we learn, whatever our age.
Personally, although being a parent is more difficult than it ever has been I feel grateful for the openness around discussing this complicated job with no pay and no training that is emerging.
There are loads of parenting blogs and websites and even a growing number aimed at dads, including one by my friend Harun about being an amazing dad.
I think this is great. We need more conversations about what it means to be a parent, even if we don't all agree. After all, there is more than one way, there has to be, we're still inventing it.
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