One thing I have noticed in discussing life, growing up, depression and other mental problems, and other issues with people of my generation is that there is a distinctive pattern of dualism in how we view our parents.

Namely, one parent is the Good Parent and the other is the Bad Parent.

Now I don’t mean this in terms of parenting skill, exactly, although there is a very heavy overlap between the two interpretations.

It is more like one parent is the villain and the other the hero. In extreme cases, it is almost like one parent is an all-loving God and the other is the sum of all that is evil and wrong in the form of Satan.

I have found that the hero role is more often filled by the mother and it is the father who plays the role of the villain, but there are plenty of cases of the opposite as well.

But hero and villain don’t even begin to describe the nature of the duality. What is seems to be most often is a case of the Good But Weak parent versus the Strong But Angry parent.

And the stronger and more divergent this duality is, the more psychologically damaged the children will be, in my opinion.

Let us talk about the two types. We will call them Parent A and Parent B.

Parent A is kind, loving, nurturing, and benevolent. The love they offer is broad and unconditional. They are always sympathetic and patient, and rarely say anything harsh or upsetting. As a result, they are rarely the disciplinarian and offer their support without condition or force.

But they are passive. They do not initiate much of anything, they do not take on responsibility voluntarily (although they are diligent about what they do take on) and they are not very likely to deal with their children honestly and clearly when they feel the truth may hurt their children.

Parent B is impatient, angry, demanding, and often abusive, at least verbally. They rarely ever show approval or acceptance, and indeed, often seem to be working hard to give their children the impression that they hate them. They are often very critical and withholding of their children, and as a result, they are cast in the role of villain.

But they are assertive. They might not do all the work, but they almost always take all or most of the responsibility. They look after household finance, they make the tough decisions, they bear the burden of providing discipline and enforcing the rules.

This duality forms the bedrock basis for the children’s entire view of reality. As they grow, their entire world view becomes polarized. Naturally, they gravitate toward the accepting parent, Parent A, and become avoidant of Parent B.

Parent B senses their children pulling away from them, but so caught up in their role that they can’t react by becoming more loving. Instead, this only reinforces the sort of angry and impatient behaviours that have them playing the villain in the first place.

For you see, these roles reinforce one another strongly. Inside the mind of each parent is the deep conviction that they have to be how they are in response to the other.

Parent A thinks “I have to be soft and supportive and passively protective in order to balance out the aggression, anger, impatience, and harshness of Parent B. ”

Parent B thinks “I have to be the harsh one in order to compensate for the passivity and lack of structure and abdication of responsibility of Parent A. And I very much resent the role I have been cast in, but I don’t understand how to change it. Somebody has to do these things and I know it won’t be Parent A. ”

And over time, Parent A will become more Parent A in response to a perceived increase in Parent B’s Parent B-like activities, and then Parent B responds by becoming more Parent B, and the whole family moves a little further out towards the ends of the teeter totter.

And because this duality naturally expresses itself in ethical terms, it is nearly impossible for anyone involved, whether they be parent, child, or innocent bystander, to see that that problem is not the Bad Parent, but the duality itself, and the roles said duality force upon the parents involved.

The true villain might well be Parent A’s unwillingness to accept any part of Parent B’s role, or vice verse.

And of course, it’s the children in between who suffer the most. They invariably pick sides, and suffer from the fallout of their hopelessly unbalanced childhoods for their entire lives. Often, they even repeat this same dualistic mistake when they, themselves, become parents, because they know no better.

It is only by accepting the need for both ends of the scale and cooperating as parents so that neither parent plays villain or hero all the time that we can resolve this problem and keep it from echoing down the ages.

The opposite of insanity is not the opposite insanity.

The opposite of insanity is sanity, and that means meeting somewhere in the middle.