Are You Turning Into Your Parents?

You are. This isn't new. But it may be a little more complicated than that.

Dec 02, 2023

man, woman, and child walking together along dirt road — Photo by Alberto Casetta on Unsplash

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The Avett Brothers’ song “Smithsonian” is a beautiful exploration of a phenomenon all of us encounter - even if we don’t recognize we are encountering it. The witnessing of, even the participation in, some universal event, that we know happens to everyone, an event through which we can give clear-eyed help to another … while still being surprised when it happens to us.

Here is the opening …

Call the Smithsonian, I made a discovery

Life ain't forever and lunch isn't free

Loved ones will break your heart

With or without you

Turns out we don't get to know everything

Get the young scientist, tell him come quick

Must be the first man that's ever seen this

Lines on my face, my teeth are not white

My eyes do not work and my legs don't move right …

Smithsonian - The Avett Brothers

In this case, they are exploring the common phenomenon of growing old - at the same time universal and being discovered. We discover it in a new way by going through it. We know people grow old, we know we will grow old - but we can be unnerved by the reality that we are growing old - or have grown old to a degree that … surprises us. Because I had a distant, disappointing, and complicated relationship with my father - it is a uniquely startling experience to see him, more and more, look back at me from the bathroom mirror. I believe I am growing to (physically or facially) resemble our father more than my brothers are. I think they agree with that assessment. Probably, they are relieved. At any rate, there is a sense in which I am turning into my parent. Which, you may be aware, has become a meme.

Dr. Rick is the fictional doctor of unexplained training, coming to us via Progressive Insurance commercials, who helps young people - roughly in the younger millennial cohort - who, after assuming the responsibilities of home ownership, are turning into their parents. Their parents who are a bit culturally out of step, who need to understand what are the current cultural expectations of life in the world … because their cultural stance has changed with the increasing responsibilities of adulthood. It is a good bit. Well executed. Not sure how these spots sell insurance, but I enjoy them. Maybe they are trying to invite this cohort into adulthood - well, at least into the home insurance buying segment of adulthood. “Don’t worry - we are softening your worst fears through the lens of absurdity … you can buy a home - you won’t turn into your parents.”

But we are. These spots work partly because they are naming something we may fear while we recognize that it might be happening to us. We are turning into our parents - in some good ways, in some bad ways, in some necessary ways, in some universal ways … even while we may hope to resist this turning. And … just posing the question … even given my complicated relationship with my now deceased Father … maybe this isn’t the worst thing in every case? Or, maybe the most honest stance concedes at least that my Father went through the same process I am going through - it is something we share even if our sharing of it is offset by about three and a half decades or so. To be clear, I don’t want to turn into my Father. I think this is part of the appeal of the spots, even for those who admire and are well connected to their father or mother, turning into them feels like something to be avoided. But we can’t completely avoid it - we will at least, though separated by a generation, share many of the markers of growing old. We would share the milestones of marriage, children, home ownership, career challenges … joys, disappointments, and fears. At some point, my father probably saw his father looking back at him - though he may not have been emotionally aware or connected enough to recognize his response. I don’t know, I can’t really imagine talking to him about such things.

As King Solomon of Israel might have commented (or as God might be commenting through the book of Ecclesiastes): There is nothing new under the sun.

What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

We may understand the world through a different lens than our parents had, and recognize that it is a different world in important ways. But it is the same world in important ways too. The Pew Research Center surveyed adults about how their parenting approach was similar to and different from that of their parents. The results are a bit surprising in their unsurprisingness. Parents want to keep what they valued in their own upbringing (or what they now see to be valuable), and move away from what they experienced negatively (or what they now believe does not fit the world as they understand it).

In general, parents want an expanded experience of love and relationship for their children and family from what they understand as their experience. I know that I wanted our children to have an experience larger in love and relationship that I had. Here’s the thing - my children probably want a larger experience for their kids, for our grandchildren. I want that for them also. There is nothing new under the sun.

Share The Embassy

As the Avett Brothers, and Dr. Rick, and King Solomon might have observed, while there is nothing new under the sun, we are surprised when we experience this truth. And yet, as I think the Avett Brothers and King Solomon would agree (not sure about Dr. Rick, he does not tend to wax philosophical), we are not ruled by fate - we do not have to passively experience this truth - we have agency and responsibility and God’s empowering, to shape how this pattern plays out in our lives. We are turning into our parents. Yes … but the question is which version of our parents, or which version of the us that has been influenced by our parents?

As a parent, there are parts of me I don’t want my children (now adults, of course) turning into and parts of me that are not the desired destination for them. But what that means is that, like me, my children need redemption from a Father in heaven who loves them perfectly. However well or poorly I reflected that, they also can tap into the source. That is a comfort, as one who, by God’s grace, saw the need to jump on the redemption train. It is a comfort that my brokenness inevitably transferred onto our children is meant to be redeemed - and that God made a plan for that redemption. In the bigger story, we are all called to be made into the image of our Father. That is something to be very much embraced. By God’s grace, may I continue to turn into a truer and deeper resemblance of Him.