There's an old joke that tells of two moms waiting for their children to come out of school. The first mom tells the second mom about how she always wanted to dance when she was a child but her mother insisted she play the violin and how unhappy that always made her. The second mom tells her she bets the first mom will be different with her daughter. To that, the first mom responds, "Of course! She's going to dance!"
This joke illustrates how a parent can expect their children to be like themselves and not individuals. Unfortunately, unlike the joke, the result of this type of expectation is usually unhappiness.
Literally, from the moment the child is born and placed in a mother's arms both parents begin searching for and exclaiming over how the child has the dad's nose or the mom's mouth. As the child grows and matures these physical characteristics may or may not continue to remind people of one parent or the other, but no one thinks much about it. The child either looks like you or not and there isn't much to be done about it.
Personality characteristics are regarded differently. We yearn to not only pass on our genetic material, we want proof we are passing on this material as expressed by the way our child behaves. And that is to behave as we do.
It seems logical. Our child has our genes and watches what we do and hears what we say. Therefore, by nature and by nurture our child should behave as we do. He or she may not behave exactly as one parent or the other, but their personality should reflect one or the other of us. Often, parents tend to appropriate a same sex child, paying more attention to them, believing that a girl will be more like the mother and a boy just like his dad. Or, regardless of sex, a parent spends more time with the child they feel is more like themselves. Parents may expect to relive their own lives through the lives of their children, forcing a child to believe and behave as they do, as the mother in the joke takes her child to dance class regardless of what her daughter may want.
Each of these circumstances will cause problems, not only for the child, but also for the parent and the family unit as a whole.
Children are individual people. There was a time when everyone thought a child was a tabula rasa, a blank slate that could be molded in any way without resistance, especially by their parents. Some still hold this view, but children react to the outside world in different ways depending on their own personalities that they are born with along with ten little fingers and ten little toes. Parents who have more than one child should know this. One child cries ten hours a day from the day they are born. Another sleeps through the night at three weeks. Yet another is a textbook example of a newborn, wakes every few hours to nurse, sleeps, a little colic at a few weeks old.
If parents do not regard their children realistically as individuals, they cannot interact with them properly and may not even be able to care for them properly because they are dealing with a fantasy. If a parent concentrates all of their attention on one child in favor of another, that child will most likely suffer from too much unwarranted attention, the other children in the family will feel rejected, harming both the children's relationship with the parent and each other. The relationship between the parents will suffer especially if one parent must constantly intervene to reassure the neglected children that the other parent loves them and must argue with their spouse about their unfair behavior.
The child who is forced into the mold of a parent will never feel as tough they are good enough and will suffer from the stress of trying to live up to their parent's expectations abandoning their own goals and dreams or fighting with their parent to establish their individuality.
All of these scenarios can only lead to heartbreak and unhappiness as family members deal with each other improperly. Parents do not parent, making sure all their children feel loved, are protected and have the opportunity to grow and earn. Parents cannot parent as a team, bringing the best of what they have to offer to the job. Siblings, however much they may fight as children, cannot look forward to loving, adult relationships, untainted by rivalries forced upon them by parents whose expectations were foolish and unrealistic.
To be fair, it is not altogether unreasonable for parents to wish their children were like them. After all, many people spend time thinking about what is right and wrong, crafting a value system, in or out of a religion, as well as learning skills, everything from shooting a basket to singing to sewing that they would like to pass on. And in fact, children can be much like their parents but they may not exhibit this until they are grown-ups and gain a little distance and a different perspective. Also, while the expression of a trait may be different, the underlying characteristic may actually be closer than you think to the way you or your spouse are.
The next time you lock horns with your teen over a difference in political opinion, instead of wondering how they could be so different than you, look closely. The thought and passion they brought to the argument has probably been seen before, either across the marital bed or maybe even in the mirror.