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One of the most unjust elements of twentieth century psychology was the notion that you could always blame your parents. Everyone recognises and understands that people are shaped by their experiences as children: no-one would doubt that. But the idea that you could look at your troubles and deal with them by attributing them mainly to other people is both disingenuous and cruel.

Firstly, it is a truism that except for certain, rare, circumstances, most parents do the very best they can. They may be affected by poverty, their own psychological issues, relationship issues - but generally they act with devotion and love towards their children. As nobody is perfect, their parenting will not be perfect. There will be things any child will remember as an adult - a humiliation here, a lack of praise there - a feeling of being ignored somewhere else. But whatever they will have done, it will have been through human error - which we are all prone to.

So making them responsible, as if they were gods, for the behaviour of their child once it has reached adulthood is to assume that they have a power and malevolence out of all proportion to their very ordinary human lives.

Secondly, it is to deny a fundamental element of our civilisation - which is why the idea is so pernicious: that an adult has the ability to choose their own behaviour. If we deny that, we deny their ability to reason, to organise, to make ethical decisions. Then we reduce the individual to a set of reactions and instinctive responses only. It is true that everyone is the sum of their memories - people are affected by their pasts. But part of being an adult is dealing with that appropriately. Just as we all have to accept certain facts: we are not as talented as we thought; we are not as handsome as we once were; we cannot earn the money we wanted - so we have to accept that the problems and troubles we carry are our own duty to resolve.

If an individual finds relationships difficult and blames it on something typically vague, such as their parents being "cold" - or whatever - it is for them to seek out the help they need and change themselves, just as they would deal with any problem at work.

If they feel that they have low self-esteem due to not having been praised enough as a child, and consequently find it hard to hold down a good job - they must change themselves, take control of their own life and move forward as an adult - and not as the child, thrashing around for someone to blame.

It is different in those cases where definite abuse has taken place (as opposed to the failings of people doing their best for a child) when the person was a child. In such cases an individual can be damaged psychologically such that they respond to others in certain ways that prevent relationships or make them very difficult. The abusive parents would have to take the blame for this - anyone who damages a child must take responsibility for doing so - but in these cases, the adult still needs to seek help themselves.

A parent will always affect their child. There is no getting away from that. We are emotional beings, formed by the emotional experiences of childhood, when everything is magnified and sharpened by the lens of immaturity. But - except for certain very rare situations - an adult is able to take control of their own life, and indeed must do so, because everybody else is struggling to do the same thing. Only by always being as responsible and careful as we can be, can we reach our potential as humans. Attributing our failures to others sets us back.

Learn more about this author, Lawrence George.
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