turning lead into gold

"The psychologist John Snarey has studied men who had very difficult childhoods because of their fathers’ poor parenting. Some of these men replicated the same problems in their relationships with their own children. But others were able to use the memory of what their fathers did wrong to chart a different course in their own parenting. What separated the two groups was that the successful ones neither idealized their own fathers nor focused on their shortcomings. Rather, they placed their fathers’ failures in context, turning their anger “into a sense of sadness for and understanding of the conditions under which their own fathers had functioned.” Their unhappy memories became a guide for avoiding bad behavior rather than an excuse for it."

(from NY Times)