09/05/2026
In honor of Mother’s Day, this is the main generational cycle that I broke with my children… and honestly, it made me become a better mother.
I stopped believing that fear, intimidation, whooping, beating, or humiliating children was the same thing as discipline.
A lot of us were raised to believe, “I got whooped and turned out fine.” But did we really? Or did we just become adults who struggle with emotional expression, vulnerability, nervous system regulation, self-esteem, people pleasing, hyper-independence, anxiety, or fear of making mistakes?
Carl Jung once spoke deeply about the unconscious patterns passed through families. And if we’re honest, many parents weren’t taught emotional regulation… they were taught control. Machiavelli even understood that fear creates obedience faster than love. But obedience and emotional security are not the same thing.
Some of us learned very early that love could come with aggression, yelling, shame, silence, religious guilt, or physical punishment. Especially in the Black community, many of us inherited survival-based parenting rooted in fear instead of emotional safety.
And I had to ask myself:
Is my child actually learning right from wrong…
or are they just learning to fear me?
Children are still developing their identity, nervous system, confidence, and emotional voice. Constant yelling, threatening, hitting, or whooping may stop behavior temporarily, but sometimes it also teaches children:
• suppress your emotions
• don’t express yourself
• love equals fear
• mistakes make you unsafe
• authority matters more than understanding
As a mother, I had to learn how to communicate before trying to control. To guide instead of dominate. To correct behavior without crushing self-expression.
Not saying parenting is easy. Not saying children shouldn’t have boundaries. But I do think more of us should ask ourselves if the parenting methods we inherited actually created emotionally healthy adults… or emotionally wounded ones who learned how to survive.
Healing the mother wound sometimes starts with becoming the parent you needed.