thoughts on a drive: parents

[lauralh]

No matter what we do or how far we go, ultimately we're still a product of our upbringing.

I was wondering if my wanderlust and refusal to commit to a specific place had to do with the fact that most of the people I knew growing up all pretty much lived the same place all their life. Oh, maybe they moved across town, or even across the state, but that was it. Even my dad, who referred to Louisiana as a toilet, kept coming back all his life. So the idea of buying a house or whatever, instead of just renting an apartment for six months at a time, fills me with the same sort of dread that most men probably get when a woman mentions marriage.

I think that on a certain level, everything we do is a reaction to our parents. Some people do the same thing their whole lives because their parents did, some people make the same exact mistakes their parents made - some people totally rebel against their parents, some people see everything their parents did in their lives and do the exact opposite in every regard. Even people who do some of the same things their parents did, but some different, are using their parents as the reference point.

Nonetheless, it makes me wonder. What makes some people rebel and some never? What makes some rebel and then go back to the old patterns, what makes some rebel and never look back? Is only temperment inherited, not likes and dislikes? Or neither?

Comments

[hotcrab.livejournal.com]

it always seemed to me that the more repressive the parents,
the more rebellious the children.

of course, i also think that people who do things just to get back at their parents will eventually revert, cause they aren't following their own hearts

[herbaliser.livejournal.com]

who knows... there's also kids who have repressive parents, live their whole life under the restrictions, then have kids under the same restrictions, too.

Re:

[hotcrab.livejournal.com]

when in doubt
i blame it on the water