Were your parents too severe? I’m curious what you thought in your teens and what you think now. I don’t think my parents were too severe. I got annoyed with them at times as a child, but never thought overall that they were too severe. I was the youngest and was treated more gently. And I was more gentle to them than my older siblings.
I think as we age, we judge our parents more generously, particularly when we struggle with our own children.
The biggest difference in child-parent relations, I think, since the 1960s, is that it is much more common now for adult children to be friends with their parents.
