𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐃𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐦𝐚 𝐀𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬

Please permit me to wear the Scholar-Practitioner cap briefly.

In his book on Polarity Management, Barry Johnson argued that some issues are miscategorized as problems, things we seek to solve. He called them dilemmas. The task with a dilemma is not to solve it but to manage it, so as to get the best out of two poles that sit apart. These issues are usually interrelated, so you cannot manage one while neglecting the other. They are not either/or but and/both, if you want any result from them.

I found that frame useful this week because parenting challenges aren’t problems that need solutions; they’re dilemmas that require knowledge, understanding, and profound wisdom, managed through candid, two-way conversations and a willingness to shift as we better understand ourselves. Extreme positions hurt both parties more.

In the week of my birthday, three solid experiences pushed me toward that conclusion. Each one moved closer to home, and each one ended in less agreement than the last.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐄𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐫

A conversation that ran past the hour. It began as a discussion of my previous article, “The clash of duty and responsibility”, and gradually became a discussion of misgivings about parenting styles across generations.

The shape of the disagreement was already clear. While our generation believes we have moved the needle away from what we received, our offspring feel we are not doing enough.

In that conversation, I tried to explain, through my still-undeveloped theory, the Graph Plotting Analysis, the unresolved conflicts between what we inherited, the deliberate shift we have made, and the loud complaints we get where we expected some commendation.

Put plainly, the idea runs on two axes. One axis plots what a generation actually passes on; the other plots what the next generation believes it is owed. The gap between the two lines is where the complaint lives, often widest exactly where the sacrifice was greatest. The elder listened to that and did not disagree. That, in itself, was a finding.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐂𝐥𝐮𝐛

Second, I found myself in a Book Club. During a session where a chapter of one of my books was read and discussed, with humbling joy, we ended up discussing parenting challenges across generations. My book did not discuss parenting at all. Somehow, after analyzing the chapter, the discussion shifted there anyway. At one point we agreed that people are free to share whatever bothers them.

What made that gathering different was how long it lasted. Many people in the room had watched this play out over five solid generations: their grandparents, their parents, themselves, their children, and now their grandchildren. That is not an anecdote. That is a dataset, and almost nobody in it believed the one below had adequately understood their generation.

The coping mechanisms the grandparents developed in that Senior Book Club were the most instructive thing in the room, and they deserve more than a footnote. Three of them recurred:

• 𝐀 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐟𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. The complaints that once provoked a quarrel were simply absorbed.

• 𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐟𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. The “sit down look.” Generations of Nigerian readers will need no gloss; for everyone else, it is the look that ends a conversation without a word being raised.

• 𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟-𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭. An honest admission, from people who had already finished parenting, that they might have got parts of it wrong.

Note which of the three is doing the real work. Tolerance and aloofness manage the symptom; only self-indictment moves the needle, and most of us in the middle generation are still avoiding it.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

The third event was at the family devotion on my birthday, where I had the privilege of explaining the scripture we had read. Again, I found some leverage to discuss parenting.
I emphasized what has become my central claim: we gave what we did not even receive, yet we got more complaints than appreciation.

In defending their generation, they named what they felt instead: emotional disconnection, leading to alienation from parents once they grew up, with many moving away from home and never looking back.

We argued back and forth. They dismissed the idea that they were not appreciative. At one point I was told that I always seek to defend or find excuses for Nigerian, albeit Black, parents. The charge is worth stating precisely, because the “albeit Black” I attached to it in my own head made it something it may not have been: the complaint was about Nigerian parenting specifically, but it lands as a complaint about Black parenting generally, and I had been answering the second while they were raising the first.

When I sensed that we were about to drift apart, I asked for an adjournment and said the discussion would have a second part.

I can call that prudence, or I can call it retreat. It was probably a little of both, and the fact that the one conversation with the least distance between us went worst is not an accident. The elder could afford to listen. My children could not afford to, because they were the ones being evaluated.

𝐌𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐰𝐨 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬

In managing opposites through quadrants, it is essential to understand that both poles have upsides and downsides. Only through give-and-take can we move from the extremes toward each other and hope to reach a reasonable middle ground.
𝐁𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐮𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐬. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞; 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫.

Two quadrants are easy to see in this argument, and one is easy to forget:
• 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐞. Its upside is continuity, authority and the transmission of values that survived hardship. Its downside is that it mistakes compliance for understanding.

• 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐞. Its upside is emotional literacy, room for the child to speak, and the freedom to leave a home without leaving the family. Its downside is that it mistakes articulation for resolution; a generation fluent in the vocabulary of harm is not automatically a generation that has repaired it.

• 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐨𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐭. What both poles lose when they harden. Unacknowledged sacrifice curdles into resentment on one side; unheard complaint curdles into distance on the other. Neither side is served by winning.

Parenting has improved over time compared with previous generations. But we are far from the ideal parenting style, even if one exists.

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐬 𝐌𝐞

One way forward: keep unlearning and relearning, and keep moving the needle. Parents, don’t lose heart if your sacrifices go unacknowledged. Children, understand that the needle is moving, perhaps too slowly for your liking, but it is moving.

And to my own children, specifically: understand where we were coming from, and let us continue the conversation.

My generation may have made huge sacrifices for our children. We may also not have considered the psychology of intergenerational differences deeply enough. Both are true at the same time, which is the point.

𝐀 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

So, to the younger generation, in particular: what would have made you feel heard? Not understood, not tolerated, heard, at seventeen. If you can answer that, we have the second part of the conversation I asked for.

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬?

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