By 
I have friends who are terrified that they are not good parents. They had unhappy childhoods, and they desperately don’t want to repeat that cycle with their own children. I put most of them (most, but not all, women) in a therapy or recovery setting, so these are people who have some issues, but are actively working through them. Still, I don’t think such fears are a rare exception (although the expression of them may be). I think most people harbor doubts about their abilities as parents. Parenting is the most important job you can take on; it would be human to have worries.
The truth is that most people have children before they can adequately support them, not only materially, but (even more importantly) emotionally. Nor am I referring to teenage pregnancy; I’m talking about almost everyone. The reason is that nothing can really prepare you for parenthood. Even the most skilled and well-prepared people still need to learn the vast majority of parenting skills in on-the-job training. If there were a test available to determine parenting readiness, most of us would fail miserably.
Having a child has a way of throwing people (conscious people, anyway) into a head-on collision with their own inadequacies. The tension of providing, caring, teaching and disciplining; to argue, cajole and explain; of setting boundaries and trying in vain to avoid power struggles; of sacrifice, tiredness and more tiredness, can bring doubts to the most trusting person. Getting into a power struggle with a five-year-old can be demoralizing. You can also lose your temper or take out frustrations unrelated to our children. We can set our minds firmly not to let it happen again, but soon we find ourselves in the exact situation, behaving in exactly the same shameful way: yelling at the girl, bargaining with her, threatening her, begging her. If it happens in public, it’s mortifying. You want to crawl into a hole and die. Those books you read, those people who gave you advice, all the therapy you had; Nothing prepared you for this. You feel like the worst person on the planet. You are sure that you are marking your children for life and you don’t know what to do about it.
But just because you do some things wrong doesn’t mean your kids will be scarred for life. Making mistakes is part of parenting. The nature of on-the-job training makes mistakes inevitable. So you have to completely abandon the belief that good parents don’t make mistakes. Good parents make mistakes. Many of them. So do bad parents. The crucial difference between good and bad parenting is not the absence of mistakes. It’s how the parent handles mistakes.
It’s pretty simple. So simple, in fact, that you may have doubts about its validity. But I assure you that it is valid. It’s not just valid, it’s your get out of jail free card, and it can, and should, be used over and over again, as many times as you need to, as many times as you screw up. What is? The apology.
A good father acknowledges his shortcomings with his son. She is liberal and effusive with her apology. She is specific and clear so that the child is not confused about what the problem is, she asks if she understands and gives him the opportunity to ask questions and feel heard. She asks for forgiveness, and allows the child to process her by giving it to him. She strives to create an atmosphere in which the child feels safe to express themselves. She does not always succeed, but the effort does not go unnoticed by her son.
A bad parent, on the other hand, will not acknowledge shortcomings and will not apologize to their child. She believes this shows weakness, or that there is no need to apologize to a child, except perhaps in very extreme cases. When a parent doesn’t apologize to her child and doesn’t try to make things right, the child is left stuck with the confusing and terrifying emotions left over from the altercation. Usually the boy does not feel safe to talk about her feelings in that environment. Therefore, he has no good outlet and holds back the feelings, which poisons his poor soul, or discharges them on other children, pets or toys, spilling the poison into the world. All when a simple “I’m sorry, honey” would have slowed down the poison from forming at all. There are very few things on this side of the horrendous (ie physical, verbal, or sexual abuse) that cannot be fixed with a sincere apology.
Failing to own up to mistakes with your children can have profound implications. An entire childhood without parental apologies can result in adults plagued with self-esteem issues and unclear about what constitutes a healthy relationship. It may take them years to overcome these obstacles, if ever; many don’t. The conscious effort required is more than many want to assume. Sadly, they are likely to repeat the cycle with their own children, being cut off from the part of themselves that might have done otherwise. Therefore, what seems like a small and simple thing can make a big difference not only in the life of one child, but also in all the lives touched by that child.
Yet another aspect of this manifests itself in the dynamic between the adult child and his unapologetic parent. Such children often try to get their due from their parents well into adulthood. They expect and strive to please parents with the underlying motivation (whether they are aware of it or not) to get what they didn’t get as a child. It is a sad and pointless effort. Whenever feelings between a parent and child are strained, the effort to improve the relationship must come from the parents. As it should be when the child is small. Since the father is the source and the reason for the problems, it must be the father who recognizes and changes her behavior. No amount of effort from the child, adult or not, can improve the relationship. However, if the father realizes his mistakes and sincerely wants a better relationship with his son, change can happen, no matter how much time has passed. But again, it must originate with the father.
I realize this is somewhat oversimplified; There is more to open and healthy communication than apologizing. However, it is a fairly accurate measure of a person’s level of emotional development. People who tend to be unapologetic also tend to be more emotionally closed off and therefore less likely to be attuned to their children’s needs. Conversely, if parents make maudlin and insincere apologies that have more to do with their own guilt and self-pity than with the child’s well-being, that doesn’t do the child any good either. It is definitely a complex issue. And yet, I believe that the ability to seriously own up to one’s mistakes and apologize for wrongdoing is a rather rare and remarkable trait, and absolutely essential to all healthy relationships. Being able to say “sorry” and mean it may not be the ultimate indicator of good parenting, but it certainly is a reliable indicator.