Photo
by Tory
Morrison on Unsplash
(Seed bearing grasses in the foreground are backed by a person walking through and enjoying the spring pasture.)
“Mini me” parenting is the potentially personally damaging practice of expecting one’s children to have the same personalities, aptitudes, and interests as the parent (often the same sex parent), and enforcing that.
If that genuinely suits the child (which may indeed genuinely be the case), that is OK ... expecting that but adapting to the child being different is also OK ... and actively seeking to encourage the child to be their best self and pursue their aptitudes/interests is best of all - both for the child, and for humanity.
The biology of mixing two sets of genes to create a child has several evolutionary advantages.
It creates the potential to prevent in-breeding (potential, as a wide mix of partners across the species is also required), and it creates the potential for changes which may have survival/evolutionary advantages.
That principle does not only apply to physical features: it also applies to how we think, and our characters.
Einstein's abilities, it could be argued, were not present, fully formed and capable, in either of his parents: they came about through the combination of whatever is genetic, plus all the evolutionary influences - life experiences certainly, but also parenting, and supportive parenting is what is most likely to result in children being the best they can be - for themselves, as much or more than for others.
Personal choice is also crucial.
Similarly Marie Curie, Nelson Mandela, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Gough Whitlam, Dion Fortune, and so on: they all likely had strengths that they inherited or were taught by their parents, but it is the differences to their parents that enabled them to be and do what they were/did in the world and personal circumstances they found themselves in.
Note, however, we do not need to justify our existence, and we need to be more human being than doing - the best that a child may be could genuinely be to be healthy and happy.
(More on that shortly.)
Restrictive (in the authoritarian, be-like-me-without-question type) parenting is inherently damaging and abusive. By denying the child the potential to be different, it is also ANTI evolution - it enforces a form of character inbreeding, and it denies the child and indeed all of humanity the potential to benefit from a generational change of character.
In fact, I consider reactionary and bigotted attitudes to likely be a form of ... “character inbreeding” - a recessive character "gene", in a sense.
Franklin D Roosevelt had the advantages of social privilege, the challenge of polio, and other influences which resulted in him being able to conceive (no doubt with others) and act on/realise things like the expression of the Four Freedoms and the New Deal - things which were new and different and, I would argue, reliant on his character being different to that of those who held power before him.
Similar such changes ascribe also to Ashoka, who was the first person to ban slavery, Buddha, who chose to reject the attempts of his father to direct his interests and character, Bishop Desmond Tutu, the famed poet Kahlil Gibran, and the many philosophers/“intellectuals” of “the Enlightenment”, who shaped western political thought and enabled things like the American Revolution - all things that were different to what had gone before, all things that would not have happened had the key figures been forced to be the same as their parents ...
I also wish to draw your attention to following excellent article by JA Westenberg:
“The Harvest Will Come” https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/the-harvest-will-come “A Defense of Human Seasons”
Possible flaws
Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:
- there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;
- I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
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Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).
#PsychicABetterWorld and may all that I do be of value and actively BPM used for and by the nonphysical BPM because #KindnessIsThePoint
Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here, and Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear
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