Danny ChaiBen Hur thinks something similar, that when parents really love each other children don’t turn out screwed up. We were talking about BLT and this came up. Kind of similar to the unconditional love thing.
As for me, I don’t buy it. Mostly on the strength of a few counter-examples. SN, didn’t one of the Sunny Hills Killers go to church or something? Not sure. I think this mentions one of their families as being Christian but who knows. Anyway.
So you could argue that in these counter-example families, the parents didn’t *really* love each other or they didn’t *really* give unconditional love. But I dunno, I don’t see how that can be. So it either makes the theory untestable or does the reverse interpretation thing, a la Jesus must have felt peace at Gethsemane. The theory must be true so the parents must not have loved in the right way. I dunno.
At any rate, by any reasonable standard I can think of, the parents were loving, both to each other and unconditionally to their children. Yet the children kind of came out “screwed up”. So even if their theories are true, it’s useless for me, because whatever standard I might have for parents loving each other and their children is empirically not sufficient and I’m back where I started – I have to do something different from them but I’m not exactly sure what that is.
Assuming (for the sake of argument) that I’m not screwed up, and comparing to my counter-examples, I can come up with only 2 things different, both of which are really 1 thing, the grace of God. One is prayer. I dunno, I don’t think my dad was a fantastic parent but one great thing he did was pray for us all the time since we were kids. I honestly think that’s saved me from many things. The other thing was having my grandma around to raise us. In retrospect I think both me and my sister would say that’s one of the best things that happened to us.
Honestly though, I think about it but I don’t worry too much because I think Jieun will be a fantastic mom.