My Parents Did Not Believe in Me

1821 Words4 Pages

Society often emphasizes the role of parents and how they should rear their children, but parents often go against what society thinks and often practices. My parents both contradicted themselves while their expectations were very different. Their expectations were different in an aspect that they both wanted me to succeed, but they wanted that to come to a certain limit, especially when it meant excelling higher than they did. The parental expectations that were placed on me went shockingly wrong, because I; unlike others, took a different route and succeeded tremendously well. My dad is an educated black man who went to college to get his bachelors in liberal arts. He attended business school and even helped my brother and me start our own business, which is still very successful today. My dad is a teacher. A teacher to me is a prominent figure in the community, one who not only educates others but also him/herself. While my dad came from a big family of more than 12; and humble beginnings, he expected my brother and me to do something bigger than what he did, but in the back of my mind, he also didn’t want us to be his “better” competition. My dad wanted us to go to college, and to graduate, and to embark upon a good profession. He also hoped that one day I would marry a black man and have kids. I believe that my dad wanted for me what his life wasn’t, the path he wished he would have taken. My dad has five children, Christopher; 26, Darce; 19, Me; 17, and two twelve year-old twin daughters whose identities still remain unknown to me. Just as he had children early in life, he divorced in the same manner. He spread his seed around like it was a fad and didn’t handle his responsibilities as a parent. And then when I got to the age where I knew what sex was he also expected me to get pregnant young too. He expected me to get pregnant at 17 and not to graduate high school-at least that’s what he thought would happen. Defiantly, I turned 17 without becoming pregnant, graduated high school one year early at the top of my class, and am enrolled in one of America’s most prestigious black colleges.

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