Wonder how much of this is driven by social media and the internet today. The word 'Toxic' is just thrown around now and everything is 'Toxic'. Its a word that has ceased to have any real meaning but virtually every behavior that used to just be normal every day activity is Toxic. Everyone has flaws and no one has all the answers. Parents are just people doing the best they can and for the most part making what they…
"Toxic" is just a catchier-sounding synonym for "harmful." It doesn't imply intent — in fact, that's one of its strengths, and one of the major components in the shift in the way we collectively talk about things over the past couple decades. Part of the conversation around race, for example, has been an awareness by more and more people that unintentional harms are far more prevalent than intentional ones, and in to…
What's the point in having children and raising them as best as you can if the talking heads in society will treat them to focus on your unintentional harms and resent you?
I myself am one of four children and I'm the only one that had a healthy relationship with both our parents because I ignored society's pressure to focus on people's failures and instead consider parents as flawed people doing their best given their upbringing, values, effort and the knowledge/information they had available to them at the time. My three siblings all have have issues with one or both parents and they aren't doing as well I me emotionally and I feel bad for them but also know it isn't entirely their fault since society has fed them toxicity.
That's right: society teaching people to focus on how others are toxic to you can be as toxic as those people are and often is far more toxic than any toxicity you experienced from the people you're been taught to consider toxic. Yet, we never discuss how all these discussions about "toxic people" are more toxic that the people we're discussing.