Dad

You intentionally changed your fathering approach to improve on what you received

You improved on your dad’s parenting → boomer values instead of silent generation values

Working class coal miner dad born in the 1920s or 1930s
Survival first, love as provision: a roof, food, heat = care; little verbal affection.
Early self-reliance: “earning > learning”; leave school at 14–16, pay board, or move out.
Authority & obedience: father as head; “because I said so”; corporal punishment normal.
Emotional stoicism: don’t complain, don’t cry; feelings are private, pride is dangerous.
Rigid roles: Dad works the pit; Mum runs house/kids; boys toughen up, girls help Mum.
Austerity & thrift: waste-nothing, mend-and-make-do; cash good, debt bad.
Respectability & station: don’t get “above yourself”; suspicion of grammar-school airs.
Community loyalty, private tenderness: union/crew solidarity; home life often terse.
Hard launches: overcrowding + costs → push kids out early (“time to stand on your own feet”).

Provision → protection: “I’ll never kick my kid out at 16”; stability as a promise.
Earning > learning → mobility: backing school/qualifications as escape velocity.
Harsh authority → calm steadiness: less shouting; pride in being un-prickly.
Stoicism → acts of service: lifts to band practice, quiet cash when needed.
Scarcity → cautious enterprise: start a business, stay debt-averse, keep it solvent.
Distant father → 1:1 time: tries to connect (even if via his interests: football, cars).

Your dad was a coal miner, and money was always tight, especially with ~6 kids. You were the smartest kid, you worked hard, went to grammar school
You worked hard and went from a man who made boxes in a factory to starting your own shipping/freighting company.
You focused on the business, grew it, employed people, stayed out of debt, stayed profitable always.
You followed football, went to the pub with your friends, talked about politics and music.
You met my mum, had me when you were 40, and life continued

Your dad kicked you out at 16. He was prickly and domineering, with a very short temper
You were softer, would never raise his voice (at me), were fun. Not explicitly supportive (as that would require emotional attunement beyond his ability), but very intentionally not angry, not prickly, trying very hard to be a grounded presence.
And “not explicitly supportive” isn’t true actually → you took me to band practice every week when I was a teenager, helped transport all the equipment to our gigs at local pubs, gave me money over the years, e.g. during my master’s degree, during my undergrad too. I’m sure your parents gave you no money at all, a sense of “you have to make it on your own”. You couldn’t explicitly say “I’m proud of you, I love you, as you never heard that yourself, but you supported me

Unlike your dad who was prickly and had no time for 1:1 time with his kids, you wanted to spend 1:1 time connecting with me, a prioritised this highly
You tried to connect, even if you weren’t good at it, even if your tactics weren’t very good (e.g. sharing the stuff that you loved (football, cars) without noticing that I didn’t care about those things (and perhaps I hid it too well! I probably never told you!))
- Mythopoesis → “me and my dad didn’t connect easily but we kept trying because we loved each other”

Her mum could be nice but also could be quite nasty, a bit of a bully. I felt super super supported, unconditional support, really cherished
[more about the parenting she received]

My parents did really well for a while
My parents fought entropy for a long time, defying the odds and massively improving upon the parenting they received
They were very naive about adopting a child, and this added a huge amount of chaos into the system that they couldn’t keep up with, but they tried!