Who is that parenting for?

"Parenting that is good for the child"
"Parenting that I want to do"
"Parenting that I think is good for the child"

These three look similar when lined up, but when you look closely, I think they are completely different creatures.

The first one is the one that looks perfectly correct, brought along by parenting books, experts, and the voices of society.

The second one is the one that comes along with my own values, habits, and perhaps even past wounds; it is relatively honest and relatively selfish.

The third one is the most complicated, where the first two hold hands and whisper, "Look, this is for the child's sake."

What is scary is that the third one wears the face of good intentions the most. If you wrap a parent's desires in "for the child's sake" wrapping paper without realizing it, the person opening it cannot easily refuse.

It would be easy if they all overlapped, but in reality, they are usually misaligned, and I suspect we usually only notice that misalignment later. So, at the very least, I stop for a moment to try and separate them, wondering which one this is. I sometimes think that the act of doing so might be parenting itself.

Precisely because there is no correct answer, I want to at least make the effort not to mix them up. Today, too, I quietly include this as a reminder to myself.