I’ve included 6 options; 2 of which are “equal”. Please only answer this if there is not the thinnest preference for one or the other.
The poll is divided by gender to check something I’m curious about. Perhaps it’s easy to guess.
Too late to edit: You might replace “like more” with “get along with better”.
Female: Father but it’s rather simple as my mother is batshit crazy.
I liked my Mom and Dad fairly equally, but I was always closer to my Dad because I’m similar to him in personality and temperament. So, I get along with him a little better than I did with my Mom.
What do you choose if one parent is dead, and was suffering from Alzheimer’s for many years before that? Would it be your relative affection before the dementia set in?
I can’t really answer the poll. I’m more similar to my father in personality and was always a daddy’s girl growing up but in the last several years my father has become a huge alcoholic to the point where last week he was so drunk he completely forgot my birthday. I tend to disagree with my mom on pretty much everything but she is a good person and very responsible. The parent I like better changes every day depending on how much my dad has had to drink and how much fox news my mom has been watching, I guess.
The question is related to gender so if the main reason you get along/don’t get along is something which is accidental, don’t take it into account.
Totally my mom. I’m bitter that she was the parent working outside the home for so long, leaving me home with Drunky McFatherpants. And my older brother wonders why I favour Mom so much? Yeah, well, he had Dad before he hit the bottle.
I feel it important to note that Dad was the parent I spent the most time with - these kinds of questions seem to factor in which parent you hung around with more.
No contest. My father. Putting up with my ball-breaking shrew of a mother without getting her some badly needed psychiatric help is pretty much what killed him. She may or may not be alive today, dunno, the bitch.
I love my parents equally, but I genuinely like my father more. He is simply more of a realist than Mum, who indulges in religious fantasy, and opinion reality far too much for my tastes.
I’m abstaining – mom and I get along great and I genuinely like her, while dad and I never really saw eye-to-eye. However, he also died when I was in my early teens, so no great shock there. I’m sure if he hadn’t died relatively young*, he and I would have bonded later in life – I’m much more like him now than I was as a kid. But since I can’t really judge fairly, I’m going to pass on this one.
*My eldest brother had a bit of a “woah” moment recently when he realized he hit the point where he was now older than my father was when he died.
Mom and I have basically one thing in common: Neither of us want to turn into our mothers. I love her, and we can get along if we both put a lot of effort into it, but Dad and I are far better friends.
My mother and I have a more formal child-mother relationship. I don’t swear in front of her, for example. But she’s very loving and always good for advice or help with just about anything. I could go to the bar or club with her, but I don’t.
My dad and I are more friends. I usually see him when I vacation, so I usually end up at the bar with him. We chat about the family, news, politics and stuff. I could go to him for advice, but I don’t.
So “neither”.
Perhaps, but I wonder in which direction. I have a lot more interaction with my Mom, and she often makes me want to be a hermit. Nothing I can really point to, nothing abusive or anything, she’s just a bitter, sad human being.
My dad may also be a bitter, sad human being, but I don’t know it, because I don’t know him as well. I like him better precisely *because *I don’t know him as well, and our relations are all either superficial niceties or “special” moments of love.
Mom got the shit job when they divorced - she had to teach me how to clean my room and do my homework and try to keep the boys at a distance. Daddy got to take me to the beach and go sailing and go to the zoo. Not really a fair contest, but that’s how it works when you only see your dad on vacations…
My father never should have gotten married, and definitely never should have had kids. My mother could have done a lot better.
Dad, but only because my mom died when I was a baby.
Much closer to my mom. She’s my best friend.
After many years of observation and interaction, I’ve realized that my dad just doesn’t like women, and once his little daughters turned into grown-up women, the relationships went out the window. My dad is unkind, judgemental, racist, and controlling. He absolutely uses my brothers financially and emotionally. My sister and I have nothing to do with him, largely because of things he has said to or about us.
He emotionally disowned me when I got divorced, without ever considering that I may have had very good reasons. He refers to my children as a burden and says I am “saddled with kids,” whatever that means. Meh. What’s to like?
I like my dad more because he’s a really good guy - kind, open-minded, generous, and fun-loving - and always made it clear, growing up, that he loved us kids deeply and thought we were really amazing people (smart, talented, beautiful, etc).
My mom I have little fondness for, we get along fine now but she’s never seemed to like me at all and either ignored me or abused me when I lived with her. She doesn’t enjoy being a parent (says herself she has ‘no maternal instinct’) and IMO, should never have had kids.
I answered that I like them both equally, but what I mean is that I’m pretty ambivalent about them both.
My mom definitely deserves props for being a single mom with two kids, 13 months apart. So if I had to choose, it’d be her. But since I’ve gotten older, her drinking has made her someone I don’t like at all. I don’t trust her to be alone for long around my children, and I resent the hell out of her sometimes because I know that, when she’s unable to care for herself, she’ll probably be my responsibility.
My dad, on the other hand is a nice enough guy. But he was a deadbeat when I was growing up and still is much of the time. He never helped pay for us even though he was making well over six figures (mom made certain I knew that), didn’t visit, clearly had favorites and broke almost every promise he ever made. He’s the guy who says he’d love to visit, but never comes. He’ll want to “get back to his roots” every few months or so, then a flurry of e-mails will ensue where he professes his commitment to family, then we won’t hear from him again until he goes through his mini-mid-life crisis again. I’ve learned not to trust that I’ll see him until he’s on my doorstep. He’s smart and he’s charming, but I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him.
I voted before I read the ‘too late to edit’. I get along with my mum better, so I should have voted for her, I guess. But I respect my dad more.