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heroica
STRICT PARENTS MAKE GOOD LIARS BY M I LC A H FA JA R D O P H OTO G R A P H Y BY M A D D I E M O O R E
I’m not going to sugarcoat it: strict parents make good liars. We all either know someone that hides almost everything about their lives from their parents, or we are that person. As someone who has personally spent the majority of their life avoiding confessing entirely, I am starting to understand why certain religions make a healthy habit of it.
Sometimes, I scare myself with how easy lying comes to me because I’ve grown up doing it. I feel like it comes so naturally. There’s no hesitation about coming up with excuses, no thought; it just happens. It’s so dangerous when you think about it.
Here’s the thing. My generation is now well past that age of sneaking out to parties and lying about where we’re going and who we’re with. We’re all moving out of our homes or in with partners, talking about children and marriage, and choosing our own paths in life. And yet, our parents still only know the tip of the iceberg.
Phoebe painted herself in the image that her parents wanted to see. From their perspective, they saw what she described as a smart, sensible and level-headed girl. Not too boisterous, not too meek. But they don’t get to see the whole version of her:
This generation of secretive kids has now grown up to be secretive adults. After many ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’ moments, the time has finally come to ask ourselves, how long is long enough to keep our parents in the dark? It’s important to underline that we’re not simply pathological liars. At the centre of most strict parent-child relationships is a parent that wants better for their kid and a child who would never want to disappoint them. So, in order to live the life that all the other kids with lenient parents were able to and to experience the things we were sheltered from, lying and secrecy seemed like the only solution to gain independence and freedom. Twenty-two-year-old Phoebe Edwards spoke to Heroica about her experience with strict parents and how it has taught her a thing or two about lying:
With my friends, I feel like I’m a completely different person – my parents see the diluted version of that, the kind of version that could do no wrong. I was very much a goody-goody in secondary school, but by the time I got to college, I grew so fed up with having to maintain that image. I skipped school all the time. I would argue back with teachers and lie about what I was doing, where I was going and who with, and it definitely showed me that you get to a point where you just break. Having to maintain a perfect image for her parents became a burden Phoebe was stuck with for a long time. Despite the burden, she knew that some things you’re better off lying about to avoid facing the conflict that would follow if you told the truth.
