Chapter 18

Making Up History

So far in this book, I’ve provided perfect, irrefutable advice on how to raise kids who are just as good or better than the children of overachieving parents with less effort from you. But I haven’t shown you examples of how bare minimum parenting’s principles worked out for people who followed them. Maybe “followed” isn’t the right word since I’m just now writing them down. But some parents throughout history did what I would have told them to do anyway, so I’m retroactively claiming credit. It’s not fair, but that won’t stop me. Dead people can’t sue.

It’s challenging to use historical figures to prove bare minimum parenting works. If some long-dead person is still remembered today, they probably did something important. That exceeds the goals of bare minimum parenting. But the alternative is to use ordinary people no one has ever heard of, and that isn’t ideal, either. It’s tough to build a case based solely on Bill, the dairy manager at my local supermarket. Although I almost did anyway, not because I thought it would prove anything, but because I wanted free milk.

Instead, my examples in this chapter are Abraham Lincoln and Joseph Stalin. No other book has compared these two men based on how their parents raised them—or based on anything at all. They lived at different times and had nothing to do with each other. This research is as cutting edge as it is pointless. So it’s exactly like everything else in academia.

Some of what I’m about to say might sound controversial. And by “controversial” I mean “wildly inaccurate.” But who’s to say what’s a lie and what’s a slightly smaller lie? Nobody can go back in time to prove what really happened, and if they could, they would alter history, so it wouldn’t count. This was proven by a scientific source called every time travel movie ever. Look at that, I’m even citing my work.

And really, even the experts don’t know what happened back then. There are thousands of years of history where the only primary source is a single, partially burned scroll. Historians assume that scroll is the definitive work of literature for that civilization, but maybe the reason it was burned in the first place was because it sucked. That’s like future historians concluding this book was important because someone tried to flush it down the toilet.

If the facts I present here don’t jive with what you’ve read elsewhere, that doesn’t mean someone (specifically, me) is lying. It just means I’m having a scholarly disagreement with the other experts. My research is just as valid as theirs, as long as their research also consisted entirely of looking up Lincoln and Stalin on Wikipedia. Countless teachers have told me that isn’t a real source. But to be fair, this isn’t a real book.

Before we go any further, it’s important for you to understand my historical biases. I grew up in the Midwest, where Lincoln spent most of his life. Multiple states claim him: Kentucky, where he was born; Indiana, where he spent his childhood; Illinois, where he practiced law; and Ohio, which he passed through on his way to better states. The term “Midwest” just refers to the loose collection of states that act like Lincoln belongs to them. Feelings about it are pretty strong. It almost started a second civil war.

In my neck of the woods, Honest Abe is as close as you can come to a god. If Jesus and Lincoln both came back from heaven and arrived in the Midwest on the same day, there would be a queue around the block to see Lincoln and no queue at all to see Jesus, mainly because Jesus would be in the queue to see Lincoln, too. Clearly, I like the guy a little bit. But I promise to be impartial when comparing him to Stalin, who everyone agrees was a repulsive monster with no redeeming qualities.

Lincoln vs. Stalin

	Lincoln	Stalin
Height	Six feet, four inches.	Shorter than Lincoln.
Weight	Ten bald eagles.	Some weird metric measurement.
Arm Span	Long enough to hug all of America.	Too short to push the launch button.
How They Made the World a Better Place	Won the Civil War and freed the slaves.	Died.

Honestly the Best

Abraham Lincoln was born in the early 1800s, the son of a mother and a father. His parents had names, which you’re welcome to look up on your own. The important thing isn’t who they were, but how they raised their kids. They were bare minimum parents by the modern definition, but back then they were just called parents. Simply surviving took considerable effort, so parents didn’t have much energy left for anything else. Nobody parent-shamed anyone about it, though, because they were all too busy trying not to die of tuberculosis themselves. It’s harder than it sounds.

According to historical records, Abraham Lincoln’s mum and dad never attended a single youth football game. Abe didn’t care because he didn’t play organized sports. Also, football didn’t exist in America back then. George Washington won a war to keep it out.

The only activity Lincoln did for sure was survive. It was challenging because at least one of his childhood homes only had three sides. The next time you feel like a bad parent, remember the mother and father of America’s greatest president couldn’t even give him the bare minimum number of walls.

As hard as it was to stay alive, Lincoln was better at it than the rest of his family. His mother died after a brief illness when Lincoln was still a kid. Historians disagree on the cause of death, but it’s notable that she was survived by other mums in houses with four walls.

Number of Football Games Attended by the Parents of Famous Historical Figures

Undeterred, Lincoln’s dad remarried within a year. Relationships moved faster back then because people could die at any moment. You never knew if a first date would be followed by a second date or a funeral.

Lincoln gained some step-siblings through his new stepmum. If this story sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the basis for The Brady Bunch. I forget the name of the kid who was supposed to be Lincoln, but it was the ugly one. The big, quirky family then moved from Kentucky to Indiana and finally to Illinois, where Lincoln helped his dad set up a new farm. There’s no record of whether Abe got his own bedroom, but you can bet this time the house had an appropriate number of walls. It saved a ton on the heating bill.

That’s the bare minimum childhood Lincoln had, and he grew up to be Abraham Lincoln. Before you try harder at parenting, ask yourself if you expect your kid to be better than one of the greatest leaders in world history. If you do, never set foot in the Midwest or you’ll be chased out for blasphemy. There’s no such thing as “better than Lincoln.” Your kid can only tie with him, and even then, only if they’re his clone. Get them tested just in case.

Stallin’ for Stalin

Then there’s the other guy: Joseph Stalin, brutal dictator of the Soviet Union for three decades of uninterrupted misery. There are a few key differences between Lincoln and Stalin. First of all, unlike Lincoln, Stalin is not beloved by people in the Midwest. He’s not beloved by people anywhere. Except maybe aging communists in Russia who Stalin didn’t get around to killing. There are only so many hours in a day. Again, my bias might be showing here, but based on the body count he racked up among his own countrymen, Stalin is one of the worst people ever to live. Though in his defense, he did beat Hitler and had a great mustache, so maybe it’s a tie.

I’m not here to judge historical figures by their facial hair. (If I were, that award would go to Lincoln.) I’m here to judge their childhoods by bare minimum parenting standards. On that scale, Stalin stands a better chance. If there’s one place that excels at having the bare minimum of everything, it’s Russia.

Like Lincoln, Stalin had a subpar childhood. He was born in Georgia roughly a decade after Lincoln died. Not the Georgia that surrendered in terror when Lincoln flexed his biceps, but the one in the Russian Empire. Tough break.

Stalin’s father drank too much. He overachieved at being Russian, and it killed him. At least he died doing what he loved.

Undeterred, Stalin’s mum worked multiple side jobs and called in favors from a priest to get her son into a religious school, a coveted spot in a country where simply not freezing to death was considered an accomplishment. Stalin was the first one in his family to receive a formal education, a major victory for his overachieving mother. He made the most of the opportunity. Just kidding. He dropped out, became an atheist, and ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist. I might have skipped a few steps in there, but you get the idea.

So is Stalin a success story or a cautionary tale? Let’s just say no one wants their kid to grow up to be the next Stalin. He killed millions of Nazis with his army and millions of his own people with his incompetence. In the end, he was as bad at keeping people alive as his mum was at doing the bare minimum. Oops.

Thanks to his questionable upbringing, Stalin missed two-thirds of the benchmarks of successful parenting. He turned out to be a social deviant, and he can definitely blame his parents for it. Secret political murders aren’t the hallmark of a well-adjusted human being. If you must be a murderer, at least be open about it. Take some pride in your work.

Stalin’s mum did manage to hit one successful parenting benchmark: She made Stalin self-sufficient. According to historical records, adult Stalin never called his mum to ask for money. Although she may have been dead by then. It’s hard to say. I’d have to Google it.

Stalin could take care of himself, but his mum broke the bare minimum code to get him to that point. She used dirty tricks like hard work and networking to get Stalin an education. That’s the modern equivalent of ruthlessly doing whatever it takes to get your kid into a top-tier nursery. Stalin in turn learned to mercilessly pursue his own goals. In so doing, he decimated his own country and set in motion a Cold War that lasted half a century. Clearly overparenting turns children into maniacal despots. Well, it turned one child into a maniacal despot. In this chapter’s sample size of two people, that’s statistically significant.

Worst Parents in History

Parent	What They Did	Why It’s Awful
Eve	Doomed mankind for an apple.	Not worth it for fruit. Maybe for bacon.
Abraham	Tried to sacrifice his child to God.	Ruined father-son bonding time forever.
Cinderella’s Stepmother	Made Cinderella do all the chores.	Put perfectly capable servants out of work.
Godzilla	Too busy smashing buildings to raise his son.	Children with absentee fathers are more likely to grow up to be monsters.
Grendel’s Mother	Gave birth to Grendel.	Set off a chain of events that forced generations of bored college students to read Beowulf.
The Mum in Home Alone	Forgot her kid in a different city twice.	Child Protective Services should have stepped in the first time.
Stalin’s Dad	Drank too much.	Refused to share.
You	Nothing.	You’re doing fine, but you’re emotionally incapable of giving yourself a break.

Learning from the Great (and Not-So-Great)

What lessons should you take from the childhoods of Lincoln and Stalin? First and foremost, don’t live in Russia. It’s a land of cold and sadness, and nothing good ever comes from there. Unless this book ends up being available in Russian, in which case it’s a cheerful land of prosperity and you should totally buy my guide.

Second, overachieving at parenting isn’t just harder; it really is worse for your kid. Stalin’s mum overachieved by doing everything possible to get her son into a good school, and it turned her kid into a supervillain. If she had chilled out a little, the world would have escaped the wrath of the Russian Lex Luthor. But she just had to impress her neighbors by pushing her son, and the price was nearly ending life as we know it in a nuclear holocaust. Well done.

Lincoln’s parents, in contrast, were consistently minimalist. All of his guardians did the bare minimum to keep him alive. Lincoln was self-sufficient, wasn’t a social deviant, and never blamed his parents for anything. If you want your kid to be like Lincoln and not like Stalin, be like Lincoln’s parents. Other than the dying-young part. That’s optional.

With that, it’s time to wrap up this book—not because I’ve made my point, but because I’ve almost reached my contractually required word count. One more chapter should do the trick. I could write more, but that would be overachieving. I might not be the greatest childcare expert in the world, but at least I’m not a hypocrite.