I [26F] am considering setting hard boundaries for my parents [53F/M] if they don't find a way to get along. What is the best way to go about this?

My parents are good people with terrible relationship skills. My Mom means well but has a hard time listening or empathizing with people and if she's angry she'll mock people or yell at them. My Dad doesn't communicate his own thoughts, just sits there feeling tense and only half-responding to my Mom or anyone else who's saying something he doesn't like, until he's being yelled at and then starts yelling back. My siblings and I all agree that they're awesome people but their parenting was varying degrees of traumatic for all of us, and confusing as hell. They're much nicer to be around now that we're out of the house but they're still awful to each other, and it's really unpleasant to be around. There's always tension in the air. You can tell they have a lot of shit to work through.

My husband and I are planning on starting to try for a baby a year from now. We've been together a decade and our dynamic is fantastic. We argue about couple stuff all the time but we never "fight," as in, it's never angry. It is always calm and it is "us against the problem." We both take each other seriously and put effort into one another, and it's very stable and peaceful and calm.

I've come to realize that, while I'm fine with leaving my future kid alone with either of them, I'm not fine leaving my kid alone with them *together,* until the kid is maybe 7ish and old enough that they've already established some way of interacting with other people. I don't want them to think that the way my parents interact is normal, healthy, or okay. If the kid sees this once they're old enough to recognize "Grandma and grandpa are always mad at each other and kinda mean to each other," that's fine. I just want them to be able to put it into context.

What is the best way to bring this up to my parents? If my parents found a way to get along (even if that meant them finally divorcing), that's fine. As long as they can be nice to each other in the same room without this air of "threat" around them. I really want to say some version of "Hey, I love you both, I think you both will be awesome grandparents, but if you want me to leave my kids alone with the two of you together while they're infants, you need to get a handle on your relationship with each other."

I don't know the best way to phrase this and I also don't know if me suggesting it is somehow overstepping a boundary? What do you guys think?

TLDR: My parents are awful to each other. I don't want to expose my future children to that while they're young. What do?

Submitted October 23, 2020 at 04:27PM by AccountForAmoebae https://ift.tt/37BcLvp