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look, jiang fengmian is the just kind of dude who's better suited to being a fun uncle than a dad. he's a pretty bad father, and while his parenting of jiang cheng is very bad, it doesn't do wei wuxian any favors either
since wei wuxian is the kid he's got the strongest relationship with, let's focus on that. jfm is good at acknowledging and encouraging wwx, but absolutely horrible at the hard parts of parenting--- enforcing boundaries, discipline, and impressing the idea of *consequences*
like, wei wuxian is a teenager. it makes sense for him to act the way he does, especially since his only guardian has done shit all to teach him about what happens when you act recklessly. and there is no excuse for this failure. jiang fengmian is an adult with a thinking brain
he knows that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. hence why he holds back from confronting the wens, even when they're clearly crossing a butt load of lines. he stops nie mingjue (a grown man with a legit grievance) from starting shit, out of a sense of caution
he sends his heir and favorite kid/first disciple as hostages to the wens, because he doesn't want to provoke them. and yet, when wei wuxian does that exact thing, he celebrates his achievement, and says fuck all about the consequences of those heroic actions
and to be clear, jiang fengmian is the only one who has a chance of making wei wuxian think about stuff like repercussions, because not only is he one of the few adults wwx genuinely admires and respects, jfm is the only parent he has
madame yu is not his mom, and it's not her job to parent wwx. she's an important adult in his life, but she's an authority figure more than anything else. nothing she, or lan qiren or any other adult, do or say is going to have as much of an impact as it would coming from jfm
but we can see that jfm just refuses to have those conversations with wei wuxian. he refuses to have difficult conversations with any of his kids, and seems to pretty much leave madame yu with the job of disciplining them
and out of all his kids, wei wuxian is the one who needs this kind of guidance the most. jiang yanli and jiang cheng are both dutiful and unlikely to get into very much trouble on their own. wei wuxian is a trouble magnet
and deciding not to curb wwx's "more balls than brains" attitude is a bad move as a parent, and as sect leader, bc wei wuxian's actions reflect on the jiangs as a whole. and that attitude comes back to bite wei wuxian, and all of them, in the ass
in the end, he's only there for the fun parts of parenting wei wuxian, and leaves the hard parts to his wife---who never agreed to raise wwx---and his other children--who are children
in conclusion it's a damn good thing his kids are amazing because otherwise I would say, jiang fengmian is not allowed to have children
