#lbr there's a lot of trauma surrounding parents between these two

[inkblackorchid]

Had a general faithshipping thought pop into my head and figured the best thing to do with it was to yeet it into your ask box:

Between Yusei and Aki, who do you think would have an easier time adjusting to being parents? Each of them has unique trauma with their own parents, and by the end of the series they’ve made peace with it, but I could see the news that they are about to become parents bringing up old pains and worries

I personally see Aki being more outwardly nervous at first but getting reassured fairly quickly (it helps she’s a doctor and friends with other doctors) while Yusei’s outwardly perfect dad material and fully ready but internally is agonizing over how to be a father since he had no example growing up and it’s not until he’s holding his kid that he’s convinced he can do this

But I’m curious what you think

Faithshipping thoughts are always welcome, haha.

Interesting question! While I can see your reasoning and agree with certain parts of it, I see Aki and Yusei a bit different in this scenario, though. For me, I think it'd be Yusei who would have an easier time adjusting to being a parent—and the "why", ironically, comes down to role models. You're correct to say that Yusei's dad wasn't around to model fatherhood for Yusei, but the thing is, Yusei did have a positive role model when it comes to parenthood in general: Martha, who, based on everything canon tells us, seems to have been an excellent guardian. Jack, Crow and Yusei all have fond memories of her, visit her every once in a while, take her advice to heart when she gives it, and, most importantly, feel safe turning to her when shit hits the fan. All of that checks out as a great parental figure for me. So while Yusei may not have had his dad look up to, he does have an idea of what raising a child properly entails.

Aki, meanwhile, is a whole different can of worms. I stand by the firm belief that Aki's parents love her and want the best for her, but canon shows us that both of them were mediocre at best at showing it, and that might still be generous. (Granted, Setsuko barely gets enough of a personality for us to tell whether or not she was a capable mother. But the fact that she worries about her husband and not her daughter first in every flashback we see of the Izayoi family, even the one where Hideo hits Aki, and that Aki condems her and Hideo both when confronted with them during the DS arc says something, I think.) Point is, I would argue that between Aki and Yusei, Aki is the one who doesn't really have a frame of reference for what good parenting is. She knows what you shouldn't do, but that doesn't translate into knowing what will work. And the thing is—and I know this because I have seen it in real life—not having a good role model when it comes to parenting can make you very insecure about how to be a parent and sometimes even about whether you should be a parent in the first place.

All this is a rather long-winded way of saying that while Aki and Yusei arguably both have plenty of baggage surrounding parenthood and would approach the idea of becoming parents with no shortage of well-hidden anxiety, I think Aki would be the one who'd have more trouble adjusting because she would never stop questioning whether she's doing her job right. Given her history with her own parents, I think there would be few thoughts more painful to her than her relationship with her own kids turning out like the one she had with Hideo and Setsuko as a teenager. Yusei, meanwhile, I could see turning to and being reassured by Martha (and by Crow, who, let's be real, has a good deal of experience with children himself before canon even ends) when he doesn't know what to do. So while I agree with you that he'd have his troubles with the idea of parenthood, too, I don't think they would be quite as persistent as Aki's.