The statement was made in an early journal entry that Asher’s parents, Aryeh and Rivkeh Lev, were bad parents. As the novel unfolded, although these two had some bright spots in terms of parenting, that early statement essentially held true.
The first traces of bad parenting were found in the first two chapters. It started with Aryeh expressing how displeased he was that his son was creating sketches, things from the sitra achra (the other side). It then continued by way of neglect as Aryeh was constantly traveling around the country and Rivkeh was too busy studying to spend any time with Asher. Although Asher’s parents most likely realized what they had been doing to him and so tried to pay more attention to him, that quickly went away when he began to draw again. Thus, the cycle that was set up was that Asher’s parents resented him when he was showing great interest in art, but were proud of him when he was not. And this was nothing but detrimental to Asher since he was constantly living in an unstable, ever-changing environment.
The instability continued when his father first moved away (although this allowed him to become closer to his mother) and then increased when both of his parents began to live in Europe. Although by this time Asher had already set up an agenda for his life, without his parents’ support, something terrible was bound to happen. This terrible thing came in the form of Asher beginning to separate himself from his religion. This only further drove a wedge between him and his father. And as Asher was distancing himself from Hasidism, his parents were distancing themselves from him. The somewhat fitting "end" to the relationship between Asher and his parents came after he released the crucifixions and they could not bring themselves to look at him. They also couldn’t bear to be with him and so by abandoning their son, their actions epitomized bad parenting.