What obligations do children have towards their parents?

[rusmeister]

Mine too. All that's left is prayer.

It's impossible to explain color to a blind man, or a bus to those that do/will not believe in traffic.

[aliantha]

Mine too. All that's left is prayer.

It's impossible to explain color to a blind man, or a bus to those that do/will not believe in traffic.

Okay, Rus, whatever. I'll put in a good word for you with Lugh -- just in case *you're* wrong.

[hierachy]

Mine too. All that's left is prayer.

It's impossible to explain color to a blind man, or a bus to those that do/will not believe in traffic.

I would believe a bus was about to hit me, were I not stood in the middle of a forest without so much as a road anywhere in sight.

[Farsailer]

Just read the thread so I'll come out from under my rock and offer my $.02:

There's a historical context to the problem of aging parents which has, thanks to things like Social Security, pensions, 401k's, savings, real estate ownership among the masses, morphed into today's environment.

In America, when my grandparents got old, they did what every generation did before them, they relied on their children for their old age care because there was no other way to handle it. In other words, the safety nets we have today is a very modern invention, before this, for the whole of human history, the aging were at the mercy of their descendants. In most societies, this translated to the veneration of and respect for the elders, and children were raised watching their parents take care of any surviving members of the previous generation. And that's how societies took care of their own.

If you go to other countries not of the First World (southeast Asia provides excellent examples of this), you will find that they still have that sense of obligation toward their elders so that they will sacrifice for them as well as for their own children. In many of these people, that sense of obligation is very strong, these people tend to be more community and family oriented than individual oriented.

Returning to the US and other First World countries, we have gotten so far away from that that James can say that he has no obligation toward his parents at all and the attitude won't really cause problems for him in our society. Why should I sacrifice for them, he says? Why should I return any favors they did for me?

My faith is deeply personal, but regarding my parents, they know they will do the best for themselves, I have told them not to worry about leaving any inheritance to me and my siblings, they worked hard and deserve to live well now. And when the time comes that they can't take care of themselves, I will be there because I feel that sense of obligation to them.

This isn't meant as an argument, I'm not trying to tell James he should be any different (though I do wonder about the nature of his relationship to his parents), it is just my take on the whole deal of parents and obligations.

Back to the rock...

[Avatar]

Interesting points.

But I agree with him that any "obligation" is self-imposed. It is surely "right" (or moral) to take care of them, but nothing says you have to. And what about people whose parents abused them? Or didn't protect or provide for them? Are they "obligated" to take care of their parents later?

What about people who are depressive and wish they'd never been born? Do they owe their parents?

(Just musing...)

--A

[rusmeister]

nothing says you have to

Exodus 20:12

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Not quite 'nothing'.

[Avatar]

Not binding on non-christians. (Or non-jews I guess, since it's the old testament.) Although I'm sure most religions have some similar concept...somebody was talking about reciprocity somewhere...not sure if it was this thread though.

Anyway...even god doesn't tell you that you have to. Just that it's what he wants you to do. Free will and all.

--A

[Farsailer]

Not binding on non-christians. (Or non-jews I guess, since it's the old testament.) Although I'm sure most religions have some similar concept...somebody was talking about reciprocity somewhere...not sure if it was this thread though.

Anyway...even god doesn't tell you that you have to. Just that it's what he wants you to do. Free will and all. ;)

--A

Of the Asian countries, only the Philippines are predominantly Christian (Catholic actually), but the sense of familial obligation is strong in all of them so this concept is definitely not (and in fact, never was) limited to Christians.

[Avatar]

Not suggesting that it was. Only that the fact that god commanded it of the christians is not relevant to my point.

--A

[onewyteduck]

i didn't read the rest of the posts in this thread after i came across this statement:

In the moral sense, we are definately obligated to care for the people who raised us, with at least the level of care shown by the parents; to do otherwise is the height of selfishness.

that lets ME off the friggin hook then. or wait. maybe i should move in with each of them for six months of the year each (they're divorced) and bring my husband and we could fight and knock each other around and yell and scream and if they need help with say...their taxes (mother's not very good at math) i could yell at them when they get confused and confuse them further, and i could make them eat hot dogs while i broil myself and my husband a steak, and i could refuse to drive them anywhere they need to go and make them walk, and i could hole myself up in the basement and get drunk and raise hell, oh yeah!!! i could have parties when they're trying to sleep, and i'm sure my husband wouldn't mind beating me up once a week just to make my parents feel helpless and make them nervous wrecks!!! yeah and i'd have to take my dad's dog away from him too cause i'm sure he doesn't know how to take care of him properly. oh yeah...there's LOTS of things i could do to give my parents the level of care they gave me. and i could get my two younger brothers in on the action too!! i'm SURE my brothers and i could think of ways to provide them emotional scars to grace their golden years the way they provided them for us in our formative years.

I'm not pickin' at ya, Lucimay. My situation wasn't that bad but wasn't great either. I just wanted to use it as an example of what has prompted me to post!

My maternal grandfather, Clarence, born 1887 - he was the youngest of 7 children and was apparently pawned off on other relatives pretty young. I don't know why yet, I suspect his mother died. He got nothing when his father died, the rest of the children did. At age 30, his life was disrupted when the US became involved in WWI.

It was always suspected that he had a 2nd family. I have now confirmed that. And, it looks like there may have been a 3rd.

My mother and her siblings were shuffled around to different family members alot when they were growing up. She always referred to Clarence as a drunken old fool and wanted nothing to do with him. I remember seeing him twice, both times when he just showed up unannounced. Mom never talked about her mother.

My mother - had only been married a little over 8 months when my brother was born. She always said he was "early" but, was it a "have to" marriage? If she was pregnant when they got married, were they even aware she was pregnant? I'll never know the answer to that one! She was 18 when Terry was born, WWII had ended but Dad was still in England. (I have located a flight roster that shows him returning to the US the day after Terry was born) She was living in Kansas on an Army base. Was she alone when she gave birth? So, there she is, married to an Air Force man which meant frequent moves to lots of places where she had no family and Dad was frequently absent.

About Dad.....never talked about his family much, only his brother Lonnie. Two yound mens lives disrupted by the bombing of Pearl Harbor, one survived, the other did not. Lonnie wanted to be an actor, Dad was ready to enter the University of Oklahoma.

Dad always said there wasn't any family. I have found all kinds of relations that I never heard of! Mom said that Carrie, (Dad's mother) was hateful to her and she didn't approve of either of her son's wives.....
I found an obituary for Lonnie, it makes no mention of Dorothy. Approve of her or not, she was his wife and should have been mentioned! I have to wonder if there had been some kind of major falling out?

Lonnie Sr.....another young life disrupted by WWI.

Young lives disrupted by the Civil War....I have found 3 so far, 2 Confederate, 1 Union. Samuel, my great grandfather (Confederacy) is the only one I have really gotten into much detail yet.....the 1860 census shows he is 22, unable to read or write but he is a literacy student. His personal estate is valued at $3100.00 but he doesn't own slaves. On the 1870 census he is a farmer with a personal estate of $260.00....still unable to read or write. So much for that ambition!

I could go on and on with this......too many young girls marrying old men, too many young widows (or widowers) with young children, too many dead babies!

I'll get to the point. (Finally, you all say! ) Sure I have baggage and scars from my parents, but they had baggage and scars of their own. I'm sure I have inadvertently passed some baggage onto my son....

What do I owe my parents? Especially now that they are both dead? I owe them enough respect to realize that they tried to do the best they could by me, that they were all too incredibly human, that they too were hurt as children. I owe them memory.

What does my son owe me? Pretty much what I owe my parents. He has a picture of my father hanging on the wall in his house.....when he picks Peyton up and carries her over to it, she will blow a kiss and say, "Wuv you, Poppy". Debt paid.

I started doing all of this reasearch in January. Up to then, I would most certainly have echoed Lucimay's sentiments. I might have even agreed with James.......

"Pass the chamber pot on down the line, to be filled up again!" (an appropriate quote from the Tull song, Two Fingers.

Just my opinion.

[Avatar]

Great post Duck. Nice to see you around as always. So more than just reciprocity huh?

--A

[rusmeister]

Yeah, appreciated that, owd.
Just one little (possible) point of disagreement:

Debt paid.

Nope. Don't think that can ever happen. (That you mean you are pleased by it and that raising your child is worth it - yes. That the debt is therefore cancelled - no.)

[lucimay]

i don't feel picked on one little bit duck and i enjoyed reading your post.

meh. i was hot under the collar when i wrote that post that someone would imagine they could tell another person what they owe their parents.

i owe my parents the only thing they ever had to give me. love.

i love my parents. they love me. there are no debts between us.

i find it ridiculous that anyone can imagine otherwise or deign to tell another person that there is anything more between family members
than that.

i never needed a god or a rule book to tell me to love my parents.
i just did. and they me, dispite their horrible parenting skills.

love people. thats all there really is.

[rusmeister]

i don't feel picked on one little bit duck and i enjoyed reading your post.

meh. i was hot under the collar when i wrote that post that someone would imagine they could tell another person what they owe their parents.

i owe my parents the only thing they ever had to give me. love.

i love my parents. they love me. there are no debts between us.

i find it ridiculous that anyone can imagine otherwise or deign to tell another person that there is anything more between family members
than that.

i never needed a god or a rule book to tell me to love my parents.
i just did. and they me, dispite their horrible parenting skills.

love people. thats all there really is.

Lucimay, it looks here like we are really on the same page, and I think you hit it here:

i love my parents. they love me. there are no debts between us.

Although another way of putting it is that the debt is incalculable. If you love each other then you're not tallying up lists - but you are doing whatever needs to be done, because that's what love does.

love people. thats all there really is

It really is all. It's everything. I think the key to making sense of that statement, though, is that it is clear that love has to mean what you do, not merely what you feel. Warm fuzzy feelings won't help your parents when they need it - but acting as if you really did love them, no matter what you feel or whether they "deserved" it or not will help them and stimulate both feeling and further action.

To sum it up, if you say you love your parents, but leave them to help themselves when they need your help - that's not love. And we ought to love our parents - whether they deserve it or not. The Greek word agape means loving that which does not necessarily deserve love - deserving has nothing to do with it.
Part of our problem is the multitude of meanings we assign to 'love' Greek had four different words that I know of that we translate as "love".
Agape, eros, storge and philea. We, on the other hand, seem to have reduced it to a feeling - which is pretty worthless for the purposes to which we assign the word.[/i]