![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/166\/2013\/01\/Forward-Thinking-3.jpg\" "\\"Forward")
<\/a><\/p>\nForward Thinking<\/a> is a values development project created in collaboration with Dan Fincke of Camels with Hammers<\/a>. Dan is introducing our next prompt today (head on over to see it!<\/a>), but in this post I will pull together some of the responses to this month\u2019s prompt<\/a>: \u201cWhat do we owe our parents?<\/strong>\u201d A total of five bloggers wrote posts in response.<\/p>\n I want to start with this succinct summary<\/a> by B. of Celebration of Gaia:<\/p>\n We owe our parents everything. Without them, we would not exist. We wouldn\u2019t be here. We wouldn\u2019t be anywhere.<\/p>\n And yet, at the same time, we owe our parents nothing. We didn\u2019t ask to be born, to be brought into this world. We didn\u2019t ask to exist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I remember the first time I heard that second point. I think someone introduced it to me with an analogy: A dog owner has no right to get upset about having to feed her dog, because she\u2019s the one who chose to get<\/em> a dog. When you choose to have a child, you are choosing voluntarily to take on the responsibility of feeding, clothing, and raising that child.<\/p>\n Perhaps the best example of this comes from Anne. Because I knew that Anne grew up in a profoundly abusive home, and because I knew that Anne was now a parent herself, I was perhaps especially interested to read her post. Here is how she thinks about the topic of obligation to one\u2019s parents today. Anne had this to say<\/a>:<\/p>\n There\u2019s a saying that\u2019s been going around for a long time, \u201cBe nice to your kids, they\u2019ll choose your nursing<\/a> home.\u201d I never realized until just now how absolutely true that is.<\/p>\n For a very, very long time I believed I owed my parents everything. This probably was due a lot to the fact that they thought my whole existence was to please them. \u2026 My dad would go on and on about how children were supposed to take care of their parents and elders and do whatever they said because of one random passage in the bible that said some grandkids of this one dude didn\u2019t drink alcohol or build houses because their grandpa was told by god not to (Jeremiah 35<\/a>).<\/p>\n The more I\u2019ve thought about it though, and the more I\u2019ve read about parenting, the more I see they had it totally backwards and the saying \u201cbe nice to your kids, they\u2019ll choose your nursing home\u201d is totally true. You shouldn\u2019t raise your kids thinking they owe you their life, therefore they can be your slaves. You raise them to be human beings who will function in society and better themselves and everyone around them. You be kind, respectful, and loving, and more than likely they will be kind, respectful, and loving back. I don\u2019t feel Ari owes me anything. It wasn\u2019t her fault she was born, and it would be really unfair to put all that on her just because she was<\/em> born. If she chooses not to help us in her old age, we are adults and we figure it out ourselves. If she does choose to help us in our old age (and hopefully we will, because we strive to teach her to be caring towards others!), it will make life great.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As far as my folks are concerned\u2026I\u2019m not even sure I\u2019m going to see them before they or I die. If we do see each other, it would be on my<\/em> terms, and they have a hell of a lot of apologizing to do, because if anyone owes anybody anything\u2026THEY owe ME for a shitty, abusive childhood and a buttload of emotional baggage.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t choose to be born. Why should I owe someone else for their<\/em> actions?!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While I personally agree with Anne and am taking a similar approach with my own children, I do think it\u2019s important not to move so far in the direction of individualism as to forget the importance of relationships or the extent of our interconnectedness with others. We shouldn\u2019t overlook or ignore the kindnesses others, whether they be parents or friends do us, and we should be ready to return the good others have done us in kind.<\/p>\n On the other extreme, the blogger who runs Fruits of Kamma offers a very different perspective<\/a> from that outlined by Anne above:<\/p>\n The ancient idea of obligation was more generous and more circular. Each of us is born into obligation \u2014 obligation not only to our parents, who give us life, but obligation also to everyone in our community, who give us care and education and help when we are in need. We, in turn, are responsible for paying back, paying forward, and paying sideways by shouldering our responsibilities as members of a community. It is impossible to walk away from this sort of obligation \u2014 or perhaps not impossible, but it requires a sort of exile, a species of communal death.<\/p>\n This older view of obligation is, in my opinion, much more humane than the newer view. I try to cultivate a sense of gratitude to everyone and everything around me. If someone performs a service for me \u2014 let us say, they cut my hair or serve me a meal \u2014 I am grateful for that. Of course, I pay them, but that, in my view, is not simple recompense. It is a small gift I offer to them. Ideally, we are each enriched by our exchange, and instead of going our separate ways, we are bound more closely, by gratitude and by the pleasure we find in helping each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Matt Recla, who starts by saying that he grew up with excellent parents, discusses interconnectivity and obligation<\/a> in a way that bridges the points made by Anne and the blogger above:<\/p>\n So how should the obligation we have to our parents be manifest? It depends. If the relationship is healthy and desirable, it can manifest in the same interactions as any other loving relationship. If unhealthy, there may not be a relationship at all, and it may be better that way. In any case, though, the idea of obligation requires a willingness to face the fact that none of us are independent. Americans enjoy the image of the self-made man or woman, and particularly in cases when individuals seem to have triumphed over difficult odds, which may have included poor familial relationships. Even these folks didn\u2019t make it without help, and no one wins a prize for shunning relationships the most. We cannot escape the complex web of our interconnection with our environment and those within it. Rather than trying to just discharge or ignore it, we would do well to embrace our indebtedness and move forward because of or in spite of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rachel Marcy argues for this same balance<\/a>:<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think the parent-child relationship entails an equal exchange of obligations. Parents have a basic obligation to provide for their children, at least until they reach adulthood. From there, I think everything depends on the quality of the relationship. Unfortunately, some people have terrible parents, and I would never advise them to maintain relationships with abusive or toxic relatives, especially for the sake of a vague sense of \u201cforgiveness.\u201d No one owes someone who mistreated them during their most vulnerable and helpless stage of life. Nor do I think that children inherently owe their parents for the fact of being born; after all, we don\u2019t choose to be born, and we don\u2019t choose our parents. But we do have the sort of obligations to our parents that we have to other human beings with whom we have relationships. For better or worse, the parent-child relationship is one of the closest that humans have, and the closeness of that relationship leads to a greater sense of obligation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Kay turned the question around but also arrived at a similar conclusion<\/a>:<\/p>\n So, let\u2019s turn this around: when a parent honors their child? It\u2019s most often by treating that child as an adult. As a person who is capable, mature, and trustworthy. Why shouldn\u2019t that be turned around? Certainly, with younger children who don\u2019t yet understand all the forces at work around them, the scales tip more towards obedience- especially in emergencies. With adults the scales tip more towards independence, and the sometimes-difficult teen years are often centered around this very balance. But if the child treats their parents (within reasonable bounds of safety according to the situation) as a capable, mature, and trustworthy adult? That sounds like honor to me.<\/p>\n And sometimes, when we\u2019re interacting with capable, mature, reasonably trustworthy adults? The best way we can honor them is to share our opinions, our concerns, and to follow our own conscience, even when it does lead to disagreement, or worse. But I have to believe that sometimes, honoring one\u2019s parents means confronting them about their lies, their bigotry, or their criminal activity- because all of those things are done by parents, somewhere, and if the alternative is ignoring or enabling it, well, those don\u2019t sound very honorable to me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n After reading the comments on the original prompt<\/a>\u2014do take a look through it for additional perspectives!\u2014I had a few additional thoughts.<\/p>\n First, I think the extent to which we assume children have default responsibilities to their parents is affected by the emphasis we place on responsibility to society as a whole versus responsibility to blood relatives. When one commenter suggested that we should instead ask<\/a> what we owe the elderly, another commenter argued that this only works<\/a> if we also ask what we owe all<\/em> children rather than what we owe our children specifically. I think this is an interesting point. Which bears more weight? Collective social responsibility, or individual family responsibility? Depending on where you fall on this spectrum, your answer to questions about family obligations will likely differ.<\/p>\n