"You don't owe your parents anything"

[climbingqueenie]

I've seen a lot of this sort of thing bandied around on TikTok and other social media and I wondered if it was the norm to think this these days. I'm obviously not talking about abusive parents- my Dad was emotionally abusive and I don't really have anything to do with him as an adult - but just in general, is it really wrong to expect a reciprocal relationship with your adult children? I spend time with my DM and help her out because I love her and she does the same for me. I'd be pretty gutted if my DC grew up and didn't want to see me or didn't consider my feelings or spoke to me rudely. My mum was by no means perfect but what parent is? She had her own traumas and flaws as we all do but essentially her heart is in the right place and she loves us all, and always showed it. So no I don't "owe" her anything but I appreciate her and I like to help her out.

I don't know, I just feel there is a lot of tendency these days to put all the blame for any problems you might have on your parents and it isn't very healthy. Is there anyone who parents in a perfect way that has no damaging effect whatsoever on their children? Surely we are all a little bit dysfunctional and that's just part of being human? To reiterate, I'm not talking about abuse. I just feel there is significant pressure on parents these days to centre their children's emotional wellbeing- as is obviously completely right- but also to display no thoughts or feelings or emotions of your own. I have a friend for example with a teenage DS who speaks to her like dirt - one time after he'd spoken to her particularly badly she cried and he told her to do that was emotionally manipulative.

Is that where we are? Do you have to just allow your children to say what they like to you and have no emotional response?

I'm genuinely interested in this because I know it has many layers of nuance.

Well, I no longer have to tred on eggshells around her, but I still have all those nasty voices in my head trying to undermine me. I’m not sure those nasty voices would be there if she hadn’t put them there. I know they are talking crap though, and I’m not gonna allow her to talk anymore crap to me.

am I happy? well, I’m doubting myself, but that’s only because she always plays the victim and blames me for everything. I feel more liberated being able to tell her to fuck off though, that’s for sure. I’m not angry, I’m just tired of it.

@Limecoconutice - brilliant post. Agree with everything!

I do think parenting these days sways more into gentle parent territory than anything else - or actually to put it better, what people think is gentle parenting but is actually more like permissive parenting.

I home educate one of my DC and in home ed circles there are a lot of people who parent that way. I was reprimanded fairly recently by one such person because I reminded my 6 year old DC to say thank you when they were given a slice of cake. Apparently I shouldn't do that as that is coercion!

But it pretty much sounds like you're the same with your Dad so I don't think we are really on a different page here!

Not really. I can't say I'd be overly upset or heartbroken if we never spoke again or never had a relationship going forward.

I love him but I don't feel the need to have a relationship with him of any kind.

I am very lucky with my parents and would drop everything to help them if they needed.

Theyve always been there to help me, so the least I can do is the same.

My sister is the complete opposite. Tells everyone of how she's had no support over the years and has to do everything herself. Yet my parents raised one of her children and paid for everything for the child while my sister collected the child support and they bailed her out with money so many times, not to mention everything else they did like running her around and cooking for her.

I can't name one thing she's done to help them.

You'll get told on here that maybe they treated your sister differently and she must have had a different childhood to you.

That's what she tells everyone 🙄 but we were both treated the same and given the same opportunities, but she's just always thought the world owes her something.

Sorry if this has been covered already but surely one of the hallmarks of a civilized society is respect and care for everyone. The State is not allowed to pick and choose who benefits are allocated to based on their niceness.

The state is not my family and it has no emotional or blood tie to me. That's not the same relationship as that between a parent and child, or other family members.

-The UN Declaration of Human Rights said back in 1948 -Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion.

But again, that's nothing to do with family expectations and relationships.

Do you really believe that not everyone deserves respect and care? That is a very strong opinion that goes against all principles of humanity.

They deserve support from the state if they need it. They certainly don't automatically deserve my respect or care, no.

This is a difficult one. Everyone is entitled to care and respect imo, but there is no obligation on family members (as opposed to the State) to provide it. I would strongly oppose any attempt at putting a legal obligation on families to provide care/support and I would also argue that there is no moral obligation to provide it either.

It's not the same thing. In modern developed countries, by-and-large, sex and even pregnancy only results in a child if the mother wants a child. Parents make active choices and are liable for all of the risks inherent in those choices.

Children don't choose to be born and are provided with parents who they have effectively no active influence on. I don't think inherent power imbalances get much bigger than that.

Yes but the point is a poster wrote,

'Because not everyone deserves respect or care, relatives or not.'

So they are not just referencing care by family members.
It seems incredibly harsh to make decisions on care and respect based on whether or not you like someone and really scary if you extend that opinion to the state.

So you are saying that it is impossible for an adult child to treat their parent badly unless the parent is at fault?

When I think of "care and respect" I'm not necessarily thinking of "care" in the physical sense, I'm thinking of care in the sense of kindness.

I don't mean physical care - food, shelter and healthcare, for example. The state should absolutely provide those things to people in need.

What I mean is that that nobody should be forced to have any relationship or emotional obligation to another person, relative or otherwise.

I don't believe anyone inherently "deserves" my kindness, no, and they especially don't deserve it just because they're my family.

@climbingqueenie
Not impossible. Some people have clinical issues that lead to relational issues.

However, I also think people generally end up with the kids they raise and parents will say generally that they did a better job with their kids than average, attributing any evidence to the contrary to chance.

I also think it's never really that black and white. I have an uncle who was very authoritarian in his approach to education and extra-curriculars with his children overtly abusive to their mother.

2 of my 4 cousins are medics at one of the top schools in the country and the other 2 are on track for similar and none would deny that their father instilled the sort of work ethic that led to that. They've also, understandably, recently cut their father off completely.

Do you think all bad behaviour that isn't attributable to parents is attributable to mental health?

I have a complex family structure.
I'm the youngest of a long line of children and there's been trauma from poorly managed blended families and scapegoat/ golden child dynamics. I seem to have dodged most of that. The toll on others has become more clear to me as I've got older and am raising my children.

My relationship with DM has atrophied. I have to prioritise my DCs and I've got SNs in the mix to consider. Due to location and parental ages we don't have external support, and due to the demands of DH's job, I take on the vast majority of day to day practicalities. DM can't travel to me, but doesn't invite me to her I'm beyond popping in distance. She doesn't like DS1. I can't fit easily with her requirements, e.g. she won't do anything before midday, and is barely ready before I'd have to turn around and go home for pick up.

With hindsight, my relationship with her in my youth worked because I molded around her likes. I can't accommodate around that well anymore and it often clashes against my DCs' needs. My DCs come first because no one else can do that for them.

She's set herself up for a harder old age. She's actively shunned technology. She's stayed in a totally unsuitable, impractical house. I moved an hour away, but would never have justified affording my home town anyway and wouldn't want to live in nearer affordable areas. If she was of a more flexible disposition, that would be less of an issue.

I don't ask for much from her. More interest would be nice and not listening to inevitable comments about the ethnic origins of any encounters, including the occasional surprised "nice" ones

Her current relationships with her children generally reflect what she's put in to them over the decades.

I hope I have better relationships with my DCs in adulthood, not out of duty, but out of mutual love and interest.

Nope, but I think I see what you're getting at. My belief is that the people who have the most significant control over your development from birth to the age of 16 minimum have a very significant impact on the adult you come.

At the very least, they have the most significant impact on the way in which you relate to them.

I couldn't put a quantitative value on it but I can't think of a bigger influence. Even if you were to argue for something like "wider society" they mediate your level access to it.

My 13 year old ds is not allowed Tik Tok or Instagram, Dh and I are currently debating whether we are going to allow Snapchat. The pressure he’s getting from his friends to get these things is annoying and worrying.

Surely banning something from teens just makes it more attractive? I have gone a different route, I don't ban tiktok, but we talk about misinformation, about how people on social media can often create a "brand" which they have to stick to but might not necessarily be the full picture, how real life is often a lot more nuanced, even how extreme and polarised content attracts more views and interaction therefore being rewarded by the algorithm by being shown more often to people. We laugh at some of the ridiculousness on tiktok and how it's just people making stuff up.

Who knows if that's the right approach but it feels more satisfactory to me. He wasn't allowed it on his phone before turning 13 but used to get sent videos by his friends etc anyway.

I have a friend for example with a teenage DS who speaks to her like dirt - one time after he'd spoken to her particularly badly she cried and he told her to do that was emotionally manipulative.

Is that where we are? Do you have to just allow your children to say what they like to you and have no emotional response?

I think your friend is possibly being a bit wet and people pleasing there? You should have boundaries with children. I do sometimes hear the kinds of things DS1 says to me and think wow - that's bold of him to say that - but he's just reacting to the fact I've never really required him to be deferential or been bothered about "cheeky" "backchat" and so on. I would not allow him to be rude or nasty, name calling etc isn't allowed, and neither would addressing me as though I am some kind of servant, but talking to me as though I'm his equal, including making slightly huffy requests on occasion - absolutely, please do. I'm aware that this would be seen as not his place by some people or seen as rude/cheeky etc. But I don't think it is.

Well I agree with you but she's coming from the gentle parenting angle that she should always allow her child to have his feelings, recognise what's important to him might not seem a big deal to her, understand teenagers' brains aren't fully developed etc. So when he tells her to fuck off and that makes her cry, and then she gets accused of emotional manipulation...I mean what do you do?

I dunno. I guess I think about all this a lot. Like, of course you shouldn't expect your children to grateful that you feed them, clothe them, comfort them - that's your job. OTOH when I became a parent I suddenly realised how much emotional energy goes into it and how much of yourself you sacrifice (as it should be). But I hadn't fully appreciated until then that it was the same for my own mother. So I kind of cut her some slack at that point for things I might not have done when I was 21.

You can have your feelings without being rude, though. There are ways to express anger/pain/upset without swearing and being rude.

If your friend has chosen to never enforce boundaries around acceptable behaviour, what does she honestly expect?

I'm with you! My point is that IMO current parenting fashion discourages boundaries. I have seen teens on TikTok calling their parents abusive or dismissive because they've asked them not to speak to them in a rude way. I think there is an expectation as a parent you are basically a robot with none of your own feelings or flaws.