"My Parents Need To Earn My Respect"

TheConductor

I hate this sentiment. 

Listen, mate, your parents have provided you with EVERYTHING you could ever need for the last eighteen years. Food, water, shelter, clothes, toys, everything. 

Your parents have worked their whole lives to give you a decent life. That's enough to earn your respect.

Gelzo

I'm being generous when I say that this is a wide generalization.

TheConductor

^ Well obviously. There are going to be exceptions. This was directed at a specific person.

And I'd hardly call the social norm a wide generalisation.

InsanityAddict

Most of the time a parent demands to be treated with respect, it's a red herring for calling them out on ignorance or prejudice, or when they're slamming the discussion with an appeal to authority. I respect my parents enough to not treat them any different from how I would treat a friend my age, and they've done a damn good job of raising me that way.

TheMightyAnonym

I've actually said this before to my father, although he is... of questionable character. I didn't state his need to earn respect because I felt an injustice had been committed.

Wicked223

I think, in this situation, it's important to recognize the difference between respecting your parents and pretending to respect your parents so that they don't take your privileges. 

RedEyedAbyss

"I'm being generous when I say that this is a wide generalization."

If your parents did not leave you to rot all by yourself or constantly hit you in alcohol-fuelled rage, I'd say you have it rather good. Yes, appeal to worse problems, but developed world kiddies really lack perspective. I say that as one that went through the "I hate my parents" phase.

Honestly, the attitude teenagers have is making the prospect of having kids even less attractive. Why project my future onto some ungrateful brat?

Chagen

So I guess all those kids who get raped and beaten by their parents should still respect them?

Bullshit.

RedEyedAbyss

"or constantly hit you in alcohol-fuelled rage"

I hate arguments where the other side refuses to pay attention.

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"Honestly, the attitude teenagers have is making the prospect of having kids even less attractive. Why project my future onto some ungrateful brat?"

For some reason, I feel as though this isn't a very good thought to have, when one believes that parents should be unconditionally respected if they feed you and provide shelter.

RedEyedAbyss

Not unconditionally. Obviously I disagree with my parents on many issues being a leftist anarchist hippie and all. But a little empathy goes a long way.

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You don't have to agree to respect.

RedEyedAbyss

It seems people here are conflating the two, though.

TheConductor

@Chagen. Do. Not. Put. Words. In. My. Mouth.

If you bothered to read what I said, I clearly said that you should respect parents who have -and I'm quoting myself here;

"provided you with EVERYTHING you could ever need for the last eighteen years. Food, water, shelter, clothes, toys, everything.".

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Well, in a sense, it isn't like one needs parents that don't beat or rape you...

Vorpy

I used to think the same way until my mother kicked me out of my stuff and told me to move, or even survive by myself for a week. I only lasted two days. And the fact that she put up with 3 people that were worse than me for 18 years as well.

TheConductor

^ True, you don't need parents. But having a decent set of parents will make your life significantly easier.

Rottweiler

I respect my parents enough to not treat them any different from how I would treat a friend my age,

...

Where that attitude is the socially expected norm for teenagers, the incentive to make all the sacrifices necessary to rear children is dramatically reduced.

St. Confucius, pray for us!

RedEyedAbyss

Isn't the norm for teenagers to listen to their own age group friends more? Every parent should be expecting that already.

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Since when was Confucius a saint?

InsanityAddict

Yeah, Chinese society is popularly known to actively encourage having lots of kiddies.

Rottweiler

@Abyss: But teenagers don't respect the friends they listen to via peer pressure, not to the degree parents merit. Furthermore, the parent-child relationship is hierarchical and indissoluble, while the friend-friend relationship is egalitarian and can be terminated by either party.

@Edmania: Just being syncretic to highlight how the old ways can be found taught anywhere, while the new are WEIRD.

@Insanity: Um, you do understand the cataclysmic ideological gulf between Confucian and Communist China, yes?

InsanityAddict

It starts with the same two letters so there's no notable difference between the two.

I'd cast doubt on the idea that a parent-child relationship is inherently hierarchical and indissoluble(power mechanics work two ways), or that it even is the desirable way it should be.

snowbull

Since when is it indissoluble? Parents abandon children all the time...

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I think he's talking about no matter where your parents are, you're still blood related to them.

MoeDantes

Here's the problem with the OP:

The kid never asked to be born. Period. He was just kinda pulled out of his happy little nonexistance into a life where he had no fucking clue for ten years, probably was subjected to all sorts of painful bullshit without any decent warning, preparation or explanation, and through it all he's told that this is the whole reason he should respect the two beings who were responsible for his life.

Yeah, that's like thanking the radiation that gave you cancer.

Rottweiler

@snowbull: Since when is it indissoluble? Parents abandon children all the time...

They're still your parents. If your blood parents expose you on the side of a hill and someone else saves and rears you, you owe them filial love and you have duties to your blood parents (protip: don't wander to another city, kill your father and have sex with your mother).

@MoeDantes: Well yes, if existence is inherently evil, reproduction is bad and parents are owed no respect. Furthermore, the happiest thing you could do is kill yourself.

If. The case that existing is evil is... not self-evident, to put it mildly.

vandro

Oedipus was a victim of circumstance, not someone hellbent on getting revenge on the parents he didn't even know existed.

Forzare

If my blood parents left me abandoned on a hill, I would have absolutely no duties toward them.

They left me to die on a fucking hill.

snowbull

I think it should be said that while in most cases parents do deserve respect, making a kid isn't especially difficult.

Rottweiler

@Forzare: By the fact that they gave birth to you, you retain particular duties toward each other - incest avoidance being the obvious one - even if they're horrible people.