...is one in which the kids don't act all ungrateful and disrespectful like, and exclude their parents from their lives. Because of course, all parents are shining beacons of effort and responsibility, who never put a foot wrong and who love their children with a sprawling torrent of unconditional affection.
This is according to an article in 'The Daily Mail' this week (yes I know, why do I still read it? It's just...sometimes you need something to skim-read while you're in the gym coffee lounge, otherwise people just think you're mad if you just sit there staring into space. Or they'll try to talk to you, which can be worse). The article made me upset and angry in equal measure, because it was probably one of the most ill thought-out pieces of writing I've ever read. I marvelled at how it was deemed fit for publication.
In it, the journalist wrote that there was an increasing number of children who, on reaching adulthood, decide to 'dump' their parents; cleanse them out of their lives because their childhood expectations weren't met. These 'expectations' are reported as a Mum "not giving me a cuddle when I split up with my boyfriend" and there was a full interview with an excluded Mum who "seriously doesn't know what (she) did wrong...(she's) not allowed to see (her) grandchildren and it's excruciating". Or words to that effect. We didn't get to hear her daughter's side of the story.
How can such a complex and emotive subject possibly be summed up in a 500-odd word article, written by someone who quite obviously has no experience of the subject matter? I can't imagine for one moment that anybody would exclude a parent from their lives as a result of a hasty whim. I know that because I've excluded my mother from my life ever since I was nineteen, and I've been wrestling with the consequences of that decision ever since. Because it's bloody hard.
The assumption made in the article is that it's a breeze for these people to "callously" cut their parents out of their lives, but I just can't believe that it's ever done without thought or instinct; without the feeling in your core that you HAVE to do it, because it's the only thing that really feels right, that will make your life even vaguely liveable even though you know how much pain it will cause others.
I think that if I were to write my story here, it could be taken as 'petty' or 'ill thought-out'. Possibly; it would depend on how I decided to put it. The same goes for my mother's side of the story. It may be easy for an outsider to feel sympathy for her (the truth is that so do I; I don't actually hate her or wish her any harm). But the reasons for my excluding her from my life are real, and they are not trivial. Neither are they, I believe, for anybody else.
What the article failed to note was that some parents just aren't cut out to actually be parents. I have three friends who have no contact with their fathers; not through their own choice. What about them? Are they failures as children? I strongly believe that unconditional love and effort must come from the top down. Every person born is an accident of biology, born to random people who may or may not have decided to have you in the first place. You did not put in a application form for life, and parents are just people; if they want love and respect from their children then those things must be earned and given just as freely back, surely? At least you must believe, as their child, that they did their best with whatever they had in their hearts. Some do; some don't, and the reasons are unique in every case, as is the eventual outcome.
But anyway. Next time when I'm in the gym I'm going to take a copy of 'Heat' to read instead.
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