Should all children "thank" their parents?


 

Yesterday, I posted this comment on Miss Manners' column about a woman who thought her daughter owed her thanks for the act of putting her through high school and college.  Miss Manners' response include the following: "Isn’t this the time to tell her how proud of her you are -- not how indebted to you she is?"

I made a response of my own, and here it is: "There's a problem with parents or step-parents who need all this "gratitude" from children. Not that kids don't need to know how much the effort costs or requires, but that childrearing was once done largely for the greater community, not the child (or the parents). We used to need as many healthy children around as we could come up with, so the work of bringing them up enjoyed real respect and social support. Nowadays, the land is overcrowded, and childrearing is a very expensive, time-consuming private hobby. It's a shame this line of endeavor enjoys so little support from the culture, but that is not a problem for individual children to solve, especially while they are laboring hard on schoolwork, household chores, activities, and part-time jobs to please their self-anointed custodians. Daughter can wake up and smell the coffee -- and offer her thanks --when she begins enjoying the career her hard work in school has earngirl has doed for her. As it is, Mom, show some respect for the hard work the girl has done."

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