Saturday, January 12, 2008

Growing Up

If parents do their job well, their children will grow up and will no longer need to be parented. To have your grown kids needing to be parented by a spouse or the nanny-state is a failure as a parent. It means that somehow you did not help your child become an adult.

Yet it seems this is the normal state of the world today. Look around you and you will see most people being parented in some way. Welfare hands them money, food, and housing. Government tells them what to do to be "safe" or how they must behave. Everywhere they turn they are being told how to live. No adult would stoop to taking handouts or instructions from some big maternal government. Yet, the supposed adults (as measured in years) think nothing of it in most cases.


Their parents failed to help them become healthy, independent adults. Is it too late for them? Blaming your upbringing only goes so far. Once someone reaches the age that they should be an adult, it is their responsibility if they do not "mature". How old is too old to finally become an adult? I wish I knew the answer to that. What I do know is that the welfare trough needs to be emptied and turned into a planter or something. It may be painful, but continuing to coddle these big children is not doing them a favor. Handing your life over to someone else is not a healthy thing to do. It hurts you and it gives your surrogate parent way too much power over your life.