Parental Discontent

We never see it coming. Sooner or later, there is a generational shift, and we are no longer the young ones, fighting back against parental demands and expectations.

Now we are the parents, Now we are old enough to be grandparents. We are not pleased with all the choices that our children have made. We hold back from offering advice and suggestions. We decline to interfere.

Where parents are go-getters and their children are underachievers, it is quite vexing for the parents. But parents need to be silent. They need to go live their own lives, and maverize until they die. Their children are separate beings whose individuality is sacrosanct, and whose liberty to live and work as they will, must not be trammeled.

There is nothing that the parents can do. They must respect the individuality of their children. They must let them go to make the choices they will. Whether the choices are wise or ill-advised, the children have made them, and the bed that they have made is one that they will lie in.

As society becomes more Mavellonialist, children will have a working tradition of achieving par excellence, so it is predictable that they will mostly over-achieve, rather than underachieve. Then the problem of parental disappointment and discontent will largely be an issue of the past. Until then, we just have to stay out of our children's lives, and let them go and do as they will.

There are rare exceptions where the adult child is mentally ill, destructive to himself or dangerous to other, so the parents must intervene. Or if the daughter were a prostitute, neglectful of her three year daughter, then the parents may have to sue for parental rights to rear the grandchild.

Ordinarily thought, the moral thing to do is to stay out of their lives, and shut up with opinions, criticism and advice.