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Comment by s5300 | Hacker News Reader

Between a duty to family & country, which should truly come first in our short lives?

Had her children ever accidentally found out at near any time in their lives, they may have never been able to trust their mother again - severing what arguably should be one of the strongest bonds one can have.

Would you (rhetorically) find it reasonable that she, or anybody with children, is required to live with that thought in the back of their mind? In an occupation she’s otherwise taken an oath (highly presumably) to devote her allegiance to?

I’m not sure. It definitely seems like a question with a hard answer.

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"they may have never been able to trust their mother again"

That's a real stretch. Anyone with the maturity to understand that information should also have the maturity to delineate between lies for inconsequential things in the sake of national security vs personal lies affecting their lives.

"Between a duty to family & country,"

The logic goes that duties to country are inclusive of duties to family because without a stable country your family is less protected. That's what they say. Whether you agree or not is another matter. Not agreeing means that job likely wasn't for you anyways.

I replied to the parent comment above, but it's worth replying to this. The kids might not know what mom did before this, but the way the mother operates was long ago normalized for them. The mother probably never lied-- they usually don't-- she probably just never shared. What the mother does is a job that isn't necessarily in conflict with her love for her children. People have to balance the effort they put into their job (as opposed to the effort they put into their children) all the time. She still gets to make that choice, at least in the US and the UK (as is the case here). That choice may cost her her job, but that's true of any job.

This is all to say, it's highly doubtful that this had the impact to their relationship that you're imagining here.

Lol. It's supposed that one of them (i.e the mother) should behave like and adult and own it. Of course nobody forced her to choose serving her country but I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.

It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job.

I remeber when my brother spilled the beans on a "family secret" to some close family friends in front of my mother...good that was just a silly thing. Now imagine that could get her fired or worse, cause someone's death.

I wonder if she(or the remaining parent) would find it sensible to share that as well with the children.

> Lol. It's supposed that one of them (i.e the mother) should behave like and adult and own it. Of course nobody forced her to choose serving her country but I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.

> It's just proof that not all the people are up for this job.

It's understood that family members will know to some extent. If nothing else, this is so that they know to be wary of security threats many people would otherwise ignore. She's almost certainly not sharing details of operations, she's instead sharing with her daughters why things are the way they are in their household.

I've said in other comments, this is another world and the concerns here are different. It's not like it is in the movies.

Again, that family members will know to some extent is understood, which is why she felt comfortable admitting it in the interview, otherwise she would have lost her job and the article would have been kiboshed by the security services.

> I believe in this case she failed both her duty to family & country.

So you likely never had to handle top secret information and couldn't spy his way out of a paper bag, has just declared that one of the most successful spies is a failure.

So typical.

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