You don't owe your children much more than food, love and a roof over their head. Sure, you might want to give them the world, but don't listen to anyone telling you that's the expectation - that's a fast track to resentment.
Though I agree that doesn't have to mean conforming to societal expectations of ivy league schools and so forth. Food, love and a roof over your head goes a long way.
I offer that the above is the first truth of parenting.
After I understood it, organizing my priorities became far simpler.
Parenting is service.
Seems to me that parents should want to minimize that suffering, even if I also disagree with “owing them everything” as parents should also help them to grow into self-sufficient beings. It’s a tough balance to strike and I won’t pretend to be an expert on it, I’m only just getting started myself.
The thing is the vast majority of people find living to be on the whole a source of great joy, far greater than any suffering they may experience as a byproduct of it. The handful who don't do have the option, grim as it may be to consider, of returning to nonexistence. The fact that this option isn't taken by even 1% of people suggests strongly that nonexistence just isn't that compelling an alternative.
The point is that the obligation flows one way because one party was inserted into it without their consent.
Does their lack of preexistence impact that equation in a meaningful way?
Yes. Obviously.
Well, philosophically it's not a big problem, because dissatisfied can very easily stop participating.
As a parent you want to give them everything but you then have to balance that against realities & other priorities. That's part of the training of a good moral character: learning to manage life's limitations & your response to those limitations.
One can also turn around your moral argument: Your children owe you everything, since they wouldn’t exist at all without you.
To be specific I dislike your framing and use of the word "forced". I do agree though that parents should deeply love and support their kids which is what it sounds like you are trying to say. And in turn, your kids should do the same despite "generational differences".
Why?
I am also a parent.
> I do agree though that parents should deeply love and support their kids which is what it sounds like you are trying to say.
Loving your kids is not a moral obligation, though most do (for the record, I love mine very much). Supporting your kids is a moral obligation, whether you love them or not, incurred by creating them.
> And in turn, your kids should do the same despite "generational differences".
I disagree. Our kids will never be morally obligated towards us in any way. We can only hope to have loved and supported them enough for them to love and support us back of their own volition.
I agree with this. Kids can't willingly bring themselves into the world (although "forced" is an exaggeration), and the burden is on their parents. A kid, until a certain point, is a person with certain needs and restrictions that call for external supervision (e.g. needing shelter, not voting). I consider a person in general to not have inherent obligations beyond not killing and whatnot. Sure, I can ditch my friend in a socially awkward moment and that would make me a huge jerk, but surely it doesn't rise to the same level as hitting someone.
> Loving your kids is not a moral obligation, though most do (for the record, I love mine very much). Supporting your kids is a moral obligation, whether you love them or not, incurred by creating them.
I don't quite know what you mean by "loving" versus "supporting". To me, supporting sounds like loving, with the caveat that I think emotional care ties into supporting a kid. Do you mean extra things like buying more presents on holidays?
Maybe. "Forced" implies "against their will", and prior to existing they of course had no will to oppose. It seems like you know what I mean though, and I'll try to think of less harsh verbiage for my point.
> I don't quite know what you mean by "loving" versus "supporting". To me, supporting sounds like loving, with the caveat that I think emotional care ties into supporting a kid. Do you mean extra things like buying more presents on holidays?
I may have been overly pedantic in separating them. By "love" I mean the actual emotion, which can never be forced or obligated. By "support" I mean everything we do for our kids. And part of supporting our kids is making sure they never doubt that we love them, which perhaps renders the difference moot.
What's the difference? If you don't boost them with all your might, you effectively condemn them to a life of struggle and misery, in today's world. Knowing this, it's gonna be you forcing yourself to give them your all, not society's expectations.
That's not my experience of the world at all. Quite the opposite, in fact: I had a pretty good time when I was coasting by on minimum effort, and I'm having an even better time now that I'm putting in some mild amount of effort.
I have no reason to suspect this will change in the next generation. If anything the falling costs of goods and services everywhere suggests they'll get an even easier ticket.
except that "love" part is a huge bucket that includes pretty much everything that we do for our kids (which is a heck of a lot more than food and shelter)
> expectation
it's not social expectation that drive what we sacrifice for our children; it's our love for our children that does, at least the parents I know (including myself)
Well OK sure I get that that would be good for kids but you're also gonna limit the number of parents if that's the new normal.
And past a certain point it's not.
> And past a certain point it's not.
Where do you estimate that point is? What harm do you believe lies past it?
However, the idea of parents giving 100% of themselves to the children is also an unsustainable one, and fundamentally horrifying one - if everyone things this way, generation by generation, then this robs existence from any meaning. It's admitting that all the good and nice things in the world, all that separates us from other animals, are all accidents, all made by people who weren't good enough at giving their children their best, and instead wasted their time on stuff like arts and sciences.
So I think there must be a point somewhere. And perhaps a hint of that is the observation that kids are better off with happy parents than with unhappy ones.
No one is suggesting giving 100% because it is an impossibility. What is suggested is that parents and children have the same priority - the children's wellbeing.
I have 5 adult sons. The value of my wellbeing is that it enhances their wellbeing. This reflects the nature of our one-way debt. They owe me nothing. I owe them what I can give.
- entertaining themselves
- working/providing for themselves
- having to do things that they don’t want to do
- being told no, and dealing with unfulfilled desire
All with balance, I am not proposing that kids are just left to fend for themselves. Caring for your kids materially and emotionally is important, but so is living your own life and making them live theirs.
I may be having kids in the not too distant future, and when I think about how I would parent, I consider 2 families I know who I have seen raise children.
In one, the kids are often denied requests they make for objects they want to own and activities they want to do. The parents drag their kids along to things that they (the parents) want to do, rather than not doing the thing because the kids don’t want to. At family gatherings, their parents expect that they will take care of and entertain themselves, while the parents enjoy time with the other adults.
In the other family, the kids are showered with toys and attention, and their mom goes to great effort to open any door for them that they express interest in. At family gatherings, the parents are always checking on their kids, and indulge every request the kids make of them.
Which family has happier, more capable, and well-adjusted children? Which family has happier parents? The answer to both is the first family.
Kids love screens, parents love getting to do their own thing while the child is quietly occupied, but a certain type of parent feels the need to go to war over the screen time limit rather than enjoy their dinner. Neither father nor son is having a good time at soccer practice, but a kid's got to have a sport. And so on.
We're calling for something bolder here than merely the will to override a child's wishes. Parents need a permission structure to prioritize their own desires, not just the ones they have on behalf of the children.
There was a good Ezra Klein episode about this [0].
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/22/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
That's a rather simplistic view where your kids don't get ill and are born healthy.
Not to mention many other complications.