Dear Parents: Your Children Don't Owe You Anything
As a Desi child, I've grown up hearing things like "I feed you and give you a house and this is how you repay me?" addressed to me, my friends, my cousins, kids in various forms of media, as far as I can remember. But something I don't understand is, why do parents want credit for keeping their children alive and making sure they dont die? That's the barest minimum you have to do as a parent, keeping your kid alive. That's saying "since I keep you alive, that makes you obligated to me. You owe me for making sure you don't die."
Which is a strange thing to brag about. You keep our dog alive, too. Why isn't he asked to achieve outrageous academic accomplishments, hug people he doesn't even want to speak with, dress in the way you'd like him to dress, speak in the way you'd like him to speak and change his entire personality and sacrifice his happiness so you could be happy?
As Elena Alvarez from One Day At A Time said, the bigger person should not have to be the kid. Why do you expect your child to behave like an adult when you treat them as if they still suck a pacifier? Why do you expect children to stop going to art classes so they can focus on their education, even when it makes them miserable? Why is your reputation and your bragging rights due to their achievements more important than the happiness of your child, a human being that never asked to be born? Why do you revel in making them feel like they owe you for a life they never asked for?
They do not owe you anything. Not a smile, not a grade, and definitely not their happiness.
