Human being is the creature that takes hardest of the efforts and longest of the time for learning to live life and to reach the level of maturity. How quick all the other animals learn the survival skills. In fact, many of them are born learnt. No body is required to guide them what they have to feed and how. Nevertheless, the case of human being is not the same.
A child comes in this world as a weak being. He cannot feed himself unless the caretaker provides him. The feeble being doesn’t know how to clean himself, the caretaker performs the job. Children are totally dependent on their parents for fulfilling their personal, social and emotional needs.
Life goes on. The strong hands, that supported the child to move and take his first steps, become weak. The strong back, that lifted heavy loads to meet the needs of the kids bends down and no longer remains capable of being straight even for itself.
Nonetheless, the child that was once weak turns into a strong and robust individual. This is the time when responsibilities are supposed to be shifted. The parents deserve to be taken care in their old age as they cared for their kids during the time of their weakness.
It is heart breaking to witness the incidents of children treating their parents as a burden when they turn old. They abandon their parents and negate their responsibility towards them thinking that they have the right to live their lives freely as individuals.
During their youthful years, people start considering their parents a reason of discomfort who put pressure on them for fulfilling their needs. People want to enjoy their lives without being pressurised by the responsibility of their parents.
The point to consider here is that if our parents did not spend their youthful years to fulfil our needs. Did the parents not sacrifice their dreams and desires to give us a better life? Did they not face the discomfort in order to bring comfort to our lives. Now when the life flips and the positions are altered, isn’t it the responsibility of children to pay them back with same level of love and care?
I think it is quite ungrateful on the part of the children to take the efforts put by their parents as for granted. Parents also had the choice to not care of their kids when they were young. If they chose to give the best to their kids sacrificing their own wishes, it is responsibility of children to be grateful to them via their words and actions.
Nonetheless, despite considering it the responsibility of children to take care of their parents in their old age, I don’t consider the mind-set of bringing up kids for our own future as a healthy mentality.
Having this kind of mentality, parents build too many expectations, some of which might even be irrational. Consequently, children are put under unnecessary pressure of fulfilling all the demands of their parents. The situation becomes frustrating for children and disappointing for the parents.
Another problem with this kind of mentality is that parents do not keep anything save for themselves, instead spend everything on their kids. When the table is turned with time, parents become totally dependent on their children. In such a situation if children refuse to take care of their parents, the parents feel helpless.
In short, children should not consider their old parents as a burden on them. Instead they should be grateful to them and treat them with kindness and love. On the other hand, parents should not bring up their kids with a desire of getting the support back. Instead, they should be saving something for their own future and also always be striving for independence .
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This post is my participation for Hl-featured contest.