We all know the cliché of smothering mothers and overbearing fathers. Parents who view their kids as a vicarious extension of their own ambitions. The dad who screams at his kid during Little League practice. The mom who will do anything to make her daughter a cheerleader.
Conversely, there are grown kids who are the mirror image of this codependency. They live to please their parents. Go to whatever college their parents prescribe. Major in whatever field their parents prescribe. Marry the “right” man or woman. Work for the “right” firm. Join the “right” country club.
Their parents have a script for how their kids were meant to live, and their kids dutifully play the role their parents have assigned. And their parents continue to control them from the grave.
We see the same mentality in the way Catholic and Orthodox believers worship the ground on which the church fathers walked. It’s as though they’re striving to win the approval of mom and dad. The church fathers have a blueprint for their lives, and they comply with their every wish. Mama’s boy and daddy’s girl.
It’s symptomatic of the spiritual and emotional immaturity which Catholicism and Orthodoxy foster in their charges that this is considered virtuous.
But maturity involves a capacity to emulate the good without a fawning emulation for all things traditional.
How true?
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed, it is so!
Let me explain. I will quote the end then the beginning to put over my point:
"....But maturity involves a capacity to emulate the good without a fawning emulation for all things traditional."
"....We all know the cliché ...".
Well, no, no we all don't know that cliche'!
It took reading that a couple two or three times before it sank in what your point was before I accepted it as sound wisdom from a decidedly ethnical viewpoint.
Ah, well, and this was before child protective services started enforcing societal laws on us, from my cultural framework, when a baby doesn't stop crying we put them in a baby papoose and hang them in a far tree just far enough away so we can hear when they stop crying but far enough away that their annoying cries don't bother us.
When the baby stops crying, we pick them up immediately. When they cry, back to the tree they go. Over a period of time, usually it is just a short period of time, I think because our babies are wise, they catch on that crying isn't nearly as much fun as being with family!
Oh, you cry babies, what I would give to get you in "my" tree! :)
Having said that, us California Indians have taken quite well to living the high life now that Congress has passed the law that countered the RCC's bingo parlors on our reservations, the INDIAN GAMING REGULATORY ACT, "IGRA".
As a further personal privilege and digression, I'd pick up at the bookstore and read the book titled "Wooden Leg" to get a sense of just how much I appreciate the wisdom and understanding this Triablogue brings me? I encourage that based on these words in your article above:
"....Their parents have a script for how their kids were meant to live, and their kids dutifully play the role their parents have assigned."
Not in my culture. We tend to find naturally in our hearts these Words of the Holy Script when it comes to training up our own:::>
Pro 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Pro 22:7 The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.
Thanks alot.