It is a common belief that children must look after their parents due to the fact that the parents had sacrificed so much for their children. In terms of educating, feeding, caring and giving moral support as their children grew up.
Others believe it is an obligation but a choice and the children can choose not to help or look after their parents due to the fact that they owe their parents nothing.
What do you think? Do we owe our parents undying devotion for giving birth to us and contributing to who we become?
I agree Mariappan Jawaharlal with what he said the issue is cultural, but:
If everyone abandons you, it is your parents who will contain you
Whatever your mistakes, do they not deserve love and recognition? :)
This is a cultural issue. In many countries, children are expected to support parents when they become old. In some cultures, it is the responsibility of the eldest son. However, in countries like the US, children leave home once they are 18. Parents live on their own after retirement separately and children move out to start their own life.
We are born out of love, and so they deserve our unending love in return.
I agree Mariappan Jawaharlal with what he said the issue is cultural, but:
If everyone abandons you, it is your parents who will contain you
Whatever your mistakes, do they not deserve love and recognition? :)
I agree with Mariappan Jawaharlal that this is a cultural issue. In countries like South Africa,most commonly within the Black Society, taking care of your parents is a way of thanking them for all they've done for you, not necessarily out of obligation. However it may because of not being able to afford to pay for them to stay in the elderly retirement homes.
This question probably requires a layered answer.
I was raised in the US though I was not born here. Coming from a Caribbean culture, one of the first things I noticed about US culture is that is not uncommon for family members to be very far apart from each other. It is not unheard of to see your relatives only a few times within the span of a decade. This did not make any sense to me at first, since in many Caribbean cultures is common to have several generations of a family living in one household.
If you look at the history of the US, particularly in the 1800s, it starts to make more sense. More often than not, your birthplace was not an ideal place to find fruitful work and raise a family. People often had to move to far away cities or territories to obtain work. Because of this, parents aggressively pushed their children out to find employment when they came of age (probably more so for males than for females). This practice became entrenched and was eventually adopted into the wider US culture. It should be noted that not all US cultures follow this practice, at least not that intensely. The other side of the coin of the "aggressively push your children out into the world" is that they were not expected to return to their birthplace to care for their aging parents.
I offered this analysis to then express that you cannot separate rituals and practices from their cultures. Quite a few people offered answers to your question, but many of them take the moral high ground and are devoid of analysis. None of the answers take account of what is the effect of growing up in household with toxic/abusive parents.
What if the intention of returning to care for your elders is insulting to them? If you were raised in a culture in which you are pushed towards independence the first chance you got, returning to care for your parents might seem to be an insult to them. You might make them feel like they failed in some way.
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