A Criminal Before Conception

This is my last essay for my writing workshop class. An argument paper.

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When do we take responsibility for our wrong doings? When do we get the chance to take credit for our accomplishments? The blame game is what we Americans love to play. And, we don’t play fair. We are blamed for a child’s outcome before the child is even born. I’m baffled that people willingly go through this process more than once. I’m floored by my own decisions. Parents are such easy targets. We treat them all like criminals. It can last a lifetime. We know there are some parents that are abusers, but we shouldn't treat every parent the same.

Parent blame starts before conception. We must keep ourselves healthy, pick the right spouse, and read classic literature out loud to the swelling belly. We must place the child on baby waiting lists with prominent baby schools. Once the child is born, we must be at its service. Here I won’t disagree that an infant needs around the clock attention, preferably from caring adults. You teach them to watch out for the hard floor, to watch the cars as they cross the street, and not to touch a hot stove.

We tend to forget that while we are nurturing them by developing an enclave of love, earth is our location. Billions of other people live here with us. These people have an impact on our children no matter how much we shelter our little ones. Yet, when something goes wrong, the parent gets the blame. It’s great when your child performs well on this stage called life. I've been to plenty of graduations where I've seen parents in tears over what they believe their love nurtured. The children are influenced not only by the world directly, but also indirectly through us. I would love to believe that each morning we put on this life shielding armor that protects us from all that we see.

Influence does not only come from living in a violent neighborhood. Influence can come from watching people prosper from wrong doings in the corporate world. These stories shape our thoughts, our dreams, and our focus. Our parents taught us never to steal, but I see several stories a day where people are living glamorous lives due to theft and corruption. We get our children through the elementary years, and then the parent/child relationship crash happens in the teen years. Parents take all types of blows to their parental involvement and skills during this time. In my experience, this period will show you how strong your bond is with your child. Many of us ruin the relationship by the time college comes around and that far away college seems like the right remedy. Free will is granted to us once we take our first breath from the womb, but we are taught that we must not act on this will until it’s convenient for society. We have to learn early on that our free will must be in alignment with the laws and rules of the world we live.

I’m 37 years old, and I still hear my peers blaming their parents for mistakes they supposedly made in rearing them. When do we show up? When do we start owning these lives? I don’t believe we should be blaming anyone or anything. We are humans that have been given a life that we must make beautiful in the eyes that gaze upon it. How are we expected to get it all right? Parents are humans. They did not know their children and they are still getting to know their children in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s and so on.

Many will say that a parent not wanting to be blamed is an attempt to get out of responsibility for their children’s actions. To this I will say, when do children start to take ownership of the decisions they make, 18, 21, 25? When do we cut the umbilical cord, detaching our lives from the lives of our parents? Some people will say that we must be the spokesperson for kids because they are not able to reason in adult ways. To this I have a story. This 13-year-old boy decides to skip school to hang out and smoke weed with friends. When his parents confront him, he denies it. His parents are baffled by his callous blatant refusal to be truthful, so they drill him until he finally confesses. The parents take the opportunity to ask him why. He responds by saying that “we only live once” and “I’m only 13 years old so you have to take care of me.” He went on to say that, so long as I’m not committing any crime or not getting locked up, it’s no big deal. This child, according to this government, hasn't been taught correctly by his parents. He won’t even know until he is of age, 18, that he has made some life altering decisions. We want our children to be smart. But, they are using their intelligence to manipulate and evade discipline.

This is a 13 year old using society’s rules, the parent’s desperate job of getting him in order and his own God given free will to manipulate this skewed system. Do we still blame the parents in a situation like this where a child is making adult decisions he stands behind? I've even heard children speak boastfully about calling child protective services on their parents knowing that the claims were false. Children know social workers will come into the home to interrogate the very person trying to teach their children right from wrong.

Children are listening to the reasoning of this world. Children are aware of the loopholes of the system. What they are hearing is that parents are to blame for a child’s bad behavior? For a parent to take credit for a child’s positive accomplishments is just hypocrisy’s way of attempting to right this wrong. How dare we not get these kids ready for the blame they will face when they themselves become parents? Blame the one making the decisions. Blame the one acting on their free will that opposes the laws, not the one trying to fix the free will of their offspring that has gone haywire.

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I can't remember where I got this pic. Just know, it's not mine.