When I was in line at Target for some household items the lady in front of me was making small talk with the cashier, a man. She asked if he had any kids. He was smiling, saying how he had one daughter, and she was turning 18 in three weeks. He said he couldn’t wait to “have her outta my hair.” He said he already knew the three words he was going to say to her (I didn’t want to know what they were). He said that once she was 18 he would never have to see her and never have to pay a child support payment again.
I was disgusted. When I turned 18, my parents were driving me to college, paying my cell phone bill, paying for me to fly to visit them, etc. Their devotion to me had undergone no change just because I was an adult. Rather they continued supporting me in ways consistent with the trend of “emerging adulthood” in which the major transitions of early adulthood are spread throughout the third decade of life instead of being more compressed in the early and mid-twenties as they were in the past. My parents still support me in some ways and always will.
So why do some parents, mostly men, feel virtually no obligation to their children while others are completely devoted and responsible? Why do some people act like they are a turtle burying an egg, while others nurture and support their offspring like a mother duck? Why are some parents like maple trees, throwing their whirlybirds into the wind, while other plants produce a single giant seed with a decent chance of survival?
Even if my cashier was immature and ignorant 18 years ago, couldn’t he have taken the next two decades to grow up? Wasn’t there time to change and become friends with his daughter?
I wanted to say, “It’s too bad she couldn’t have had a better father than you.” But of course I didn’t because I knew I was making several assumptions. Maybe the daughter really was a she-devil. Maybe I was taking him as a symbol of a societal problem and imputing other attributes to him in a way that wasn’t fair. Maybe he is pushed and pulled by societal factors that don’t affect me. Maybe his own father was little more than a sperm donor, too.
But looking at other people it’s obvious that there is a huge gap in the depth and duration of parental investment among people in this country. I am really lucky my own parents were determined to be a strong link in the chain of generations.
pseudoisaac 