colin wrote: > > society pressures about family. family are the same as any other people-if they hurt > you consistently, are abusive, walking away is the right thing to do. 'honour > thyfather and thy mother' has caused untold misery to millions of people who stay in > abusive relationships out of guilt and shame and efar of breaking this commandment. > yes, even those without this religious pressure, still have the same message shoved > at them. > We wouldn't put up with bad friends so why shoudl family be different? Honour and > respect and trust have to be earned.
True. There are many ties within families in addition to the parent/child one, but I agree that the idea of respecting parents no matter how they've behaved, the "honor thy father and mother" rule, can sometimes be used just to keep the abuse going. The advice columnist Ann Landers (or maybe it was her twin sister, Dear Abby) gave some surprising advice to a mother who'd written in saying that her son had been completely ignored by his grandmother while he was growing up and now he was going to college near her, and she had lists of things for him to do and expected him to be "on call" since he and she were family. So what was he to do? Ann said that the grandmother had not earned such attention and, most surprisingly, the mother was to make sure the son felt no guilt at not spending his time taking care of his grandmother's needs since she had so coldly ignored him for years. That made perfect sense to me, but you hardly ever hear that viewpoint, and it was shocking to see it so plainly stated in a nationally-syndicated column. Debra Shea
