 Flip the television on, watch any number of daytime talk shows and you'll invariably hear someone say something to the effect of, "blah blah blah, blood is thicker than water, you only get one family, you don't get to choose them, and therefore you have to love them." Self defeating, is the only way to describe the logic of this argument. Truly, blood is thicker than water. So is motor oil. Yet I don't see what relevance viscosity holds to familial relations. It's also true that one only gets a single family. Or at least it's true that one starts with a single family. And undoubtedly it's a truism that the first family one starts with isn't chosen, but given. One doesn't choose his mother or father and therefore should not despise them? What?
Quite the contrary, one should hate his parents. By all semblance of logic and good sense one should despise his "given" family with a fervor by the age of eighteen. Parents, it should be noted are not particularly special or exceptional people. They have their flaws. They have their idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. If anything, they should be considered people of questionable sanity for their very decision to have children. Evolutionary advantages aside, such primal urges towards procreation must be considered ghastly, almost antiquated in our more civilized context. Children are prohibitively expensive, and noisy. What reasonable person takes on such a responsibility with glee? Clearly these people are either insane, enamored with the vanity of self propagation, or too lazy to read contraceptive directions. So parents are not chosen, but friends and lovers and golf clubs are. According to esoterically reasoned logic based on ill explained axioms- this places the former firmly above the latter in the hierarchy of interpersonal relationships. Forgive me for my bafflement, but why is it that I should prefer those I have been saddled with, over those I have chosen? Furthermore, why should a living arrangement that consists of, for all intents and purposes, three strangers forced to cohabit for eighteen years be even close to bearable? If I grabbed two random people off the street and shacked up with them for eighteen years, surely I would kill them within a decade? Parents are simply strangers you've been forced to live with, and children are simply strangers you've been forced to care for. The prospect of living with family is madness, and in some regards moreso than the prospect of living with strangers. A generic roommate does not tell you when to go to bed, what to eat, who to date, or how to spend your money. A generic roommate does not expect you to toilet train him, feed him, clothe him, or pay for his college education. So you say you hate your parents? Of course you do! That is how it should be! A much better question would be, how anyone on earth struggles through life without hating his parents. Oh, I'm not blind or stupid. I understand that most immediate family groups do end up loving each other, for lack of a more iconoclastic term. Though they start out strangers, they don't end up that way. 
The implication of this is highly unsettling. The implication is that free choice isn't nearly as important in the production of healthy and enjoyable relationships as people might think. It doesn't matter who one chooses for his spouse, best friend, or mistress. How these relationships turn out is a veritable crapshoot. Is there a method to the madness? It doesn't appear so. Save for a few largely irrelevant genes, the matching between parent and child is a random one. But parent/child relationships generally turn out well. Or at least they turn out less violent than one would expect from what amounts to an eighteen year run of Big Brother. On the other hand, people choose spouses, and supposedly they do it with some intelligent deliberation. But most marriages turn out poorly. Perhaps it's the nature of the relationship. People know that they can't trade in parents (kids of course, are a different story). They can't get new ones. But they can trade in spouses, best friends and sometimes even golf clubs. Perhaps society, culture and evolution have effectively beaten into our minds the flawed but admittedly useful concept that family "comes first," despite the illogic of it all. Whatever the case, those who are in the position of hating their parents should know that they are not in the wrong. They are not misguided, mentally unstable or maladjusted. They are the seers, the ones who perceive truth and reason over utilitarian romanticism. It's not crazy to hate your parents. It's crazy that you don't. And really, that's the craziest thing of all. |
