I recently saw on a friends insta story that your Job as a parent is more than paying school fees  and I got curious and asked him what else do parents owe their children and we went on to have a discussion and based on that discussion there are something I think we need to talk about.


I remember my Dad always said something along the lines of just owing us just education and I started to wonder on the part of our parents, why did they think that they owed us only education?


  • Struggle; Most of our parents had to struggle to get an education, you had to have a some worth enlightened father or mother who took education seriously. Some of them had to watch their parents do menial jobs for them to be sent to school and they promised to do better so they could afford education for their kids. 
  • They saw the benefit; How they had a better life compared to their parents or other peers that did not go to school. 
  • They Genuinely believed it; They really believed in the idea that it was all they owed their kids. 
I know that not all parents are like this but majority of parents in this side of the country believe that and invariably act accordingly. There were definitely consequences for this mentality and the biggest of all is relationship. In these kind of families, when the children grow older there might be a relationship with the kids but it is usually on the surface level, the parents are no longer "interested" in what their children are up to and the children sort of know how the conversation will go at the end of the day that they give up trying to reach out. 

So what next? 


The children in such situations make the resolve to do better as parents. Right, right?

I really don't blame the parents, it is probably all they knew and if we really look at it, is it not the education they fought to expose us to that makes us know to do better? Think about it. If they didn't give us an education, we would be fighting different kinds of battles in life that we won't have the luxury to think about what and what your parents didn't do. Lol. 

We the children, who have now become parents, need to see our own parents as imperfect people who did the best they could with the best that they were exposed to because you will not always get it right with your child as well. 

I also don't think we should approach parenting as "I have to do better than my parents" because we would be so obsessed with getting that one thing they failed at right there is a tendency to neglect other important aspects of bringing up your child. I would say, read, know what it takes to bring up a well rounded child, listen to peoples experiences, learn, unlearn, relearn,; know what is valuable to you and commit to teaching and nurturing your child on that path. 


So, I don't want to do better than my parents. I just want to raise a well rounded child. This I commit to doing, so help me God.

What are your thoughts? I would love to know.