On Being a Pleasant Parent

It is often easy for people to be pleasant when they have no responsibility. This is a profound fact that young people often overlook. Friends and strangers and casual acquaintances may sometimes seem to them to be more pleasant than parents. Other people don’t restrict them as do their parents. Other people don’t tell them where they can go and where they can’t go. Other people don’t tell them what to eat and what not to eat. Other people don’t plague them to practice. Other people don’t pester them to pick up their clothes and to get their homework done. Other people don’t tell them when to go to bed and when to get up. Other people don’t tell them when to go out and when to come in. And if a youngster really wants to make a case of it, he may at times have some cause to conclude that other people are more pleasant than his parents. Why shouldn’t they be? They don’t have to discipline him; they don’t have to keep him well; they don’t have to teach or train him; they don’t have to answer for his actions; they don’t have to see him make his way in life. But parents have a responsibility that they cannot, in good conscience, avoid. And since they have a duty to perform, children may sometimes suppose that parents are difficult and exacting, while strangers are easy and indulgent. Strangers let them do as they please and parents don’t. Long before life is over, however, discerning children learn to realize why all this is so, and learn to appreciate parents who teach them what they need to be taught, who restrict them when they need to be restricted, who discipline them when they need to be disciplined, who encourage them when they need to be encouraged, who counsel them when they need to be counseled, and who hold the reins when the reins need to be held. And a parent who lets children do anything they want to do, who is pleasant to the point of negligence, is not likely to keep their respect as long as a parent who persuades them to perform as they should perform. And before any youngster presumes that other people are more pleasant than his parents, he should remind himself that it is easy for people to be pleasant when they have no responsibility.