Young People--and Independence

There are periods perhaps in the lives of most young people when they are impatient with counsel and precautions, when they wonder why they have to be responsible to parents, why they cannot have complete independence. They wonder why their elders need be so concerned about their conduct, their decisions, their activities, and their interests.

Some show of independence is certainly to be commended and encouraged, but no one is or can be completely free from accountability to others. And parents certainly cannot free themselves from responsibility for their young people⎯not even if they would. And young people cannot free themselves from responsibility to parents⎯not even if they would.

There are many reasons why this is so: One is merely a matter of natural affection. When we have reared and cherished and nourished others, when our hearts beat with them and our hopes are for them, we cannot stand by and feel free from some sense of real responsibility.

But there is yet another reason why young people and parents cannot free themselves from responsibility for one another. Besides love there is a matter of law. It is said that “Diogenes struck the father when the son swore.” The law holds parents accountable for the acts and utterances of their children in many ways, and a parent not only has the right but also the unavoidable legal obligation to be concerned with his minor children even if and when they are seemingly self-sustaining. And even when a youngster can’t be completely independent, he must admit the matter of law.

But quite beyond the limits of the law of the land, beyond the limits of the laws that men have made, by a higher law we are all responsible to and for those whom the Lord God has given us. In a sense, there is no such thing as freedom from responsibility for any of us to any of us. And no rationalizing will remove the obligations of parents and young people to one another⎯which youngsters (and those who are older also) must learn, lest, as concerning one another, they feel as false freedom.