I recently spent some time in hospital and while recovering from surgery, chanced upon your article "Full House" in the May 04 edition of Reader's Digest. To be brutally frank, you might have better entitled this piece "Bonsai Your Children".

I believe, and I am sure that most others will agree with me that it is a parent's duty as a parent to raise their children to be responsible and independent adults. You wrote of your delight in keeping your children dependent and free of any adult responsibility in your home, not from any dire financial necessity (indeed that is never mentioned) but from some very vile form of ego gratification.

Yes, ego gratification. You specifically stated you wanted them there "to keep them from growing up, and you from growing old" and that is distasteful in the extreme.

With regard to your statement of "Your children are your best friends", this provides other points to ponder. Pardon me, but shouldn't that role fall to your spouse, your life partner? You are not supposed to be your child's "best friend" - you are supposed to be their PARENT. Which means it is a parent's duty to raise their children to be responsible and independent adults - you are to provide them with boundaries, love, and loving discipline to guide them along the path to responsible adulthood. I have worked with children, and there is an increasing trend for "parents" who refuse to discipline their children and provide them with the boundaries they want and need because they don't want to be Parents - they want to be Best Friends. Believe me, these so-called "Parents" are shortchanging their children in ways they cannot even imagine. Ask any teacher whose days must now be devoted to setting boundaries and training children to behave in a classroom environment instead of teaching.

Your point that children moving out at 18 is a relatively new phenomena is valid. However, I also have to point out, that the average 10-year-old a hundred years ago was more responsible and independent than is the average 25 year old today. Furthermore, even if these children lived at home, they were expected to assume adult responsibilities and not kept in perpetual childhood. Therefore, your own example has proven you wrong.

There are other things in your article that draw my attention: When your daughter (at age 25) left home, you carried on and "cried, and offered to mend your ways." Excuse me, Sir, but this is more the action of a clinging lover at the end of the relationship than that of a Father, not to mention emotional blackmail. Allow me to point out that your premise that "All Fathers are in love with their Daughters" is false. Fathers may love their Daughters, but to be "in Love" with them smacks of a very unwholesome fixation. Furthermore, your confession of carrying on as you did is an admission that even you realized that you had overstepped some very real boundaries in your relationship with your adult daughter.

Now on to your son: A 28 year old man should not have to "wait until you were halfway around the world to sneak out of the house to move in with his girlfriend." You tried to keep him in babyhood, he wanted to move on to adulthood. You obviously do not have the relationship with your children that you think you do.

You are a pathetic example of a clinging parent who is cutting his children off at the knees and robbing them of their future for your own very sick gratification.

Shame on you.

Childfree Abby
The ChildFree Abby Archives - http://www.dismal-light.net/childfreeabby/