English
EspañolI have received an inheritance more splendid than all the gold in the world: trust in my parents. Whatever may befall me, under any circumstances, good or bad, they genuinely love me, and I can rely on their wise advice. This trust is intimate companionship, a vaccine against misfortunes and their loneliness. Respecting them comes naturally to me; I love being their daughter!
Text
“A person’s affective and ethical development is ultimately grounded in a particular experience, namely, that his or her parents can be trusted. This means that parents, as educators, are responsible, by their affection and example, for instilling in their children trust and loving respect.” (The Joy of Love, n.263)
Commentary
Parents do not have a minor responsibility when children arrive. Accepting their duty is part and fruit of the love they share as parents and spouses. Throughout the lives of our children, our union will be a source of resources to educate them. Parents, as their children´s educators, do not have vacations. As long as God gives them life, they cannot renounce being their children´s support, guide, and company twenty-four hours a day. We are parents no matter our children´s age. Our parenthood acquires a new and different expression, and we continue to develop it when, once married, our children make us grandparents. Continue teaching our children as we get old and sick; even our death is an opportunity to teach them.
Many justifications abound nowadays for neglecting this responsibility. Fathers who arrive late and tired from their jobs, mothers who do not want to postpone their professional careers for a few years, are a few arguments in favor of not wanting to work as a united couple, taking charge of their children´s development together. And the big dramas: abandonment, separation, fractures, divorce. Parents´ failures and their refusal to embrace responsibility result in lonely children, which are easy bait for the worst of the media and our culture.
If parents give up and flee, if they disunite as spouses, they expose their children to the lack of a “good backpack” in their emotional and moral life. However, above all, they will have deprived their children of the invaluable experience of intimate trust, of the unconditional security that resides in the truth and goodness of their father and mother´s love, whether they are a child, teenager, adult, or elder.
If children are unable to trust their parents, how will it be possible to respect and honor them?
