Parents role in a situation

[PetraG]

And in passing, I do a lot of reading about evolution and evolutionary psychology. And the fact that we are a species that generally pairs off for life as opposed to having multiple partners as the natural state of affairs is purely and uncontravertibly a biological accident. If a couple of genes had been changed by whatever means way back in the distant past then the church might well now deem it morally unacceptable to restrict oneself to one partner.

Now the argument is that the Ten Commandments are irrelevant because of concupiscience? The parents have no standing to object not because their daughter deserves her privacy to make decisions but because the parents’ morals are unrealistic and therefore wrong?

Well, in that case, they have no room to object if she and her boyfriend use the parents’ bedroom. What part of evolutionary psychology puts that off-limits? What animals respect property rights?

He has changed his mind before, so why can’t He change his mind again?

And the parents’ morality is arbitrary, too?

So much for respect between adults. All this because the daughter can’t cope with her parents making the rules for their own home? That works if someone is a guest, maybe. It doesn’t work if you’re joining someone’s established household. Fit in or make your own household.

 

[CRV]

BTW, I didn’t receive any notification that you’d quoted me …

6 And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth , and it grieved him to his heart.

He wasn’t grieved in that He had made man, but grieved that mankind whom He had made, had commited such wickedness. As it says in #5. It was the wickedness that man committed that grieved His heart .

Genesis 6 " It repented him, &c. God, who is unchangeable, is not capable of repentance, grief, or any other passion. But these expressions are used to declare the enormity of the sins of men, which was so provoking as to determine their Creator to destroy these his creatures, whom before he had so much favoured. (Challoner) — God acted outwardly as a man would do who repented. (Haydock)"

Exodus 32: 11-14

Moses prayers of intercession on behalf of the people was to plead their case, to stay God’s Justice for a time (in hopes of convincing the people to repent).
He didn’t change Gods’ mind, but pleaded for mercy by reminding God of Abraham etc faithfulness - a stay of execution, if you will.

Following on , do we not see the people acknowledge their sinfulness and repent? It is the people who change.

 

[LilyM]

Wozza:

I dread to think what the situation would be if we’d have told her to leave home rather than accept her decisions in this matter. I doubt if my grand daughter would be pestering me to finish this post so I could play with her.

Live by rigid rules and you may well find yourself contemplating the outcomes on your own.

I’m sure that I’ve made many mistakes in the almost 60 years of my life, but I’ve always had the unconditional love and support of my parents and have been close to them all of my life. I know many other people, however, some in my own family, who had much more rigid and demanding parents and in most cases they became alienated from their parents. Some haven’t talked to their parents in more than 20 or 30 years which makes me feel sad for them and for their parents, too.

And I know my grandparents would (on both sides) have kicked my parents out on their respective keisters if any suggestion of premarital sleepovers had been made to them.

My parents, being the sort who didn’t let their hormones rule their heads, had no problem waiting until they were able to support themselves and a family. No rift in their relationships with their parents at all.

And I know many families where parents and children have spent years in all sorts of.turmoil precisely because parents have been too timid to lay down ground rules about sex.at.a young age, drugs, alcohol or other destructive behaviours.

The consequences have been parents shouldering the burden of raising grandchildren or stepping in to help addict children who cannot function. Effectively enabling their irresponsibility to continue.

 

[Thorolfr]

My parents, being the sort who didn’t let their hormones rule their heads, had no problem waiting until they were able to support themselves and a family. No rift in their relationships with their parents at all.

And I know many families where parents and children have spent years in all sorts of.turmoil precisely because parents have been too timid to lay down ground rules about sex.at.a young age, drugs, alcohol or other destructive behaviours.

The consequences have been parents shouldering the burden of raising grandchildren or stepping in to help addict children who cannot function. Effectively enabling their irresponsibility to continue.

What kind of ground rules about sex would parents set down at a young age and how young is “a young age”? My parents never talked to me about sex, drugs or alcohol. But maybe they didn’t think they had to since I never misbehaved and never drank alcohol or used drugs or had a girlfriend when I was living with my parents.

And on the issue of someone waiting to have sex until they can support themselves and a family, I can see how that would be difficult for some people. For example, if someone is trying to become a medical doctor, it takes about 7 or 8 years at least to get through medical school and residency, so such a person might be as old as 30 by the time they get their medical degree. Still being a virgin at 30 is probably not very easy. I know that I would have had a hard time waiting until I was 30.

 

[LilyM]

LilyM:

My parents, being the sort who didn’t let their hormones rule their heads, had no problem waiting until they were able to support themselves and a family. No rift in their relationships with their parents at all.

And I know many families where parents and children have spent years in all sorts of.turmoil precisely because parents have been too timid to lay down ground rules about sex.at.a young age, drugs, alcohol or other destructive behaviours.

The consequences have been parents shouldering the burden of raising grandchildren or stepping in to help addict children who cannot function. Effectively enabling their irresponsibility to continue.

What kind of ground rules about sex would parents set down at a young age and how young is “a young age”? My parents never talked to me about sex, drugs or alcohol. But maybe they didn’t think they had to since I never misbehaved and never drank alcohol or used drugs or had a girlfriend when I was living with my parents.

And on the issue of someone waiting to have sex until they can support themselves and a family, I can see how that would be difficult for some people. For example, if someone is trying to become a medical doctor, it takes about 7 or 8 years at least to get through medical school and residency, so such a person might be as old as 30 by the time they get their medical degree. Still being a virgin at 30 is probably not very easy. I know that I would have had a hard time waiting until I was 30.

30? A medical.degree in my experience (most of my family - including both parents- are doctors) involves 5 to 6 years of full time study. Meaning full time.paid work by the time.you are 24 or 25 max.

Yes they have to do residency and so on, but I’ve never known any medical student to have to go until the age of 30 without full-time paid employment if they want/need it.

Someone with the self-discipline to devote that many years to building a.worthwhile career should be able to exert the same self-discipline to making sure to be on a suitable.foundation to raise children before risking pregnancy.

Of course it’s hard - but so are most things that are worthwhile.

 

[Thorolfr]

30? A medical.degree in my experience (most of my family - including both parents- are doctors) involves 5 to 6 years of full time study. Meaning full time.paid work by the time.you are 24 or 25 max.

Yes they have to do residency and so on, but I’ve never known any medical student to have to go until the age of 30 without full-time paid employment if they want/need it.

From what I’ve read, in the US medical school is usually 4 years after 4 years of undergraduate study. So, if someone enters college at 18, they would finish medical school by the age of about 26. And I didn’t realize that medical doctors get paid at least $50,000 a year during residency which isn’t a lot, especially if they’re living in an expensive city.

A number of PhD programs can be as long as 7 or 8 years of full-time graduate level study after finishing an undergraduate degree (the PhD program in my department at university was at least 7 years). This means that such people won’t graduate until they are about 29 or 30. And graduate students in those kinds of programs usually don’t make a living wage while they’re in school. Hardly any of the PhD students in my department were married and I doubt that any of them were still virgins.

 

[LilyM]

LilyM:

30? A medical.degree in my experience (most of my family - including both parents- are doctors) involves 5 to 6 years of full time study. Meaning full time.paid work by the time.you are 24 or 25 max.

Yes they have to do residency and so on, but I’ve never known any medical student to have to go until the age of 30 without full-time paid employment if they want/need it.

From what I’ve read, in the US medical school is usually 4 years after 4 years of undergraduate study. So, if someone enters college at 18, they would finish medical school by the age of about 26. And I didn’t realize that medical doctors get paid at least $50,000 a year during residency which isn’t a lot, especially if they’re living in an expensive city.

A number of PhD programs can be as long as 7 or 8 years of full-time graduate level study after finishing an undergraduate degree (the PhD program in my department at university was at least 7 years). This means that such people won’t graduate until they are about 29 or 30. And graduate students in those kinds of programs usually don’t make a living wage while they’re in school. Hardly any of the PhD students in my department were married and I doubt that any of them were still virgins.

How many jobs actually require a PhD? And why on earth would someone desiring to be seen as an independent and intelligent adult not DO the intelligent and adult thing and support themselves by working for a living while studying part-time for said PhD? And stop acting like perpetual adolescents if they don’t want to be treated as such?

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

And in passing, I do a lot of reading about evolution and evolutionary psychology. And the fact that we are a species that generally pairs off for life as opposed to having multiple partners as the natural state of affairs is purely and uncontravertibly a biological accident. If a couple of genes had been changed by whatever means way back in the distant past then the church might well now deem it morally unacceptable to restrict oneself to one partner.

Now the argument is that the Ten Commandments are irrelevant because of concupiscience? The parents have no standing to object not because their daughter deserves her privacy to make decisions but because the parents’ morals are unrealistic and therefore wrong?

Evolutionary psychology makes no claim as to what is right or wrong. Nobody has made anything like that suggestion. EP is an explanation. It takes no moral position. But understanding it gives you the information that may help in aiding you make those decisions.

 

[Wozza]

It is speculation - now.

He willed monogamy when He created one man and one woman - back at the start of the creation of mankind.

God is not going to go back in time to change what He has already willed for mankind. Nor is he going to change His mind now, and change His Design for mankind at this point in time. God is unchanging. So any discussion of if and will He, would He … is moot - pure speculation.

The Euthyphro dillema has been around at least since Plato’s time. I’m not sure that you understand it.

 

[CRV]

Oh… forgive my ignorance…

If you mean this Euthyphro dilemma? I get it.

 

[Thorolfr]

How many jobs actually require a PhD? And why on earth would someone desiring to be seen as an independent and intelligent adult not DO the intelligent and adult thing and support themselves by working for a living while studying part-time for said PhD? And stop acting like perpetual adolescents if they don’t want to be treated as such?

To answer your questions, anyone who wants to teach at a major university as a professor would need to have a PhD. And, anyone who wants to be a clinical psychologist would need a PhD. And if it takes up to 7 years to get a PhD, why stretch it out even longer by going to school part time? PhD students do get part-time teaching jobs as Teaching Assistants and they might also get grants and fellowships, but most of them would probably make less than $20,000 per year.

I can see that having a PhD doesn’t impress you very much. But money isn’t everything. The search for knowledge at the University level is quite rewarding. And teaching is rewarding, too.

 

[Wozza]

Oh… forgive my ignorance…

If you mean this Euthyphro dilemma? I get it.

I didn’t know there was another one. But yeah. That one. The one with a lot of ‘if’ clauses. ‘Moot points’ as you describe them.

 

[CaliCatholic247]

Thank you for your post.

“Mind your own business” is about the rudest most prideful thing one can say to a loved one or a true friend. The person is showing care and you feel you must insult them?

 

[PetraG]

Evolutionary psychology makes no claim as to what is right or wrong. Nobody has made anything like that suggestion. EP is an explanation. It takes no moral position. But understanding it gives you the information that may help in aiding you make those decisions.

Well, the Catholic Church does make a claim as to what is right or wrong, and the parents in question are Catholic. Saying that monogamy is “purely and uncontravertibly a biological accident” seems impossible to reconcile with the Church’s teaching on the reality of the virtue of chastity. When you dismiss the possibility of chastity for an older person as something like “missing out on a second chance for love,” it reduces morality to something that involves decision-making that seems based on a stastical assessment of risk and reward rather than as a Christian response to the call to a life of virtue.

Having said that, the question is whether or not one member of a household ought to expect everyone else in the household to ignore the way she chooses to conduct her life when she isn’t actually at home. I’m going to stick to my position that this is an unrealistic standard that precludes adults from a home in which they surround themselves with others who share their sense of what a life of virtue is and who, by their example and their attitudes, help everyone in the house to pursue that life. I think most adults have that standard, when it is open to them. The only thing that differs is what people with different philosophies or religious sensibilities think a life of virtue is–what is good and what is bad and where the priorities of one’s life are placed. If minding your own business is your highest priority, that is going to look a lot different than if helping everyone under your roof get to heaven and being able to rely on them to help you in return is your highest priority. The latter obviously involves a lot more mutual accountability. People should be free to choose that for themselves!!

I’m not saying that the parent of an adult child has a duty to form the conscience of an adult child in the same way as the parent had that duty when the child was small. I don’t think that is true. I do think that everyone has the right to order their own household around a life of virtue as they see that, if they want to do that. That is not an unreasonable or oppressive standard to have for those who want to share a common life with you. It isn’t just monasteries and convents that get that right. Everybody ought to have it, including parents whose children have reached adulthood.

 

[TheLittleLady]

There was a time, under the old law, when God permitted men to take multiple wives, some of these men are heroes of our Faith. For instance, Jacob, David, Solomon all had more than one wife.

 

[TheLittleLady]

This is poetic language, not literal language.

 

[PetraG]

Needless to say, we have different views on that. But even going with the Christian view, if God had determined that multiple partners was the best way of ensuring the survival of mankind, then multiple partners would be ‘good’.

The implicit assumption in this argument seems to be: “You certainly will not die [if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil]. God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.” Gen. 3:1-5

Whenever anybody studies psychology or anatomy and physiology or any other aspect of the human person and concludes that their experience in studying humankind gives them the “insight” to second-guess moral law rather than a means to better understand the behaviors of themselves and others, they’re falling for a very old deception.

But again: honestly, to me this is about the difference between what is acceptable in a guest in our home–which is very broad, and essentially involves building a trust that there won’t be any actual attacks on anyone or other direct offenses while under our roof–and what is acceptable in an adult member of our household. If someone says it is none of my business whether having someone as a member of my household is a help or a hindrance to our common pursuit of a life of virtue, I’d take very serious issue with that. Broad tolerance has its place; that place is just not within the confines of the small circle living the Christian life with us as a “domestic Church.”

 

[PetraG]

Along with the very strange implication: “Mom, dad. I loved you guys and followed your rules when I was 17 but now that I’m 18, no more rules and no more love.” How crazy is that?

Still, if my children start households and run them differently than I did, I wouldn’t take that as evidence that they don’t love us or appreciate how they were reared any more than they would take it as evidence that I didn’t love them when I suggested that they needed a separate household if we had serious differences about what we do and don’t consider a virtuous life. If @Wozza considers “mind your own business” to be among the most important virtues in an adult household–and I am not arguing that there is nothing virtuous in that idea–then that household will run according to that standard. The parents will expect no more or less privacy for their children than they expect for themselves. That would be their standard. That is an internally-consistent standard, even if it is different than what we have at our house.

I also want to be clear that I am not talking about: If you try to live the way we are trying to live and you fail, you’re out. No, we all fail sometimes. The question is about intention and what our common goals for ourselves are. I’m talking about: We have these standards for ourselves, this life we are trying to live, we are mutually accountable to try to live it, and we need everyone to be trying to live it. If you want to have a different set of standards, you need to be in a household that agrees with your standards.

So, back to the OP, @rosejmj: Could some parents have the standard that what an adult child does while she’s living in our house is not something we interfere with? Yes, they could. Is it wrong for parents to say that their household is founded on protecting certain virtues and the adults in the house holding each other accountable to those? Yes, they could. That is within their authority as heads of the entire household. They aren’t just heads of children and each other, but heads of the entire household. Just as an abbot or abbess is the head of a monastery and has a sacred duty to protect the life of virtue of all in the monastery, even though everyone there is an adult, so it is with the domestic Church. Your friend is not being treated as a child. Your friend, in choosing to live with her parents, have chosen a household that treats chastity as a virtue that is to be respected by everyone living in the house. That’s the kind of house her parents have. Her choice is to live according to that or else, out of respect, to find another place to live.

 

[JimG]

It seems that the problem comes down to something like this:
Child to parent,
or mankind to God:
"Life is just too hard, and anyway, why can’t I have sex any time I want?

 

[PetraG]

Catholics should have a universal standard. Sons and daughters, at the proper age, should be told how best to order their lives. There is much to be said, on a practical level, about what really works and has worked for generations. This is passed from one generation to the next as a kind of building block to the children. There is no such thing as two right answers. If a relative of mine wants the answer, I give them the answer. The answer is not multiple choice. It reflects my life and the lives of others I grew up with.

To suggest anything else implies a source of knowledge/wisdom outside of this. And if so, where does that knowledge come from? Where do the differently ordered households get their ideas?

Well, St. Paul did have a stricter standard on this. The Church has not made St. Paul’s advice to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5-9-13) into a universal standard–that is, the Church does not forbid Catholics from having someone live in their home or as a guest in their home who does not recognize the wisdom of accepting the teachings of the Church. That is a prudential judgment, and the Church would not disagree with those who say that the prudential judgment of when and how much to associate with those who reject the teachings of the Church does extend to the relationship between parents and their baptized adult children.

In other words, I’m not saying we ought to be wishy washy about what is right and what is wrong. The question is how one manages social interactions with those who don’t accept the teachings of the Church: not just those who are not baptized, but also those who are and even those in our own families. We ought to recognize that there are different ways of doing this that are all acceptable to the Church. Your warning against talking about this in a way that could be construed as moral relativism is well-taken, but I somehow doubt that parents who say that they won’t have someone who rejects Catholic teachings on virtue living under their roof are likely to be accused of moral relativism.

This isn’t just a matter that comes up in our own homes, and we all know it. It comes up in a lot of parishes. There are people who are very active in doing the work necessary to keep their parishes running who take issue with Church teachings and sometimes do so very publicly and over very serious matters. Handling that is also a matter of prudential judgment, and not an easy one. Sometimes they are asked to refrain from putting themselves in positions of Church leadership until they accept all the Church’s teachings as true and sometimes they aren’t. It depends on the particulars of the situation.