The Debt of Love

I agree with Jane English’s thoughts on parents’ relationships with their adult children. In her essay, she writes that adult children do not have a debt to their parents merely because of the sacrifices the parents made in raising them as a child. An incurred debt or obligation has a business connotation to it that a consumer and producer might have. If I tell my neighbor I will cut his hedges for twenty dollars, he will be in debt to me twenty dollars when the job is finished. The typical parent/adult child relationship is not structured like this and does not operate in this manner. The way in which a parent/adult child relationship should operate is on love. Love has many different qualities, but I want to touch briefly on the aspect of mutual well-being. When two people are truly in love with each other, both sides desire the well-being of the respective person for the sake of that person. In other words, I want the person I love to be in a state of well-being for his or her sake, not for my own ambitions. This is what separates the parent/adult child relationship from a business relationship. Both can potentially look the same from the outside, but are motivated by completely different ambitions under the surface. If I live reasonably close to my elderly father, I might trim his hedges because I know he can’t do it anymore and I love him. My father, knowing it is still time out of my day and a little bit of gasoline to get there might give me twenty dollars anyways because he loves me. In both the business and the family scenario, a hedge gets trimmed and the person who trimmed it gets twenty dollars, but the essence of the transaction is completely different. It is on this loving foundation that Jane English says adult children and parents should interact with each other. Children don’t owe their parents but rather should love them.