Hypocritical Parenting

Selfish procreation masquerading as virtue

If procreation were a 1990s commercial, it would sound like this: “Are you depressed and consumed by meaninglessness? Have a child! Are you bored, lonely, and crushed by feelings of worthlessness because nobody cares to love you? Have a child! A child has no choice but to worship you, no matter how worthless you objectively are! You don’t even need to try to be better! Your child, this object of affection by default, is condemned to need you, to be attached to you, to love you, no matter how badly you treat it. Your very own human pet will constantly beg to spend time with you, thus mitigating your loneliness and irrelevance in a world that adulthood shows is cruel and psychotic. Don’t worry about bringing a new child into such a world you now know is bad: Your child will feel grateful for the prison of life you put it in, and will believe it owes you everything, even though it never had a choice to be born, or even a choice of better parents.”

Introduction

Sorry for my bluntness, but most parents (if not all) are self-righteous hypocrites. Their motivation behind procreating is not to give love but to receive it. Parents presume that just by satisfying their physical and emotional urges of procreating is somehow a virtue or a praiseworthy accomplishment; that somehow obeying animalistic and gross instincts makes them heroes. It isn’t, and it doesn’t, as any animal and any barbarian can procreate.

Most parents imagine that the biological imperative, this instinct or biological programming that makes them feel attached to their offspring, without even appreciating the individuality of their offspring, somehow makes them saints. It doesn’t.

Being attached to objects is not the same as loving someone after recognising them for what defines them as an individual.

Dispelling the myth of the virtue of parenting

Any idiot can procreate. A female in a coma can be inseminated and then give birth unconsciously. A child rapist procreates. A terrorist, who deliberately breeds fanatical child-soldiers and slaves, can procreate. There is no virtue in the act of procreating alone.

And in the act of parenting, meaning, supplying children the means to survive? Since they never chose to be born, and they never chose you, of all parents, to be theirs, then you owe them, not only everything they need to survive, but also everything they need to thrive, in both physical and emotional means. It’s your obligation to offer them those things, and denying them after having exposed them to life is a crime.

So what if you’re a parent? It’s not a praiseworthy achievement; having a child is an act of self-interest, since you felt the insatiable need to have a child. But the child, in its blissful non-existence, didn’t feel the need to emerge into being, and certainly not the need to be your (of all people) child. You forced this decision on them.

Bringing a life into this world is not an achievement, and it doesn’t make you a hero. If anything, it’s a monumental responsibility due to it being the result of a unilateral decision, plus the parent benefits more than the child. But first you need humility to see the life of your child as a responsibility, and not a source of entitled self-aggrandisement.

Not everyone can be a true parent, one who engages, communicates, and connects with their children, one who encourages them, who humbly understands that children owe absolutely nothing to their parents — nothing at all — and that in reality, children are morally owed good parenting.

You do not owe anything to your parents for forcing you in this reality and nature not of your choosing, especially under their roof, which again you didn’t choose, of all parents. And you especially owe nothing to “god” or the demiurge of this reality, assuming a conscious creator exists, that is.

All religions are parables of bad parenthood, and the vast majority of them show a sadistic, entitled, narcissistic parent-god traumatising and demanding worship and obedience from lowly creatures he created, deliberately making them faulty and frail in his despicable image; and then has the gall to expect them to behave more morally and responsibly than he does. This is the “god” most people worship: a laughable hypocrite deserving only our fear and contempt.

Good parenting is your moral responsibility

Simply succumbing to your most powerful physical and psychological urges — those of procreating — is no achievement at all. If anything, surrendering to your biological programming is your conscious denial of free will; so much for your pride in your supposed “choices” for which you claim undeserved credit (this is what the insistence on “free will” boils down to).

Ask yourself: Would you have had kids had you not been biologically programmed with sexual dictates, or even more powerful than those, with the compulsion to somehow “cheat death” by creating offspring, a Mini-Me in your image to worship you, gratify your ego, and thus build an imagined “legacy” (immortality project) that will outlive you?

That’s what I see when I see a typical parent: Dr Evil with his Mini-Me, obsessed with himself enough to play God through “creating”, not an independent individual, but a will-less slave, involuntarily subject to his tyranny.

Parental selfishness

We have children, not because we have an excess of love to give, but because we have a desperate need for love to receive, much like when buying a pet. Pets (animal or human ones) are objects compelled to grant us unconditional affection, no matter how horrible we are as individuals, and whose sole purpose is to gratify and aggrandise us, no matter how shitty we are to them and to others… this will-less, soulless automaton who never chose us or even chose to be, and has no ownership of self, and no say in what it does for us.

We get meaningless, involuntary affection from things we don’t respect, and you have no choice but to worship us, and we feel great for it… Pathetic.

Look around you: parents get angry with their children, not when the children commit some great crime, but when the children momentarily withdraw their affection towards the parents — this expected entitlement from the parents’ side. Then, the entitled parent, instead of looking inward to see how his atrocious behaviours could have forced the child to dissociate like that, feels robbed of his imagined prerogative: the absolute, by-default worship of a child.

“They kids don’t call! They kids never want to spend time with us!” Have you ever wondered why? Or is accountability too much to ask?

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Consider: before you structure any relationship with a peer, both have a need for that type of relationship beforehand. This isn’t the case with children. Before the creation of a forced parent-child relationship, only the parent felt the need for a human pet to mitigate his loneliness and feed his ego. Only the parent needed someone to vent his frustrations on and act as an emotional tampon for. But the child, in its non-existence, never felt any need for anything; it was free. The child never had the desire to be born, especially not the desire to be born to those specific parents out of millions of others who were objectively better parents.

It takes mountains of narcissism to presume that your child would have chosen to be born to you, if it had a choice, and the meager parenting and life you had to offer.

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There is no question: the motivation behind parenting is almost always a self-serving emotional need to somehow “cheat death” with an immortality project, a “legacy” perpetuated by things that will outlive us, by people who are compelled to be attached to us (genetically and psychologically) from birth, without any voluntary say in the matter. This is pride. This is hubris.

Sure, children can one day choose to be detached from their parents, but the effort, resentment, and constant reminders needed to maintain such a task are in themselves a testament to the non-existence of free will when it comes to our psychodynamics, to their unbroken attachment to their parents.

Self-aggrandising

Parents pat themselves on the back for their imagined “benevolence” of bringing a life into this world, but how much praise do you think you deserve for caring for a will-less Tamagochi that only exists to gratify you, and is programmed to do so? Children are your human pets, created by their nature to worship you by default, no matter how shitty a person you are.

Children and dogs are the easiest source of affection: you don’t have to be a good person to receive it.

You bring a life to this world whose sole purpose from before its conception was to gratify you. Your whole motivation behind it was the satisfaction of your need to become a parent, to fill the void in you that you could not fill alone. Then you have the gall to hate on people who consciously choose not to become parents, people who were self-reliant enough to not feel the need to condemn a life in this meaningless reality.

And let’s not forget the worst manifestation of parental self-aggrandising, the enmeshing exploitation of children to serve as surrogate romantic partners, as replacement husbands or wives for partners whom parents reluctantly settle with… just to have children! The circular irony in this…

Too little, too late

Parents, gods, and governments alike confuse conformity from fear with respect. But conformity out of terror is circumstantial and reliant upon random power dynamics. It’s meaningless, and it doesn’t make you respect-worthy.

When abusive parents grow old and frail, they magically become kinder because they hold no power over their now adult children. But it’s not that meaningful to be kind when you’re weak and needy, nor is it very useful that late in the child’s life.

What makes you good is being kind when you’re strong, not nice when you’re weak.

Conclusion

Am I saying not to have children? No, even though often I feel that humanity does not deserve, nor does it have any purpose to exist. I am also not certain that anyone has any moral right to bring a conscious being into such a meaningless existence; not even “god” has such a moral right.

But if we had the humility to admit that we never deserved to have children, these innocent, pure souls that are condemned to involuntarily worship us by default, even though we never earned or merited such affection, then perhaps we’d be better parents instead of authoritarian monsters presuming that children somehow owe us anything.

Children owe us nothing. We owe children everything because we initiated this unfairly imbalanced relationship with them. They never chose to be born, let alone be born to us. And they have no power over us, when we have absolute power over them. They are helplessly reliant on us for at least 15 years, depending on the nurturing, encouragement, and support we give them. Children are plunged into the prison of our parenthood, without ever having asked for any of that.

Thus, it takes an evil parent to begrudge their children for the “inconveniences” that children bring to the parent. It takes an evil parent to presume that children somehow owe anything to their prison warden for basic provisions of food, shelter, and the occasional prison activities to keep prisoners appeased.

Once we understand this humility that all parenting is exploitative, whereby the parent receives more than the child, then perhaps we’ll become better parents.

And don’t get me wrong: permissive parenting and spoiling are also forms of child abuse because they are, in fact, neglect and failure to provide healthy role models. Being kind to your child does not spoil them. Spoiled children are the result of neglectful parents, those who spend money on kids so that kids stop asking for parental attention, communication, engagement, and connection. Spoiling parents are horrible people because they think they can buy off their obligations to spend time, not money, with their children. Spoiling parents don’t understand how to set boundaries with their children, not through yelling or threats, but through patient explaining, connection, and incentivising.

It’s ironic how people without children have better parenting advice than most parents.

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I’ll close with this gem I recently stumbled upon online:

“God is made in the image of every shitty little narcissist authoritarian who wants to be god, acts like they are god, and has followers who treat them like god.”

To sum up

Most parents are selfish hypocrites. They don’t want to have kids to spread love. They want to have kids to be number one for someone who has no choice but to see them as number one. Nothing comforts you more than being an object of worship for someone. And kids are condemned to see you as their number one. There is no choice in the matter, at least for their first years.

Children are programmed by default to worship you. And if you manage to mess even that up, they are still involuntarily attached to you through the resentment you caused them by betraying the involuntary attachments they had to you.

Imagine having a kid who is programmed by nature to worship you, and managing to make even that kid despise you. No wonder no one likes you. No wonder you felt the need for a child who has no choice but to love and need you, no matter how shitty you are.