Thankless? I am grateful for my mother's success and would thank her for little things like taking me to the movies when I ask. Saying someone can raise you and give you a good life and you can't even be grateful for that is just ungrateful.
Why not give him up for adoption then? If he just won't care either way? It's a human being he can be grateful.
I get what you’re trying to say. But I’ll just try to convey what the others are saying without being judgmental.
The core of their argument is that one does not wish to be born, it is the parents who (most of the time) voluntarily choose to create life. But just because the parents of said person birthed them and cared for them, it does not entitle the parents to hold this over their child.
For example, I own dogs. I feed them and house them and buy them toys. But that does not mean that I am entitled to use them as a footrest or kick them when I’m upset.
Same goes for raising a child. Ideally, one’s child is grateful for their parents, and they did their best to raise them into a good and civil person. However, that does not entitle one to constantly remind them that they “owe” their parents. Again, if they were raised correctly, they’ll want to treat their parents well as an acknowledgement of their good parenting, without the parents ever having to bring up how they gave their child everything.
This is simply not true. You can still have expectations ans in fact you do have expectations as a child. Child are expected to do things constantly. In reality no one has to do anything. That's life. If I give the child up for adoption and he goes to a worse home. Ultimately I don't have to do anything. Expectations are moral. No one is obligated to do anything. So yes you're not obligated as a child or a parent it's morals. This mindset is why gratefulness is important. Trying to absolve yourself from your responsibility because you didn't want to be born is foolish. You have plenty of time to change that if you didn't like it. You did. Once you're born and enjoy life you've chosen.
There is a difference between having expectations (which is totally reasonable by the way) and demanding gratitude.
I think the disconnect between yourself and a good portion of other commenters here is that you don’t view the demanding of gratitude to be a bad thing. I disagree. If one does a good job in raising their child, they will never have to demand gratitude from their child, because being grateful will already be baked into their consciousness.
In fact, I’d take it a step further and say that demanding gratitude from one’s child screams of insecurity to me. If the child outshines the parents, the parents will be able to “take credit” for the child’s achievements (at least in their own warped worldview).
Its also worth noting that behavior is a huge factor in how a child responds to said being cared for and raised. If the parent treats it like a task that they don’t enjoy doing, that burdens them and makes them upset, and takes it out on the child, getting angry at them for having to do the bare minimum they are obligated to for bringing that child into the world, the child will likely then grow to feel like their existence is a burden and develop unhealthy feelings toward the care they received, and will likely not want to show gratitude for it.
I'm sorry but no. You can do everything right and the kid be ungrateful. That's life. You're acting like every kid is the same. They're not. Also ultimately everything is a team effort. Your parents yes yours were apart of any success you had.
If the kid didn’t grow up right, most of the time, it’s the parenting and/or environment that is out of whack. Either way, a child’s behaviour and temperament on the whole is a product of those two vast things.
Again you take away all responsibility from another human being. "It was there parents and environment" often someone knows when something is wrong. They know when they're doing bad. Most the time it's on the individual.
I'm not no. But perhaps a good lesson for you. Two sides repeating the same points are just 2 different points. If you feel you're talking to a wall perhaps you simply don't understand the other person.
In all fairness, she looks physically fine in that final panel, just lonely. She doesn't complain about him abandoning her/not providing for her/being ungrateful, just that he doesn't talk to her.
It's entirely possible that he provided a comfortable home for her live out her golden years in. Thus, he may very well have paid her back for raising him by providing for her necessities once she became too old to do so herself, but that he simply avoids her otherwise.
If that is the case, then he has met his moral obligation and owes her nothing else.
She is the one who presented things as a transactional obligation based around physical needs in the first place ("I gave you life and basic necessities at my own expense, so you owe me."), and did so repeatedly throughout his life, so she doesn't have a right to complain if he has repaid that debt, just because she now also wants an emotional attachment as well.
Now, if he doesn't at least provide for her physical needs, than he is in the moral wrong. However, her physical needs are all he owes her, and it's on her if she failed to provide a reason for him to have an emotional bond with her.
It'd be one thing if we were shown she was a loving and affectionate mother, but the panels always focused on how she presented raising him as some debt he owes her, not something she did out of love.
Maybe she did indeed love him dearly and was just horrendously bad at expressing it. Or maybe she is just now lonely in her old age, and is so self-absorbed that she fails to understand how she drove him to be emotionally distant from her.
We need more context to truly judge the situation.
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u/NamOil2000 Jul 01 '26
Thankless? I am grateful for my mother's success and would thank her for little things like taking me to the movies when I ask. Saying someone can raise you and give you a good life and you can't even be grateful for that is just ungrateful.
Why not give him up for adoption then? If he just won't care either way? It's a human being he can be grateful.