Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Help write the next New Rules: Natural Consequences Edition

Last week's Carolyn Hax chat mentions in various places parents scolding adult children with variations on "That's not how I raised you!" (They're scattered throughout the chat - easiest way to find them is by doing a Ctrl+F for "raise".)

This statement does a lot of things.  It disregards the adult child's very selfhood by treating their choices like nothing more than the result of the parent's input rather than being a function of their own personality and decisions and humanity.  But then it turns around and, with tone and delivery blames and scolds the adult child for the input not having been adequate to produce the desired output.

If you point out this logical fallacy by pointing out that, within that framework, it's the parents fault that they didn't get the desired outcome and therefore not something to scold the adult child about, you're accepting the parent's premise that the adult child isn't a human being with their own selfhood and is instead merely the result of the parent's input.  If you point out that when you have a human child the result is an autonomous human being, that simply intensifies whatever they're scolding about in the first place.

It's dehumanizing and based on a logical fallacy that feeds upon itself.  I think it needs a natural consequence but can't think of one at the moment.

Ideas?

3 comments:

laura k said...

Parents who use this trope will be forced to act out the bad behaviour, self-esteem issues, shame, and general nastiness that their parents - perhaps inadvertantly, unknowingly - taught them.

There has to be some kind of time limit on this, because I don't want people condemned to a lifetime in hell.

laura k said...

People who use this expression will be forced to contemplate - Jacob Marley style - what it would be like to be given no credit for your accomplishments and thought of as having no agency.

That's pretty lame. I can never think of really clever natural consequences.

impudent strumpet said...

Maybe something like every time a parent uses this trope, the world blames them for something negative about the child that's not the parent's fault.