It is unfortunate that simply being a parent is looked upon as being honorable. I understand the motive behind it — parenting is the most important responsibility a person can have. Socializing and teaching a person is not easy. Even so, shouldn’t parents be held to greater scrutiny because of this?

A child that is incorrectly socialized or not properly taught can cause innumerable problems for a society as a whole. It is this backwards ideology regarding parents that causes some of the problems. Parents oftentimes think that merely providing for the basic physical needs of their children is enough. In reality, these types of parents should be held in the lowest possible regard. Good parenting should be the norm, not the exception. Extraordinary parenting should be the goal.

The truth is that having children should not bring honor, but only responsibility. It is only in how a parent rises to meet this new responsibility that determines how much honor the parent is deserving of.

For instance, being a bad parent does not add honor, but rather subtracts it. For this reason, the child of a bad parent does not owe their parents anything, least of all honor. Likewise, an exceptional parent is deserving of exceptional praise, honor and loyalty.

Obviously there is no universal rule of what makes a good parent and what makes a bad one. This kind of judgment is reserved mostly for the child when they are old enough to understand the difference (and odds are that the typical The State News reader is old enough).

It is not my intention to judge your parents. In fact, in all likelihood, the typical parent of a Spartan, past or present, probably did a pretty good job. I am merely questioning the blind loyalty that people sometimes feel toward their parents because nobody should ever be given blind loyalty. I am only stating that a person has the right to question the job that their parents did, because believe it or not, your parents were people too.

Those considering having children not only have the right, but also the responsibility to judge their parents’ parenting in order to become better parents themselves.

A source of room and board is not reason enough to love, honor or be loyal to anyone. It is a parent’s basic obligation to provide certain services to their children, and merely living up to an obligation does not entitle someone to honor.

You don’t feel any affection for the mail carrier that brings your mail, or the person who cuts your hair. It is merely their responsibility. Why then should a parent who merely provided a roof and food be the exception?

Bad parenting is blamed for most of society’s woes, and yet nothing can truly be done about it with a piece of legislation. The key to changing bad parenting habits is by changing perceptions. People have to stop seeing providing for a child’s physical needs as the sole responsibility of a parent. People also have to recognize that bare-necessity parenting should not entitle a person to any kind of honor.

The parent owes the child everything that can be provided, and anything less is to take away from that child what should be considered fundamentally theirs. For them to expect anything less is to sell themselves short.

Alex Freitag is a State News columnist. Reach him at freitaga@msu.edu.