I have a confession to make.
Clara and I like Judge Judy. No,
we are not like 10 percent of university graduates in the USA who, according to
a study done a few months ago, think Judge Judy sits on the US Supreme
Court. But if you ask us, appointing
Judge Judith Sheindlin to the next vacancy on America’s highest court wouldn’t
be a bad idea. It would drastically
increase the common sense quotient on the high court.
The other day, Judge
Judy drew a few laughs – including ours – on the subject of grown children
coveting their ageing parents’ possessions. She told her audience that she’d taken to
visiting her children and grandchildren naked.
Now, we understood that she really didn’t mean she parades naked around
her grown offspring! She meant, rather,
that she avoids flaunting expensive clothes and jewelry in front of them. Because the result, she opined, would be them
shouting ‘Dibs on the bracelet!’ ‘Dibs on the necklace!’ ‘Dibs on the handbag!’ In other words, the kids were already
counting what they might get when Judge Judy, who is not young but hardly
infirm, passes on.
Sheindlin meant it
as a joke. But the joke reflected what,
for many, is a stark reality. And that
is that grown children often think of their parents primarily in terms of what
they stand to inherit from them. I
encounter more and more families where this is a significant part of the
relationship dynamic. Grown children who
measure their parents’ worth by what they might inherit from them.
I have met a number of older couples
who were – there’s no other way to put it – bullied by their grown kids. This, to get them to preserve their assets
lest they decrease the inheritance that their children will eventually get. Stories abound of a widowed parent pressured
not to re-marry lest a big slice of the inheritance ultimately go to the new
spouse. I’ve also known grown kids who
objected to their parents’ support of some charitable work. In many of the above cases, we’re talking
about kids who will ultimately inherit considerable amounts even after the new
spouse or charitable work is taken care of.
But this is completely beside the point.
The point is, the kids see their parents’ worth in terms of what they
will inherit from them. And their sense
of entitlement of that inheritance is absolute. Which is dismaying to say the least.
Some older adults have an answer to
this. I have seen more than one older
couple driving around in a particularly expensive automobile, or perhaps a
luxurious RV. And affixed to the bumper
was the sticker: I’m Spending My Kids’
Inheritance. I’ve seen yachts named,
My Kids’ Inheritance. Such
sentiments don’t give me the warm and fuzzies.
In reality, there is no ‘inheritance’ until someone dies. Until then, it is their money, do spend or
save or do good works with as they wish. Full stop.
So I’m not saying that these kids’
behavior – and their parents’ concern to honour of their wishes – is so
unusual. That’s really the crux of the
tragedy; this mindset of entitlement, and older adults’ accepting it, is very
common. It speaks volumes, and not
only of the greed of the next generation.
That attitude did not get there spontaneously. The parents likely fed it. Perhaps by a constant messaging to their
children of what they stood to gain. Using
that inheritance as a kind of ‘bribe’ to influence the kids to behave in
certain ways. In reality, children value
their parents according to their bank balance because parents often teach them
to.
What is so tragic about the way that
we value one another by our assets, is that that is not what the Torah
teaches. Last week we read the ‘Top Ten’
Commandments, one of which as everybody knows is, kibud et avicha ve-et
imecha – Honour thy father and thy mother.
I can’t tell you how many I’ve counseled over the years, who found
that commandment problematic. Tensions
between parents and grown children are as common as sniffles in the
winter. And I’m not talking about the
few tragic instances where the parent’s behavior towards their child was
patently abusive. I’m just talking about
children who harbour a grudge towards their parents. Remember the 1971 song, That’s the Way
I’ve Always Heard It Should Be, written by Jacob Brackman and recorded by
Carly Simon? Their children hate them
for the things they’re not / They hate themselves for what they are. Mr. Brackman’s genius for spinning lyrics
that speak of the human condition, really hit the nail on the head with that
one.
Thus, I’ve been asked many more
times than I’d like to think, by grown children who felt aggrieved in some way
by their parents, whether Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother means
that they have to tolerate their parents’ interference in their lives. At first, I didn’t know how to answer such
enquiries. But now that I’ve studied the
mefar’shim, the commentators on the Torah, I can answer the question
with considerable confidence. “No,” I now tell them. “The Torah doesn’t require
that you tolerate your parents’ interference at all. It only requires that you support them in
comfort until the day they die.”
It’s interesting that for so many
today, and sadly for many Jews, the responsibility is seen as running in the
opposite direction. Parents are
considered as being required to amass wealth, then preserve it through
retirement so that their grown children, in middle age, will enjoy a financial windfall.
The Torah gives us a lot of laws;
the traditional accounting is 613 Commandments.
Of course, the 613 Commandments are not just a religious code;
they constitute the laws by which the people Israel would be responsible to
live by, when they entered and possessed their land. In that context, they can be seen as a social
order, an ancient formula for a diverse people to live unafraid in their land.
The purpose of the commandment to honour
one’s parents – that is, to support them – is not hard to intuit. It is an important part of the social order
that one should be able to grow old in confidence, knowing that the debt of
one’s progeny for life and the upbringing received, is recognised and
honoured. Of course modern civil
society, with old-age pensions and other schemes that often effectively break
ageing parents’ financial dependence upon their grown children, has changed
that order. But I can’t imagine the
opposite mindset – that grown and ostensibly mature children, having been given
everything by their parents in all their imperfection could give them, are
still supremely entitled to whatever their parents have worked hard to amass –
is an appropriate response to this shift in reality. Some changes that modernity have wrought,
have been for our societal benefit. This
one is not. Shabbat shalom.
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