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By: Chris Quilpa

Responsible parents or grandparents beget responsible children or grandchildren. Agree or disagree? Let’s see or find out.

Parents play a significant role in the success (or failure) of their children. If parents are responsible members of society, there’s no doubt their children will become responsible citizens, too. 

Parenting is related to the issue of love and marriage or loving relationships between (consenting) adults. It doesn’t only deal with rearing and caring for children and providing them with their basic needs but also involves love, commitment to and protection, education and responsibility of children—moral, financial, emotional—such that they become lawful, useful and productive members of society.

Good parenting contributes to well-being, personal growth and development, and overall community/nation-building. It involves and employs useful knowledge, skills, and education. 

Question to all, especially parents and grandparents: When does parenting stop? Or is it endless? Does it start the moment you married the (future) mother of your child/ren to the moment your faculties falter you?

Why did I bring this topic up, you ask? Well, it’s paradoxical that, at times, we love or like to interfere with the lives, and even the affairs, of our (close) family members and others’ lives to the point that we get involved and eventually become influential to them. Nothing wrong with that, huh?

We, parents, do our best to love and care for our children. The fact is, we’re so protective of them. We want the best for them and their future. That’s why we give them or provide them with their basic necessities in life like food, clothing, safe, decent shelter, including a good, decent education (public or best private education we can possibly afford financially. In short, we want them to be better in the future (if not the best) than we were. We want them to be happy and successful in life.

Now, you ask, what is your definition of success? Do you equate it with material wealth? What does success have to do with parenting? Is there a connection or correlation between the two? Of course, there is. Ask those experts and they’ll tell you.

When does parenting stop? Honestly, as I see it, and based on my experience and observation of other parents, I  tend to believe that parenting doesn’t end, especially if the relationships (between parents and grandparents and their (grand) children) are mutually exclusive. It will only end when you’re breathless, I guess.

Good, responsible parenting is needed and important if we want to have a society that’s just, fair and orderly, peaceful and progressive. Our children and our country benefit from our good, responsible parenting. Good parenting results in good leadership, governance and, thus, good (efficient and effective) government. 

Responsible parents beget responsible children. And responsible parenting helps in community-nation building.