by Shirleigh

Created on: July 25, 2008

I am the only daughter to my parents, out of just two children. My elder brother has moved out a long time ago, and I am the only child left still living with my parents and sharing each day with them, under the same roof.

I guess there really isn't a right or wrong answer to this question of whether parents SHOULD vent to their kids about the other parent. But is it acceptable? I think it is, provided the "kid" isn't really a kid anymore.

I'm an adult in my twenties already, and mature enough in various aspect of life to develop my own views and outlooks. (And yes, just in case you're curious, in my culture, people usually still stay with their parents while they're still unmarried.)

To give credit to my mom, she never really complained to me about my dad when I was younger. It was only after I started working, after I had grown up, in my mom's opinion at least, that she started telling me things that I never knew about Dad.

Don't get me wrong, my dad's a wonderful man. It's not as if he has some dark past, and he certainly isn't a heavy smoker, drug user or some terrible alcoholic. What Dad is, however, is the youngest son of the family, the least-loved of my granddad, and supposedly, the poorest as well. It is precisely because of those factors, that my uncles and aunts despised Dad. Since Mom, my elder brother and I are Dad's immediate family and his offspring, we were despised as well. They never did it outright, but the whisperings behind our backs have always been there, especially when my brother and I were still kids who were none the wiser. And there had been instances when those whisperings behind our backs were transformed to actual actions, when those relatives would accuse my mom of cheating to make a living, and even of theft, even if they did it as though they were joking, which, of course, they weren't.

Dad never defended us. I guess he wanted to, but he didn't dare to. He isn't exactly a soft-spoken man, but he's a kind one, and in his perspective, those were his brothers and sister-in-laws. So he told Mom to simply turn a dear ear to those whisperings. In the end, when those whisperings got out of hand, it was Mom who finally lashed out and regained that bit of respect for the family.

Mom never complained, and she never told my brother and I anything about it over so many years. It's only now, that her children are fully adult, that she sometimes confided in me about the past, and she'd vent to me about how Dad just never could stand up for himself and defend us, on so many occasions.

So if you ask me if it's acceptable for her to do that, I say yes. Like I said, I'm the only child left who's still living with her and Dad, and sometimes people just need to vent. Husbands vent to wives about their rotten bosses, friends vent to friends about their partners, teenagers vent to one another about their parents, and so on. Mom obviously can't vent to Dad about Dad, nor can she vent to those relatives who had once treated us as little more than beggars. Friends weren't a good choice for her either, since they weren't part of the family and had no clue about our family history. So as her daughter, shouldn't I be there to lend a listening ear to the past, and let her get it off her chest?

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