by Ronald Manalastas

Created on: June 26, 2009

Parents should never expect financial help from their married children. When people get married, it signals the start of a new life that calls for a complete and independent dedication to a new family with compelling goals, needs, and desires that must be adequately funded especially during the start-up and development stages of the marriage. Parents have undergone the same experience when they decided to raise their own family, and this is exactly the reason why parents should appreciate the thought of not getting any financial returns from their married children.

Harsh as it may seem, the saying that children do not owe their parents any debt of gratitude for bringing and rearing them to life has critical validity. It is the conjugal decision of parents to bear children and this decision attaches an inherent conjugal obligation to raise children in the best possible manner so that they can be successful and productive members of society. Whatever financial fortune that the children gain from parental upbringing, parents cannot later set off a financial claim against it, even by means of expectation. By expecting financial help from their married children, parents are practically treating it as an obligation of their children to come to their financial rescue; and in all probability, regardless of the competing needs their children might have.

Parents should wish nothing but the best for their children in whatever stage in life they are in. It must be noted that when children were still in complete parental custody and jurisdiction, parents would even make unconditional sacrifices to ensure that they were comfortably cared for. They would not do anything that would compromise the financial interest of their children. Even if they had to forego their personal needs as parents, they wanted to see their children a cut above the rest, always financially capable to meet wants and aspirations in life. This total unselfish attitude must go beyond the point of parental custody and must consistently reside among parents as it serves to uphold the financial freedom of their married children.

Today's recession has brought to the fore the issue of parents seeking financial help from their married children, and reality is replete with growing real-life examples of this phenomenon. But the situation does not resolve the issue in favor of the parents. The issue leads us back to the core discipline required of parents: to develop and sustain a quality of life that should enable them to rear their children to a successful life, while generating residual fortune to fund their retirement and senior's life to the exclusion of their children's financial help.

If parents were able to raise their children in a manner that befits a good quality of life, with the high virtues of love, respect, trust, sharing, and unity intimately observed in the family, chances are that the married children would delight every opportunity of being able to help their parents financially, without being directly or indirectly told, requested, or solicited. A truly home-grown spirit of a vibrant, loving, and united family is the best antidote against the painful reality pill that children do not owe their parents any debt of gratitude. If good people can help other people to grow and succeed, there is no reason why best-bred, well-meaning married children, even to the point of making self-sacrifices, cannot voluntarily extend financial assistance to their parents.

For all parents and children, just always remember: the family that has grown together will always stay together, no matter what the odds are.

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