Locked Up

Clink, clank, slam. The door of my jail cell banged shut.

“What are you in here for?” I heard a voice say, but I didn’t answer nor did I turn to see who the voice came from. How could I think about anything else except that I now sat in JAIL and would stay here for at least ten years on the charge of culpable homicide?

My mind filled with blurry images as I recalled the events preceding my day in court, while I still lived in my much-loved apartment with my wife, Lauris, and our beloved daughter. One of those images featured my wife’s face.

“Take a look at this,” she’d said, her brow pensive, her eyes dismayed.

“Sure, Toots,” I had replied, noticing that this time my pet-name for her had failed at rousing a smile.

“Take a look at that,” she’d said again, pointing at the TV screen.

“Ahh,” my chest had swelled with pride, “the Parkway Theatre. That’s one of my buildings,” but then, my smile had faded and my heart lurched.

Why was ‘my building’ in the news? I had thought.

And I hadn’t waited long for an answer, a news correspondent reporting,

“For those who’ve just joined us, the east-side roof of the Parkway Theater has caved in. There’s ten injured; two dead, including a child; and it’s believed at least five people remain inside, trapped under the rubble.”

My mouth gaped as the news presenter continued her jabbering, the words “Parkway Theatre; roof caved in; and two dead, one a child” echoing inside my head.

“Theron why did the building fall down?” my wife’s voice broke into my thoughts.

“Theron?” she asked again, this time her eyes piercing and her mouth taut.

I hadn’t replied. I mean, what could I say? And I think that’s the moment she knew that the fault lay on me.

Later, sitting in court, I had deliberated. “How did this happen?”

But then, I thought, “How had it not?”

I had never wanted to be an engineer, so why did I become one? Because my father, although I was no longer legally a child, had said I must, and spiritual mentors had said, as I still lived at home, I was still under my father’s authority.

“Take up engineering,” my dad had said. “I love it and it runs in the family. Your grandfather worked as an engineer and his father too. Now, it’s your turn.”

“Engineering’s not for me,” I had protested. “I’m not good at that kind of thing, and it doesn’t interest me in the least.”

But that old, familiar, fuming glare had emanated from  his eyes. “You’ll take up engineering because I have said so,” he had yelled, numerous times. “It will set you up for life and give you prestige.”

So, to avoid his wrath, and because the Bible says we must honour our parents, I had attended engineering school, but although I tried my best, I found working hard impossible because, as I’ve said before, it didn’t interest me.

Now, as I sit in my jail cell, I am visited every so often by prison chaplains who have given me a Bible. As I read it, I feel like the character Rapunzel from one of my daughter’s favourite animated movies, Tangled, because while laying on her bed, Rapunzel notices, on her ceiling, multiple outlines of a sun, a symbol that belongs to a lost princess. Realising the symbol belongs to her, Rapunzel gasps saying, “I’m the lost princess.”

Now, while reading my Bible, instead of spotting suns, I spot the number twenty.  It’s in Numbers 1:18, Numbers 14:29-30, Exodus 38:26, 2 Chronicles 31:17 and Ezra 3:8. In all these passages, those aged twenty and above receive special responsibility and are viewed as adults no matter what their living circumstances.

And now, it makes me wonder. While the Bible says we must always honour our parents, does honour always mean obey? Is there an age of responsibility, an age where we, while still taking on board our parent’s advice, can make our own adult decisions or must we take the career and the spouse of our parent’s choosing? I decided I would ask the chaplains their thoughts, next time they came by, and I did.

Controlled

Did you choose your current career or did your parents coerce you into a career of their choosing?  If you’re a millennial, Forbes magazine says 58% of your parents chose your career and pressured you into obtaining higher education. If you’re a Gen-Z, 57% of your parents pressured you into your current job and educational choices and if you’re a Gen-X, 48% of you experienced parental badgering about which career and what kind of qualification you should pursue and, in all these generational age groupings, 82% of your parents flexed their muscles in the direction of white-collar professions.

That’s not right. Although parents should offer advice on which direction they feel their child should go after grade 12, they shouldn’t demand that their children comply with those recommendations. I’m of this opinion because obtaining vocational education and maintaining a job requires motivation and effort. If a parent coerces a child into completing a degree or gaining a job, that child has no interest in whatsoever, how in the world will that child find the inspiration to put in the labour a four-year university degree requires? They won’t.

Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, depicts this scenario wonderfully when she describes a conversation between Jo, the main character of her book, and Laurie, Jo’s male friend, whose grandfather has made the decision that Laurie will work in his business when Laurie would rather become a musician.

Jo says, “If we are all alive in ten years, hence, let’s meet and see how many of us have our wishes.”

Laurie replies, “I hope I shall have done something to be proud of by that time but I’m such a lazy dog. I’m afraid I shall dawdle.”

Jo then says, “You need a motive, mother says, and when you get it, she is sure you’ll work splendidly.”

Laurie becomes animated saying, “By Jupiter, I will if I only get the chance. I ought to be satisfied to please Grandfather, and I do try but it’s working against the grain, you see, and comes hard. He wants me to be an India merchant, as he was, and I’d rather be shot. I hate tea and silk and spices and every sort of rubbish his old ships bring, and I don’t care how soon they go to the bottom when I own them. Going to college ought to satisfy him for if I give him four years, he ought to let me off from the business. But he’s set, and I’ve got to do just as he did, unless I break away and please myself as my father did. If there was anyone left to stay with the old gentleman, I’d do it tomorrow.”

Pressured

Louisa May Alcott’s book also says that Laurie has “a young man’s hatred of subjection” and “a young man’s restless longing to try the world for himself,” and don’t most young people? So, why would anyone, including parents, force kids into careers they have no interest or talent in? I once attempted a degree where pretty much every word on every page of mv massive text books contained four and five-syllable words. When I would look these words up in a dictionary, the definition for these words also contained four and five-syllable words. Understanding and memorising such complex concepts requires great motivation, and that kind of motivation can only well up inside of you if the subject matter evokes great passion inside of you.

Understanding and memorising a degree of that kind also requires great intellect. Parents may believe their child can achieve great things, but I am of the belief that children know their capacities better than anyone, including their parents, because a grade on a report card doesn’t always indicate the intelligence of a child. For instance, while at school, I noticed I achieved high grades in some subjects but I have the memory of a goldfish, and after I had obtained those high scores, I remembered a meagre amount of what I had studied, an inadequacy that my uni lecturers pointed out to me once I moved on from secondary school. Also, parents may believe they know they’re child well, but they don’t always. During my college years, i found studying laborious because I was still reeling from painful life experiences that had left my mind and my heart in turmoil. No one knew how much pain I felt. No one knew I’d felt tempted with thoughts of suicide, not even my parents. How could they? They didn’t live inside of me. In retrospect, obviously, I should have waited until I had healed before attempting the arduous task of completing a four-year university degree, but that option did not get presented as a choice for me.

Hurried

It seems the parental expectation that children will attend uni straight out of school predominates, and I’ve heard the arguments why. Some parents say that if a child obtains a job before applying for tertiary studies, they will enjoy the money so much, they won’t bother gaining higher qualifications. Also, a few years after leaving school, some kids marry and have children. Having a spouse and children consumes your time and so a college education gets put on the backburner, but if that’s the case, doesn’t that imply, that the income that grown-up kid has pays enough for the upkeep of that new family, so why obtain a college degree if what you’re living on now pays enough for what you need?

I don’t believe all kids should attend uni as soon as they finish high school because when you complete a degree straight out of school, when you graduate, you start at the top of your career path. Instead of starting in the mail room and working your way up, you’re head honcho right from the start. How often do we hear people in lower rung jobs complaining that their superiors have no practical experience and that the policies their bosses conjure up only work on paper but in real life situations their policies lack feasibility? Maybe, it’s because they started uni straight out of school. Also, many fresh-out-of-school kids lack maturity and experience but parents make them complete degrees that require great sophistication and wisdom as soon as they finish school, but I think it’s better if they start at the bottom instead, before pursuing tertiary qualifications, because working as a lower down employee will give them this maturity and wisdom.

Another benefit of starting at the bottom is that you can gain feedback from your manager, colleagues and customers on how well you’re performing your job. These people are the ones who know your child’s working abilities the best because these people are at your kid’s workplace. They’re the ones who see your kids working. They see their successes and failures. Parents don’t work in their kid’s workplace. Parents don’t know how good or how bad their children’s working abilities really are. Parents don’t know if their child should aim for a higher up job or remain at the level they’re at. My colleagues and customers told me they didn’t think I should complete my university degree. They felt I should stay at my current level instead, and, boy, did that turn out correct but because of parental pressure, I didn’t feel like I had that option.

Lastly, starting at the bottom also gives children the opportunity of seeing if they even like the job. That’s important, don’t you think? Most people work fifty years or more. It’s nice if they enjoy what they’re doing while they are at it.

True Success

Speaking of job satisfaction, the Pew Research Centre says most Americans get satisfaction from their jobs but 30% see their career as ‘just a job to get them by.” Around 51% of Americans say their job gives them a sense of identity, and 60% of Americans feel that they will still have their job tomorrow, meaning they don’t fear redundancy or getting fired. That must feel amazing. I wish I felt that way. Wouldn’t you want your child feeling that way as well? The Pew Research Centre says the way people feel about their job performance affects how they feel about themselves outside of their job roles and “their overall sense of happiness.”

Forbes magazine says the number one reason parents give for choosing their child’s career and educational choices is because they want their children earning a successful income, but after reading the above statistics from the Pew Research Centre, should we determine a person’s success purely on how much money they bring in? I think not. Wouldn’t parents prefer that their kids not only made lots of money but gained satisfaction from their jobs; a sense of identity; believed that years into the future, they’ll still have their job, rather than receiving unemployment cheques; and that because they’re good at their job they’re also good at roles outside of their workplace? Wouldn’t you prefer that? I know I would.

But there’s a bigger issue here. What about your child’s Christian testimony? When I would talk about my educational failures, some people would say,

“It doesn’t matter that you’re bombing academically. You need money. If you fail in the workplace, the law says employers can’t fire you outright. Instead, they  must pass you around.”

Getting passed around between different employers? Who wants that? It’s not a comfortable way of living, plus the Bible says,

Better is a poor person who walks in his integrity than a person who is perverse in speech and is a fool.

Gaining educational qualifications purely so you can get lots of money but not also so you can do a great job for your boss and customers? That’s perverse and foolish, and in job interviews, when employers ask why they should hire you, won’t that involve lying about whether your good at your job or not? That’s perverse speech and its foolishness and Christians should take no part in it.

Another thing, university jobs only earn you lots of money if your good at that job  because earning a good income requires receiving repeat customers. No one wants a doctor performing heart surgery on them if that doctor barely scraped through their degree, and if the unthinkable happens, and you end up in court, you want a lawyer who has a big passion for justice, tempered by mercy, defending you. You don’t want a lawyer representing you if that lawyer’s defending you only because his mum told him he must, and you don’t want a financial advisor investing your money if his investment choices are merely a job to get him by and nothing else. If that’s the only reason why he’s there, you won’t come back and you won’t recommend him either. Neither will any of his other clients and he’ll go bankrupt, ending up unemployed, and the Pew Research Centre says unemployed people feel less happiness in their lives, so don’t let your child lose their job because they didn’t want it in the first place.

Space and Time

Midkent College says parents sometimes choose their child’s job because they fear that their children will make the same mistakes they made when they left school, but Midkent College doesn’t believe parents should shield their children from making and learning from their mistakes. In the television show Seinfeld, George Costanza says that, as a child, he told his dad, when he grew up, he hoped he’d become a ventriloquist. George says, his Dad responded by giving him a weird stare, and perhaps all of us had a silly, fantasy dream, as children, before we understood how the working world works. Some kids dream of becoming star athletes. Some dream of becoming popstars, authors and artists, but within weeks of leaving school, it didn’t take me long at all before I realised that only exceptionally talented people can achieve jobs like that and sometimes you can only have those jobs if you’re still young. Within weeks of leaving school, I also realised that even sensible, mundane, low-skilled, low-qualification jobs like cleaning and ticket selling wouldn’t pay for the lifestyle I wanted. So, within weeks of leaving school, I realised, on my own, that I must get educated and qualified in a sensible non-fantasy career path. I didn’t need pressure or orders from my parents, that decision came from my own head.

Midkent College also says parents should give kids space and time so they can discover which career appeals to them the most. If parents do that, grown-up kids will have a better chance of gaining a job that gives them satisfaction, a sense of identity, a feeling of job security, overall happiness and the feeling that not only do they excel at their work, but they also excel in roles outside of their career. That’s not the end of the story though because in the cartoon series, The Simpsons, Homer gets a job at a bowling alley. He loves it because even though it’s low pay, he finds it easy because it requires little responsibility and gives him plenty of time before and after work for pursuing his other interests. Then, Homer gets married and has a child. He realises that his bowling-alley job will no longer provide enough money for him, so he quits the bowling alley and gets a job in a nuclear power plant. This new job requires skill, qualifications, responsibility, stress, longer working hours and dire consequences for any mistakes he might make. He hates his new job, but he needs it. The episode finishes with Homer choosing that he will ‘Do It For Her.’ Meaning, he will stick at this new job, for his new loves - his wife and his children.

My point in bringing up this anecdote? Even if parents give their children freedom, allowing them to make their own career and educational choices, because of changes in their life circumstances, their child, very well, could still end up in a job they don’t like, they don’t feel good at and which makes them feel way out of their comfort zone but that choice will come from their own mind and heart. So, any failure they experience in this new line of work, they can only blame on themselves. They can’t blame it on anyone else, not even their parents, and that makes for much better child-parent relationships because instead of resenting you and holding you at arms distance for the choice you forced onto them, they might seek comfort in you instead.

Hindsight

Returning to Louisa May Alcott’s book, Little Women, Jo tells Laurie that she thinks he should quit his grandfather’s business and pursue life as a musician instead, but another character, Meg, overhears her.

“I advise you to sail away in one of your ships and never come home again till you have tried your own way,” Jo says.

But Meg, her sister, interjects, saying,

“That’s not right, Jo. You mustn’t talk in that way and Laurie mustn’t take your bad advice. You should do just what your grandfather wishes, my dear boy. Do your best at college and when he sees that you try to please him, I’m sure he won’t be hard on you or unjust to you. As you say, there is no one else to stay with and love him and you would never forgive yourself if you left him without his permission. Don’t be dismal or fret but do your duty and you’ll get your reward, as good Mr Brooke has, by being respected and loved.

I had a Jo in my own life and lots of Megs. I have failed three university degrees, and on hearing this, one solitary person, “the Jo” in my life, gave me the advice I should have taken. She said,

“Sometimes when you fail, it’s the universe telling you that you should do something else.”

As Christians, we know that “the universe” can’t speak, but that’s the person I should have followed because all “the Megs” in my life reminded me of Bible verses such as Numbers 30:3-4 which says,

If a woman makes a vow to the Lord, and binds herself by some agreement while in her father’s house in her youth, and her father hears her vow and the agreement by which she has bound herself, and her father holds his peace, then all her vows shall stand, and every agreement with which she has bound herself shall stand but if her father overrules her on the day that he hears, then none of her vows nor her agreements by which she has bound herself shall stand and the Lord will release her because her father overruled her.

Verses like this, “the Megs” of my life said, meant that if an adult woman still lives in her parents’ house, she must continue obeying them, but it’s not only women who receive this advice because once I heard a well-known preacher tell a male adult child that because he still lived in his parents’ home, he must obey his parents who were pressuring him into a career choice he knew he couldn’t find the motivation or the intellect for. Really though? I think that’s terrible advice because there’s a stereotype that adult kids who live at home are lazy no-hopers and perhaps that’s true for some, but why else might an adult child still live at home? World War II widowed many women, and many grown up children of that generation let their widowed mothers live with them, in their home, even after they had married and had children of their own, because they didn’t want their mothers living on their own, lonely and alone. Then, long after World War II, the west saw a spike in divorces like it never had before, and if those divorcees didn’t remarry who did they live with? Often with their grown-up children. How kind. What honour they showed their parents in doing this, so should those grown-up kids get repaid by having their parents pressure them into career and educational choices that they loathe or believe they have no hope of passing? Of course not.

Later, after failing all those degrees and the jobs that came with them, I read a Christian article called The Age of Responsibility. It’s written by a pastor who believes the Bible does not require adult children to obey their parents their whole lives. He pointed out verses such as Numbers 1:18, Numbers 14:29-30, Exodus 38:26, 2 Chronicles 31:17 and Ezra 3:8. In these verses, God gives Israelites aged twenty and above extra responsibility, including taking on the burden of speaking for themselves and of facing the death penalty when they sin against God. They also started receiving payment for their services at that age and supervisory roles. The writer of The Age of Responsibility believes that twenty was Israel’s legal age of adulthood and the age when a grown-up child could disregard their parents’ desires for them if they do it in a way that honours their parents. I desperately wish I’d read this article before starting uni rather than years later.

Honouring Your Children

I now believe, whatever your government considers is the age of adulthood, that’s the age when you may now disobey your parents because that’s the age you become legally responsible and culpable for your actions. It’s not your parents who will face the law. It’s you. It’s not your parents who must explain during job interviews why you no longer work as an engineer. It’s you. It’s not your parents who must explain at parties why you no longer work as a doctor. It’s you. It’s not your parents who  must explain on dates why you no longer work as an attorney. It’s you. It’s not your parents who must explain to your children why Mummy or why Daddy failed and no longer works as an accountant. It’s you. It’s not your parents’ Christian testimony that gets ruined. It’s yours. Your parents get off scot free, while all the blame falls on you.

The Bible says children must honour their parents, but it also says that parents shouldn’t provoke their children to wrath lest they become discouraged. Forcing your children into educational courses far beyond their intellect, and into jobs way out of their interest areas, will certainly provoke your children to wrath and discouragement. I once read an article that said parents often repeat the parenting techniques their parents used on them, even if those methods hurt or harmed them. The Forbes Magazine statistics mentioned at the beginning of this article seem to back that up, but let’s stop doing that. Evaluate what your parents did. Copy what worked and discard what didn’t, so you won’t provoke your grown-up children into despair and anger.  

References:

Numbers 1:18 NKJV

Numbers 8:24 NKJV

Numbers 14:29-30 NKJV

Exodus 38:26 NKJV

2 Chronicles 31:17 NKJV

Ezra 3:8 NKJV

Numbers 30:3-4 NKJV

Proverbs 19:1 NASB

Ephesians 6:4 NKJV

The role of parents in their child's career choices | MidKent College

Not Your Parents’ Career—Or Is It? Parents Exert Significant Influence On Kids’ Career Choices (forbes.com)

How Americans view their jobs | Pew Research Center

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

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