What percentage of your parents moral guidelines do you hold true?

Question

Parents should teach their children their ideas of right and wrong and give children some sort of moral foundation. Of course, as children become teenagers and adults we begin to learn that mother and father do not always know best. Our parents like everyone else are fallible.

Many claim that the behavior of a teenager or even an adult is a reflection of what kind of moral foundation the parents gave, but is this true? I'd be a different person if I took everything my parents said as truth.

Yes Mathew it's called logic.

Answer 1

The problem is -there is no class on how to raise children. Parents have the advantage of experience but the disadvantage of emotional attachment. As a good parent they don't want to see their kids make the mistakes they made. They want us to have more than what they had. The parent has the advantage of been there before. Sometimes they may push it to far or be unrealistic in what they think our actions should be. We do get our morals from our parents, but it changes as we go through life and experience it ourselves. Parents are humans, like us, some really good, some average, some bad. As much as I said I would never do that as a parent, I find myself doing it anyway. Most parents want the best for us, But they can make mistakes- again they are human. I remember when I was young and thought they were gods and the older I got the more they seemed like regular people trying to do their best. The teen years we think we know it all and the years pass and we realize how much we didn't know. My advice is listen to your parents they usually have their kids best interest in mind.

Answer 2

My dad used to say that the older I got the smarter he would get. When I was a teenager I thought he was a pretty stupid man. But now that I am old myself, I appreciate more and more the moral foundation that my parents did give me in all of their grace, wisdom and only slightly hindered by their human fallibility. I don't live by all of the facets of their teachings, but the spirit of their teachings will always be with me.

My dad's two rules were:
One: If it is not yours don't touch it.
Two: If you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything.

Things like this I hold dear. Others like, sex outside of marriage (not infidelity, but being single and having sex) being bad....that I tossed out the window.

Answer 3

The morality for most people really consists of a set of feelings that were developed in us though society training beginning in infancy. We have a natural need for praise and acceptance, and society uses that need to train us in acceptable behavior. By the time we're adults, we refer to that unfocused set of feelings as our conscience. Consequently, most people simply do what they feel like doing then adjust their standard of good (morality) so that they fit. That is why even criminals plotting their next crime can think of themselves as basically good.

Morality has to include the concept of a higher moral authority than just ourselves.