
When does a daughter's duty end? - hownottowrite
http://www.elle.com/life-love/a39035/death-abusive-father/
======
zeroer
> What exactly was my responsibility as a daughter? Is anyone so terrible that
> they deserve to die alone? And what would it say about me if I were willing
> to let that happen?

Maybe I just don't get it. The answers to these questions are obvious and
straight-forward. I wouldn't think twice about my responsibility to a person
who molested me, beat my mom, and then "fucked off", let alone spend 4,000
words bloviating about it.

To your kids you have a (time-limited) responsibility because you brought them
into this world without their consent. Everybody else in your family who's
toxic should be cut off and never thought of again. Jesus Christ, life is too
short to bother.

~~~
DasIch
The problem is that the law tends to disagree on that one.

~~~
zeroer
What exactly are you talking about? Supporting your underage children is a
moral responsibility in my book. If you're talking about filial responsibility
laws, then yea, you have a point; it's somewhere that I disagree with the law.
But fortunately, due to federal medicare support, these laws are rarely
enforced. For face-to-face meetings and everything else, shitty family members
should be shunned. I wish more people would tell their abusers to take a hike.

~~~
DasIch
I'm not entirely sure on the laws in the US but in Germany the law basically
considers parents to be responsible for their children and as the parents and
children get older, eventually the children become responsible for the
parents. I'd imagine it's similar in other countries.

A lot of the time there isn't much or any consideration given in case of
abusive relationships. Even though I think we both agree on the fact that in
such a situation any ties both morally and legally should be severed.

~~~
ptaipale
Actually, this varies a lot depending on country, and in the US depending on
state.

In European Union, different member states have different practices. Germany
and South European countries have laws and strong social norms that adult
children must take care (or at least pay) for caring their old parents.
Northern Europe does not (Nordic countries, Netherlands, Belgium, I understand
Britain as well).

According to [0], 28 U.S. states make adult children responsible for their
parents if their parents can't afford to take care of themselves.

In Russia, law also requires adult children to care for their parents (this I
know for a fact due to an immigration case where I helped).

In China caring for old parents is an important responsibility of children,
but I do not know how that is formulated in law.

[0] [http://www.elderlawanswers.com/requiring-adult-children-
to-p...](http://www.elderlawanswers.com/requiring-adult-children-to-pay-for-
aging-parents-7666)

~~~
gozur88
>In China caring for old parents is an important responsibility of children,
but I do not know how that is formulated in law.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/china-parents-
children-v...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/china-parents-children-
visit_us_570e5f96e4b08a2d32b8876a)

------
CapitalistCartr
No one owes an abusive person anything. Helping them to continue evil games
isn't beneficial to anyone. Family should be held to at least the same
standard as friends. As far as I'm concerned, anyone playing the family card
gets minus three on the dice roll.

~~~
Intermernet
The human instinct in me agrees completely.

Having said that, as someone who is both an atheist, and someone who has had
family members killed by another person, I have had both the time, and the
rare circumstance to think about this a lot.

I've become aware of the fact that we need to forgive, despite whatever has
wronged us. This is the only possible way to prevent the cycle of hate
breeding hate.

I know it sounds like a defeatist point of view, but it's actually a multi-
generational view. It's also a view of acceptance, and one that holds that no
matter what has been done to you, you will hold true to the tenet of
forgiveness.

Possibly the most important thing for humans of the modern age to realize is
that life deals you a random hand. Any actions that perpetuate this unfairness
to the next generation or beyond are _wrong_ , despite how right they may
feel.

This is probably the only path that conscious evolution can take that doesn't
continue the current cycle of hatred breeding hatred.

Sorry to sound like a hippy, but it took me over a decade to arrive at this
conclusion after a whole lot of nasty stuff happening. Hopefully you will
never need to go through that process, and will take my viewpoint as a valid
piece of anecdata.

TL;DR: despite what other people do to you, it's in the best interests of
humanity if you show forgiveness, but do all you can that it never happens to
another person.

~~~
wruza
I've read a wikipedia article about gaming theories and robots that play
games, and there was a fact: forgiving programs win. But overforgiving lose.
Forgive randomly about 5-10%, that's enough to not enter 'hate cycle'. All
others must be prosecuted.

As a generally calm person I think it is enough to just freeze your hate and
forget about it until [maybe never happening] moment, when you'll bring
revenge while losing nothing. Forgiveness is for you to go through it, not to
let them go.

~~~
Intermernet
Yes, this is where the other shoe drops. We somehow need to trust that the
"rules" our society has agreed on for punishment of breaking societal norms
are adequate to prevent people from breaking the rules more than once.

We then enter into the realms of how to deal with perpetrators. Isolation vs.
rehabilitation vs. eradication.

I prefer rehabilitation over isolation, and both over eradication.

This is one of the roles of government, and thus we enter a whole new world of
discussion.

------
pipio21
"There was also the reckoning that comes around that age when you realize two
things: one, your parents are just people, and nobody is a saint and nobody is
a sinner and everybody is somewhere in between."

Wow, reading this hurts me because it makes me feel so privileged in life for
having the family I had. That phrase is a terrible rationalization of her
situation.

Volunteering with kids that are drugs addicts or have other addictions,
troublemakers that will enter a bank or shops to rob you always find a
dysfunctional family: the father alcoholic, the mother with several lovers,or
with psicological problems, beating the children because they hate them and
never desire to have them, the kid alone all day.

You become a parent for them because they desperately need it. Some times the
only thing they need is a reference in life.

I agree a parent that does not take care of his children should not expect to
be taken care of as adult, but in European countries there are laws that force
you to do it, a heavy burden.

~~~
kinkdr
> European countries there are laws that force you to do it

Got any references for me to lookup? I wasn't aware of any such laws.

~~~
bzbarsky
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1454...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1454419/Look-
after-aged-parents-or-else-France-warns-absent-families.html) for France is an
example (it claims Article 207 of the Civil Code is relevant). That was 12
years ago, though; maybe it's been changed since then.

[http://www.dw.com/en/should-children-have-to-pay-for-
parents...](http://www.dw.com/en/should-children-have-to-pay-for-parents-in-
care/a-6007110) for Germany. That's from 2010.

That's from some searching on "Europe children taking care of parents law" and
"Germany children taking care of parents law". I didn't try other variants for
other countries.

------
TheLarch
"No one can really come up with any stories about his life that don't make him
sound like a total dick so they cut the testimonial part short" killed me.

~~~
ntaenta
I enjoyed this article a lot too. Another funny line:

" _The summer before I turned 13, my father got pretty gnarly brain cancer and
told me and my sister to fuck off, though he used the Christian phrasing. And
then he survived brain cancer and lived another 19 years. So that was
awkward._ "

And a poignant one:

" _I was in utero when my mother left my father. Her one great moment of
bravery was defying the Baptist church and walking out on her abusive husband
with a two-year-old and a half-done bun in the oven. I think she relied so
heavily on her backbone in that moment that she was never able to stand up for
herself again._ "

------
tptacek
This woman's father abused her as a child. She has no duty to him whatsoever.

~~~
lostlogin
If she was truely cold she could have asked to keep him hanging on -
reciprocating the cruel behaviour to a dependent.

------
lawpoop
Are any of the people taking a hard line here ("She owes him nothing!")
actually children of abusive parents?

~~~
hga
As the son of one who's in fact gotten even more abusive this year, as my
father got early stage Alzheimer's, which to date is still a minor disability,
to more comprehensively take out 57 years worth of grudges against him, to the
point of the unforgivable, to the point I'm almost certain she wants him dead
if she can arrange it through sins of omission....

Yes, there are people who you're technically that close to, who you are
obliged to "honor", to whom you (eventually) owe nothing, and like in this
case, who fully deserve to die alone, and most decidedly unloved.

Although I'll draw one distinction here, it's the sins against another that
crossed the final line for me, the one where I've sworn to never speak to her
again (modulo someone else's life being in danger). Sin against me, that can
be not just understood but forgiven, but against an innocent (enough) 3rd
party is somehow different.

(And for a bit more pathos, by her order in 20 days I'll be completely out of
the loop and living in the house built in 1910 I recently bought and have been
remodeling, seeing as I'm the only sibling who's in the same town, have been
living with him for the last 5 years on land she alone owns, and is the one
most strongly objecting to her treatment of him.)

~~~
zeroer
Holy run-on sentences, Batman!

~~~
hga
Yeah, I know; in this case, a deliberate style choice not to break the flow
most of the paragraphs. This isn't standard expository prose, I think it's
allowed for the effect.

~~~
dTal
I find it very difficult to read. It's like minified javascript.

------
acjohnson55
Man, my heart goes out to people who have suffered upbringings like the
author's.

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itsmemattchung
Great article; her resentment and confusion, directed at her father, is
something I can definitely relate to. Writing someone off, especially a
manipulative parent, is difficult and not as easy as some may think.

------
mindfulgeek
Her father sounds a little too much like my daughter' father. Leaving him was
the easiest thing I ever did -- it just took 13 years to work up the courage
to do it.

------
xupybd
Wow I feel terrible for the author. She got dealt such a bad hand. I hope,
outside of her relationship with her father, there was love from the rest of
her family.

