Parents: You Don’t Get Cookies

“You don’t get cookies for doing what you’re supposed to do.”

My father used to say this to me all the time. It meant that I didn’t deserve a reward, kudos, or praise for doing things that I should be doing: getting good grades, cleaning, etc. It came to mind yesterday when thinking about all the comments supporting the abusive jerk who humiliated his daughter on facebook. I couldn’t tell you how many rants I saw enumerating all the ways in which parents provide for their children. They give their kids shelter! They feed their children! They pay for school! (What? Unless you send your kid to private school…no. You don’t.) How dare these no-good, disrespectful, modern teenagers be ungrateful!

Cough.

You don’t get cookies for doing what you’re supposed to do, love.

If you don’t feed your kids? You go to jail. You kick them out? You go to jail. You prevent them from going to school? You go to jail.

This may be the first time many of you have heard this, given the high pedestal parents are put upon in American culture, but read my lips: you are not a fucking saint for providing for your own fucking children, that you chose to bring into this world.

For whatever reason, under whatever circumstances, you chose to become a parent. You took on that responsibility of your own free will. Fulfilling such a huge responsibility, that you chose, earns you no kudos. In fact, taking on that responsibility, and failing to fulfill it will earn you, the parent, serious consequences, and it doesn’t matter if that failure was intentional or not. Our society doesn’t care. Our justice system doesn’t care. If you fail to provide shelter and nourishment to your child, the society that you live in will punish you.

So fulfilling your commitment, and thereby avoiding serious consequences to yourself, does not earn you cookies.

Expecting that your child is obligated to worship at your feet for providing her basic needs is indicative of a very sociopathic, abusive mind.

The hypocrisy of this man, who expect cookies in the form of unconditional worship and adulation from his daughter for doing what he is supposed to do as a parent, while becoming outraged at his daughter’s suggestion that she be rewarded with an allowance for doing her chores!

No.

I’m sick of this attitude. I’m sick of parents bestowing sainthood on themselves, and losing their shit when their children don’t treat them as such.

You don’t get any fucking cookies for willingly becoming a parent, and then fulfilling the responsibilities that come with it.

Grow the fuck up.