EQI.org Home | Emotionally Abusive Parents | Rights
Is having a child for the direct purpose of filling your own unmet needs a type of abuse? This is the general question I want to address in this article. Many people don't consider having a child in order to use them to fill their unmet emotional needs any kind of abuse. But I think it probably is. To help support my position, I would like you to consider the following scenario to show how having a child in other to fill your unmet emotional needs could be considered similar in principle to a more widely known form of abuse, that of sexual abuse. Let's say I told people
that I wanted to have a baby so I could create a child
which I could use to have sex with. I explained to them
that I wanted to fill my unmet sexual needs. Wouldn't
most people around the world would feel disgusted and
think I am a very sick person? The other day I read an
article which said that around 80% of the pregnant single
teenage females interviewed said they wanted to have the
child so they would have someone to love them
unconditionally. While staying with a family in Australia for several days I met a teenager whose father used her in many ways. One of these ways was to give him massages when he had migraine headaches. She did this on his hairy, bare back. My instinct told me something was wrong with this, but I didn't know just how dysfunctional the family was at the time. What I did know is how much the daughter hated giving him the massages, and that she only did it because she was taught it was her duty and she felt guilty if she didn't do it. Years later this same daughter told me two facts which confirmed the family dysfunction. First, the oldest daughter who was giving her father massages told me at age 20 she tried to kill herself. Then she told me one of her younger sisters had accused the father of sexually abusing her. So I am wondering
now
when two people have sex and create a human
being, what rights do we give those two
people ? Do they have the right to use their children and
teenagers to fill their own unmet needs, even at the
expense of those same people's emotional well-being? I am
also wondering if it is fair to say that a god of some
sort somehow gives these people, now suddenly called
parents, certain rights. If the god did not have his or her own police force and jails, and no one else enforced or believed in the god-given rights, what practical value would they have? If for example a child or teenager decided they didn't like being used or abused and they wanted to leave, what good would it do for the parents to say "It is my god-given right to force them to stay with me and to use force to return them to me if they escape." Who would return the child or teen to the parent? Would their god somehow cause the return? And if the god wanted the child or teen to stay with the parent until some arbitrary age, why would that god allow the child or teen to leave in the first place? Also I am not sure what
happens when two groups of people who do have police
forces and jails, or nuclear weapons, think that they are
the agents of some particular god, and they are here to
here to "carry out his or her will", but those
groups of people disagree on just what their gods
will is. So I return to the question of what "rights" does a parent have when they create a new human life? And perhaps more importantly, what are the mental health consequences for giving parents the "right" to use their children and teenagers to meet their unmet needs. At this point in history most countries have decided it is not ok for parents to use their children to meet their unmet sexual needs. We might also say that most countries don't allow parents to physically abuse their children so the parents can feel more powerful and in control, thus filling those unmet emotional or psychological needs. But what about the other emotional needs and the methods used by parents to try to get their offspring to fill them? What about a parent who never felt appreciated so they force their child to always say, "Thank you." Or what about a parent who never got the respect they needed from their parents so they force their children to say things like "Yes, sir" and they teach them not to question their decisions because that would be "a lack of respect"? I hope that this article has given you something to think about. S. Hein My quotes around "their" and "child" I dont like either the word their or the word child, thats why I put them in quotes. When it comes to whether a child or teen belongs to the parents and thus can be called "theirs," I have a simple saying -- "Something isnt "mine" unless I can sell it." So I don't usually say "My country" - since I can't sell it, or "My girlfriend" etc. Also I dont believe a 17 year old is a child. Nor do I think a 13 year old is a child, although some are much more mature than others at 13. I have seen some of the writing done by a few 13 year olds and I feel confident that it is on the level of most first year university students. Here is one quote from Wikipedia
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Here is another quote from http://www.biblestudy.org/question/was-lot-alcoholic.html
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