Enigma

Enigma. Most of you know that this is a puzzling or inexplicable occurrence or situation. It's a puzzle. I mean, you see it, but it's not quite making sense.

There is something I haven't figured out. Oh, well, okay, if we're being honest, there are a lot of things I haven't figured out. But this one really eludes me. I cannot for the life of me figure out why parents write themselves out of significant portions of their children's lives.

What am I talking about? I watch parents seemingly every day who decide to indulge themselves in immorality. Fathers cheat on the mothers of their children. Mothers take drugs. A mother, abandoned by her husband, will shack up with a man, dragging her kids along. Fathers will teach their sons about pornography. Over and over on obvious issues parents will openly indulge their immoral behavior for their children to see. What they're doing is removing any voice they may have on their children's immoral behavior. And I cannot figure out why they do that.

Now, I'm not talking about parents who, in their youth, did foolish things and then repented of it. That's not the same. A kid asks her mom, "When you were young did you do drugs?" If the mother answers honestly, "Yes, I did," followed by, "and it was wrong and that's why I'm warning you not to," it's not hypocritical. And it doesn't necessarily have to be in the deep dark past. A father who is caught on the Internet in places he shouldn't be by a son can say, "Yes it's a problem! Why do you think I'm telling you to avoid it? Obviously I'm having a hard time with it." These are not the same. These are parents who admit to faults as faults and warn their kids.

But given a mother who leaves her husband for another man (or two or three) and passes it off as "just trying to be happy", on what grounds is she going to encourage her daughter to avoid promiscuity or to fight for her marriage? A dad who drinks too much on a regular basis and tells his wife and kids to stay out of his business will have no means to discourage his teenage son from drinking too much. Parents who divorce because they just can't get along will have nothing to offer to their children who face marital difficulties ... except, perhaps, "Give up."

Raising kids is tough enough. None of us are perfect. And all of us have made mistakes. Some of them have been really bad. So it would seem to me that sabotaging your relationship with your children in order to indulge your own petty pleasures is a foolish idea. A parent who willingly removes his or her (or their) input into important matters their progeny will be dealing with so that they can satiate their own lusts seems like the height of stupidity. And I can't figure out why they do it with such seeming regularity.