|
SOME
friends and I were walking along Bonifacio High Street
one evening, trying to exercise away the humongous
shabu-shabu meal we had just ingested, when a group of
young shrilly girls came toward us. They were probably
in their early 20s, with boobies a-popping out of their
thin sleeveless blouses and wearing the shortest skirts
that came up to where their butt cheeks began to show.
If they only weren’t speaking in English in that
colegiala twang, we would’ve thought they were
refugees from the hooker districts of Manila on their
way to meet their pimp. Or trannies on the prowl.
As
usual, Miggy made the most astute observation, about how
young girls now have to try really hard, competing with
one another just to get noticed by boys. And, of course,
the easiest way to do that is to dress rather skimpily,
and talk ever so loudly in flirtatious tones. Maybe they
think Britney Spears in her slutty clothes is the height
of fashion. Then I thought: Where were their parents
when they put on those clothes for a night on the town?
Parenting, and how difficult the task is these days, is
what I think most of whenever someone mentions Brian
Gorrell, the Australian blogger whose Pinoy ex-lover
allegedly stiffed him of a large amount of money. In his
blog, we have been inundated with gossip and allegations
of how some scions of supposedly de buena familias
in Manila have been living it up with their noses buried
in cocaine, giving new meaning to the term “high
society.” With the allegations of freeloading, bad
oufits, incest and even murder, I can understand the
venom, scorn and contempt that have flooded the comments
section of Gorrell’s blog.
(Frankly, I have stopped reading it because of too much
negativity there. Now, if the allegations are true about
the main subject of the blog, I do hope Gorrell gets
paid back every cent owed him. I don’t belittle the
misfortune that befell him, but as sis would always say,
“We are fools for love.” We make our own stupid choices
for love and we suffer for it.)
Why the
infamous subjects of the blog behave the way they do—and
in truth, this is not the first time we in media have
heard about it and what goes on in that party place that
has been mentioned several times in the blog—we probably
may never thoroughly understand. Most of them have had
the benefit of having studied in reputable universities
like many of those who read this equally respectable
paper, so many people automatically blame it on their
upbringing.
But I
think it would be simplistic and convenient to blame the
parents for the mess these socialites—or social
climbers—are in. (One trivia that has come up via the
old media is that the mother of one of the antagonists
in this Internet telenovela, was involved in a corrupt
government deal that was the talk of the town just a
decade ago. A few observers cite this factoid as a way
to explain her child’s alleged dishonesty—monkey see,
monkey do.) Besides, there are many examples of people
who have been in far more luckless circumstances while
growing up, or have had the worst parents imaginable,
but who managed to come out of their sordid experiences
as strong, upstanding citizens.
Needless
to say, I cannot imagine how parents do it these days.
If both parents are working, there is just not enough
time in the day to be with one’s kids, minister to their
needs and make them adhere to the common rules of
proper, decent behavior. What more if one parent is
away, working in some foreign country, as in the case of
many OFW families these days. The parenting task can
only be more daunting in such situations.
Then
there are just too many temptations out there—sex,
drugs, Internet porn, cigarettes, alcohol, Internet
gaming—that parents can hardly keep up with their duty
to be the moral guardians of the family. When even the
tightest controls and parental monitoring systems fail,
what avenue for instilling appropriate conduct is still
available? What can parents do when their child has gone
out of control?
Many
parents will tell you that there is no guidebook in the
world that will prepare a parent for the
responsibilities. When rearing a child, sometimes it is
a case of hit-and-miss. You can be the best father or
mother in the world, but your child still ends up dead
in someone else’s flat from drug overdose.
Of
course, all this doesn’t absolve parents of the
responsibility of trying to bring up decent,
well-behaved and sensible children. So when they see
their children now adults behaving like irresponsible
shitless fucks who think having fun is the only sole
purpose of their existence, parents just cannot be
defensive about it. They cannot deny that there is a
problem and just send the children abroad to escape the
consequences of the latter’s tomfoolery. Condoning their
children’s stupidity makes them equally guilty. Parents
whose kids have gone wrong just have to accept that
despite their maybe impeccable parenting skills, their
children have fallen off-track and have become nuisances
to society. Leaving them to their own devices where they
can hurt other people or themselves is not an option.
No
matter how old a wayward child is, parents cannot
abdicate their roles as the moral and ethical compass in
the family. They need to be consistent and unfaltering
in their implementation of rules for decent behavior
and, of course, be unimpeachable role models themselves.
One thing they cannot do is lose hope that their child
can still change or be rehabilitated with the right kind
of help, be it the psychological kind.
I think
another thing Brian Gorrell’s blog has taught many of us
is that parents these days have to work even doubly
harder than before to keep their kids in line, protect
them from falling into the wrong crowd and becoming
slaves to their basest desires. That kind of 24/7
protection and monitoring may be exhausting and,
perhaps, nearly impossible to do in this day and age,
but it must be done. Not doing so can only lead to
damaging and maybe irreparable consequences. |
