‘Disobedience to Parents’

Children are the flesh and blood of their parents and are indebted to them for countless blessings. It is a frightening commentary when youths fail to show parents the honor, respect and care that they deserve. As one Bible scholar put it: “It is the sign of a supremely decadent civilization when youth loses all respect for age, and fails to recognize the unpayable debt and the basic duty it owes to those who gave it life.” Is such really the case in 20th-century families?

“I’m afraid of my own child,” lamented one mother in talking about one of the most sobering evidences of children rebelling against parents​—parent abuse. In one violent outburst, this woman’s 17-year-old son had dislocated her shoulder with a brutal kick. Just how common is such violence against parents? In reporting the results of research on family violence in the United States, the book Behind Closed Doors noted: “One out of three children between the ages of three and seventeen hit their parents each year.” Is it not normally a gross lack of respect when a child raises a hand against his parents?​—Compare Ephesians 6:1-3.

Children are rebelling against their parents in less violent ways too. In the 1960’s it was the hippie dress and long hair. But when adults copied those trends, young people were forced to come up with new ways to rebel. The book Childstress! explains: “Through all the creativity, tried and true means of defiance grow in intensity​—drugs, drinking, truancy and running away from home. As the generation of grandparents exclaims, ‘I’d hate to start raising kids in this day and age.’”

Not all children spurn parental authority. But accounts about youths rebelling against their parents are widespread enough to establish beyond question that what the apostle Paul foretold is coming true today: “Men will be . . . disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal.”