Is “Honor thy father and mother” a long-ago thing, a never-was thing or a forever thing?
I feel I can go two ways with this. It’s a forever thing for me. But – I think that generally speaking it is a notion that is becoming less evident in our society. I have no way of even estimated the degree to which it is declining though. I do know that the older I get and the more information I have about my parents and the more experience I have as a parent – the more respect I have for my folks. For example: I felt fairly negative for a long time about my father’s behavior when he returned from WWII. His abuse of alcohol accelerated and he got more and more “in” to using verbal karate. I will say though that he never physically abused me but he did my mother and I saw it. They split up in 1950. BUT – the more I have learned about the abuse my father experienced as he was growing from a boy to a man coupled with the terrible hardships he endured while stationed in New Guinea during the War, I realize that I probably would not have dealt with it all nearly as well as he did. I forgav
