(With inputs from Danish Ahmad!)
Prologue
The ABO blood grouping system was discovered by Karl Landsteiner an Austrian Physician in 1902 and classified in 1909. Now you might think what is so important about this discovery? For what is commonplace to know these days was an important breakthrough in transfusion medicine that revolutionized wartime medical care; which was then prone to the vagaries of trial and error where transfusion was concerned. In a nutshell the ABO blood grouping involves two major antigens [3 major ones, if you include H antigen actually, but let us try to keep this one simple!] The AB blood group is unique in the fact that it is not that there are some cells expressing A antigen and others expressing B; it is not a mixture of two types of red cells. Both A and B antigens are expressed simultaneously by the RBCs of the person inheriting this blood group. Hence creating a new identity of AB.
Such a person is referred to as a universal recipient for he can accept blood from both groups A and B as well as AB and O.
Aah! I just can't resist disseminating some knowledge in the process! So here goes!
Prologue
The ABO blood grouping system was discovered by Karl Landsteiner an Austrian Physician in 1902 and classified in 1909. Now you might think what is so important about this discovery? For what is commonplace to know these days was an important breakthrough in transfusion medicine that revolutionized wartime medical care; which was then prone to the vagaries of trial and error where transfusion was concerned. In a nutshell the ABO blood grouping involves two major antigens [3 major ones, if you include H antigen actually, but let us try to keep this one simple!] The AB blood group is unique in the fact that it is not that there are some cells expressing A antigen and others expressing B; it is not a mixture of two types of red cells. Both A and B antigens are expressed simultaneously by the RBCs of the person inheriting this blood group. Hence creating a new identity of AB.
Such a person is referred to as a universal recipient for he can accept blood from both groups A and B as well as AB and O.
Aah! I just can't resist disseminating some knowledge in the process! So here goes!
Blood groups are inherited from both parents. The ABO blood type is controlled by a single gene with three alleles: i, IA, and IB. The gene encodes a glycosyltransferase—that is, an enzyme that modifies the carbohydrate content of the red blood cell antigens. The gene is located on the long arm of the ninth chromosome (9q34).
IA allele gives type A, IB gives type B, and i gives type O. IA and IB are dominant over i, so ii people have type O, IAIA or IAi have A, and IBIB or IBi have type B. IAIB people have both phenotypes because A and B express a special dominance relationship: codominance, which means that type A and B parents can have an AB child. A type A and a type B couple can also have a type O child if they are both heterozygous (IBi,IAi) The cis-AB phenotype has a single enzyme that creates both A and B antigens. The resulting red blood cells do not usually express A or B antigen at the same level that would be expected on common group A1 or B red blood cells. Hence as I said, a new blood group with a distinct identity despite having both antigens!
Simply put, AB is not simply A + B.
So much for the Biology lesson!
Coming to the focus of our topic:
Marriage: A license for sex or an institution of social security?
Marriages are made in heaven or so they say in fables, huh?
Real life is pretty darn different!
With live-in relations, perpetual friends and those with benefits mushrooming up, are marriages passè these days?
Does the modern generation view marriage in the traditional sense? What do you think has changed and why?
With divorce rates in theUS
Although I may not know all the answers (and I don't certainly claim to know any, if at all), this is my take on the issue!
The evolution of mankind from nomadic tribal savages to a "civilized" society is often attributed to the social hierarchy and organization that has evolved through the years. The considerations for forming a family as a unit has evolved from a matter of survival for the prehistoric man (wherein the survival of his people depended on the ability to bear and rear offspring in a protective environment); to a matter of economics and religion in the 20th century to a matter of choice and defiance in the 21st!
Marriage has always been the "right" thing to do! All other forms of relationships have been frowned upon by the society irrespective of the cheerful exterior that the so-called liberal societies may want to put up with the changing times! It has enjoyed social, legal and religious sanctions since times immemorial!
Simply put, AB is not simply A + B.
So much for the Biology lesson!
Coming to the focus of our topic:
Marriage: A license for sex or an institution of social security?
Marriages are made in heaven or so they say in fables, huh?
Real life is pretty darn different!
With live-in relations, perpetual friends and those with benefits mushrooming up, are marriages passè these days?
Does the modern generation view marriage in the traditional sense? What do you think has changed and why?
With divorce rates in the
Although I may not know all the answers (and I don't certainly claim to know any, if at all), this is my take on the issue!
The evolution of mankind from nomadic tribal savages to a "civilized" society is often attributed to the social hierarchy and organization that has evolved through the years. The considerations for forming a family as a unit has evolved from a matter of survival for the prehistoric man (wherein the survival of his people depended on the ability to bear and rear offspring in a protective environment); to a matter of economics and religion in the 20th century to a matter of choice and defiance in the 21st!
Marriage has always been the "right" thing to do! All other forms of relationships have been frowned upon by the society irrespective of the cheerful exterior that the so-called liberal societies may want to put up with the changing times! It has enjoyed social, legal and religious sanctions since times immemorial!
Socially, it is encouraged for the formation of a family unit, for the sustenance of a community; the social security afforded is too hard to give a miss! Legally, the legitimacy conferred on any relationship is unparalleled to that granted to a marriage: there are a whole set of legal eagles specializing in all the aspects related to it! And religion, (how can one ignore that?), has always given canonical decrees as to why it is the primary goal of every human being. There are a large number of "sins" associated with all other forms of human interaction with the opposite sex! It is the holy duty of every man to marry and populate the earth with people of his religion; without a man, a woman is incomplete and vice-versa; and it is through this man attains salvation, and so on and so forth!
The considerations for marriage have changed with time as well: just cohabitation; to union of two families, clans, tribes and nations; to meeting of two minds, as the modern day Bohemian might say!
Old timers would swear by their traditional practices in preserving the social order and that it is the right thing for the gen-x to emulate!
What surprises me the most is the fact despite modern science highlighting the dangers of consanguineous marriages, the practice has social and legal sanction in many parts of the world! People would rather marry their own cousins rather than marry outside their caste, creed, religion, class, color and race! [And they call this the 21st century!] These very people would cry fate, curse doctors and bitch about their lot when genetic diseases come calling; but fail to see the folly in their actions and continue to defend their actions on the pretext of preserving "culture and religion".
And should a couple decide to challenge the social norms in a legal manner, the vigilantes come in hordes to unleash tribal justice in an effort to make their case exemplary to the would-be couples who might ever dare to follow suit! From social boycotting, to religious discrimination, to the extremes of honor killings in the most feudal of societies, anything to "preserve tradition": family pride if you will!
Not that I have anything against the institution of arranged marriages (so long as it gives the couple the choice to opt out during courtship, if the need arises), the notion that parents alone know what's best is difficult for me to stomach, if it is to be applied at all junctures!
Let's face it, it is you and your better half that has to live out the days to the end (for your parents aren't going to be around forever), so lest you both are compatible at an intellectual level, the marriage is a sham! And unless there is intellectual fulfillment and growth in a union, the union fails once the physical attraction fades ( and that it does!). Each partner then craves for and looks towards other sources and thence begins the final dissolution!
It is one thing in life wherein if you compromise, you'll have only yourself to blame later on!
But this is not to say that all marriages borne out of "love" are successful! For "love" (blinding lust, more often than naught, actually) literally is blind; the challenges of living a real marriage and the trials it throws up in your face require more resilience than one imagines during the "love phase"! So unless the attraction is greater than skin deep and the compatibility quotient is as high, the love fizzles out to lead to chaos!
What mature adults fail to realize despite their "maturity" and "years of experience" is that a successful marriage requires the couple to work hard at it! There is no star-crossed partner or soulmate in the real world and things never are really perfect (far from it, actually!)
One of the primary reasons for marriage in the earlier times (even today in many cases) was: (you guessed it!) Sex! Whether it be through the arranged route or otherwise, the social sanction for sex that it affords, was the prime motivator in most cases, as premarital sex was a taboo (and still is in many parts of the world!). So, in this process, couples hastily entered into a union without anticipating the future of the same once sex became a routine and the interest dwindled away!
The social structure till the better part of the 20th century focused on a conservative household where the parents were never contradicted and "family prestige" kept failing marriages together. However, the marital asphyxia that slowly built up never left anybody really happy (despite the claims to the contrary), such that the marriage lasted only because of social needs rather than a personal or an intellectual need for it!
(The old timers would still count this as a merit of their way of life and in some ways, it was! At least it left fewer kids with broken households!)
A related quote goes something like this: The saddest words in life begin with "I should have..." (Related or not, I just wanted to stuff it in!)
With the erosion of the conservative mindset from many parts of the society and greater awareness triggered by greater exposure to education and the media (or failing value system as the elders would put it), the ability to tolerate the marital asphyxia waned away faster than expected in many communities around the world and the "family prestige" factor failed miserably to keep families together! The result: 1 in 2 marriages in "civilized" nations end up knocking the doors of a legal eagle!
But with an increasingly liberal society allowing for social experimentation, the trend now is to test the Ferrari before you invest a great deal in it!
(Isn't that the most crass comparison you have ever heard?)
The new age social norm of live-in relationships, friends with benefits are the gen-x's way of trying to make the right choice! The USP is that if you live together, cohabit together and assess each other for compatibility, the road ahead is paved smooth and slick for a long term commitment. Sounds perfect on paper, right? In many ways, it is! But the flaw lies in the assumption that a marriage is very much like the above! Suffice to say, any intimate relationship other than a marriage is usually a situation of power without accountability or partnership without commitment! (Some idiots treat even a marriage the same way!)
Now even in this scenario, people are driven by the primeval instincts instead of weighing certain facts in context!
A good marriage begins as a good and lasting friendship instead of good sex (although a good fling begins with the latter!). A friendship wherein both the partners are matched at a resonating frequency at the level of their minds; where each one not only understands the needs (emotional, intellectual or otherwise) of the other, but knows how to meet them and knows what to do, if one can't, at some or the other point in life! When you can trust your spouse as your confidante instead of keeping secrets from them (to keep them happy), you know you are in for the long haul!
The ritual of the "first night" needs to be put in the cold storage for eternity! You should get to be friends first and leave the physical part for a later date! The perception of pleasure and satisfaction is a function of the brain; so if your minds resonate, the sex shall be good (whether adequate or not)! But the extreme levels of enthusiasm, lack of anatomical knowledge and understanding of human physiology, prevalence of myths perpetuated by friends and the media, the numerous taboos associated and the inexplicable levels of "non-communication" that persist between couples leads them to indulge in the ritual anyway!
And consequently, the coffers of quacks and self-proclaimed "sexologists" (or a genuine medical doctor, if at all) are filled by anxious and distraught couples over a myriad of issues ranging from performance anxiety, frigidity, vaginismus, dyspareunia, impotence, to frankly bad sex! And another legal eagle may find new clients suddenly citing "irreconcilable differences"!
Whereas in a good marriage, the couple ought to be comfortable enough with each other to frankly discuss the above issues and reach decisions to iron them out emotionally, medically or surgically as the case maybe! But majority of the people love the sweet taste of denial and procrastinate till hell freezes over and then one fine day reach to the conclusion that they'd rather cry over spilt milk!
Kids can soothe a burnt marriage! There are many cases where the family rejuvenates with the birth of a child who ushers in a new wave of change; and more seriously a new ray of hope in a family on the brink! Many a couple have stayed together for the sake of their kids and rediscovered the bond that drew them closer in the first place and made newer ones in the process!
If you know and realize that you have kids for your desire of parenting and not for the kid's sake, you shall always put their interests first! And in the process stay together; for no child deserves a broken home whatever the reason that either spouse may state as a lame defense! Any child when born is equal to every other one out there and deserves to have a complete home with a caring mother and a loving father; so why should he/she bear the brunt of the follies of his/her parents?
No matter what the new-age "gurus" and the "relationship experts" (who know nothing better than to make small talk on every other gasbag of a daytime talk-show) might claim, the impact of a good divorce is not necessarily better than a bad marriage once the family unit involves children!
Broken homes scar children for life! They end up growing without a complete family unit to fall back on. (Although single parenting is en vogue in the west these days, the concept is still not a hit so far as the child's perspective is concerned!) Having seen their parents (who every child looks up to as the role models in the beginning) fail miserably in a relationship, their take on relationships in life is very skewed from the onset! The emotional needs of every child require the presence of both parents, individually and together, at different stages of life! The positive influence that parents can have on their kids diminishes in broken homes, as part of it is derived from the authority that a parent gains from the child when he perceives them to be an ideal! When a kid perceives his parents to be a failure in social relationships, the tendency to rebel and defiance follows suit!
(Jeez! I should be discussing that in another post; here I go rambling again out of context!)
Epilogue
So how does the lengthy and irrelevant biology lesson figure in this Valium of a discussion?
As discussed the AB-blood type is not simply a mixture of A and B type cells but entirely new entity that retains both the antigens and thus has characteristics of both and yet a completely unique identity emerges. The marrow in this case propagates further cells bearing the distinct dual antigens
Similarly, the key essence of a marriage is the evolution of a common ego from the merging of two distinct ones without either of them losing their individual identity in the new entity that takes shape in the process! The success of the family then lies in the defense, nurturing and progress of this common ego that represents the family!
However as the complexities of human relationships increase, the basic factors that define a marriage are being ignored and superficial factors are being flouted as causes for togetherness as well as for separation!
The real truth is that whenever one ego overshadows the other there is darkness cast over the landscape of a marriage!
The considerations for marriage have changed with time as well: just cohabitation; to union of two families, clans, tribes and nations; to meeting of two minds, as the modern day Bohemian might say!
Old timers would swear by their traditional practices in preserving the social order and that it is the right thing for the gen-x to emulate!
What surprises me the most is the fact despite modern science highlighting the dangers of consanguineous marriages, the practice has social and legal sanction in many parts of the world! People would rather marry their own cousins rather than marry outside their caste, creed, religion, class, color and race! [And they call this the 21st century!] These very people would cry fate, curse doctors and bitch about their lot when genetic diseases come calling; but fail to see the folly in their actions and continue to defend their actions on the pretext of preserving "culture and religion".
And should a couple decide to challenge the social norms in a legal manner, the vigilantes come in hordes to unleash tribal justice in an effort to make their case exemplary to the would-be couples who might ever dare to follow suit! From social boycotting, to religious discrimination, to the extremes of honor killings in the most feudal of societies, anything to "preserve tradition": family pride if you will!
Not that I have anything against the institution of arranged marriages (so long as it gives the couple the choice to opt out during courtship, if the need arises), the notion that parents alone know what's best is difficult for me to stomach, if it is to be applied at all junctures!
Let's face it, it is you and your better half that has to live out the days to the end (for your parents aren't going to be around forever), so lest you both are compatible at an intellectual level, the marriage is a sham! And unless there is intellectual fulfillment and growth in a union, the union fails once the physical attraction fades ( and that it does!). Each partner then craves for and looks towards other sources and thence begins the final dissolution!
It is one thing in life wherein if you compromise, you'll have only yourself to blame later on!
But this is not to say that all marriages borne out of "love" are successful! For "love" (blinding lust, more often than naught, actually) literally is blind; the challenges of living a real marriage and the trials it throws up in your face require more resilience than one imagines during the "love phase"! So unless the attraction is greater than skin deep and the compatibility quotient is as high, the love fizzles out to lead to chaos!
What mature adults fail to realize despite their "maturity" and "years of experience" is that a successful marriage requires the couple to work hard at it! There is no star-crossed partner or soulmate in the real world and things never are really perfect (far from it, actually!)
One of the primary reasons for marriage in the earlier times (even today in many cases) was: (you guessed it!) Sex! Whether it be through the arranged route or otherwise, the social sanction for sex that it affords, was the prime motivator in most cases, as premarital sex was a taboo (and still is in many parts of the world!). So, in this process, couples hastily entered into a union without anticipating the future of the same once sex became a routine and the interest dwindled away!
The social structure till the better part of the 20th century focused on a conservative household where the parents were never contradicted and "family prestige" kept failing marriages together. However, the marital asphyxia that slowly built up never left anybody really happy (despite the claims to the contrary), such that the marriage lasted only because of social needs rather than a personal or an intellectual need for it!
(The old timers would still count this as a merit of their way of life and in some ways, it was! At least it left fewer kids with broken households!)
A related quote goes something like this: The saddest words in life begin with "I should have..." (Related or not, I just wanted to stuff it in!)
With the erosion of the conservative mindset from many parts of the society and greater awareness triggered by greater exposure to education and the media (or failing value system as the elders would put it), the ability to tolerate the marital asphyxia waned away faster than expected in many communities around the world and the "family prestige" factor failed miserably to keep families together! The result: 1 in 2 marriages in "civilized" nations end up knocking the doors of a legal eagle!
But with an increasingly liberal society allowing for social experimentation, the trend now is to test the Ferrari before you invest a great deal in it!
(Isn't that the most crass comparison you have ever heard?)
The new age social norm of live-in relationships, friends with benefits are the gen-x's way of trying to make the right choice! The USP is that if you live together, cohabit together and assess each other for compatibility, the road ahead is paved smooth and slick for a long term commitment. Sounds perfect on paper, right? In many ways, it is! But the flaw lies in the assumption that a marriage is very much like the above! Suffice to say, any intimate relationship other than a marriage is usually a situation of power without accountability or partnership without commitment! (Some idiots treat even a marriage the same way!)
Now even in this scenario, people are driven by the primeval instincts instead of weighing certain facts in context!
A good marriage begins as a good and lasting friendship instead of good sex (although a good fling begins with the latter!). A friendship wherein both the partners are matched at a resonating frequency at the level of their minds; where each one not only understands the needs (emotional, intellectual or otherwise) of the other, but knows how to meet them and knows what to do, if one can't, at some or the other point in life! When you can trust your spouse as your confidante instead of keeping secrets from them (to keep them happy), you know you are in for the long haul!
The ritual of the "first night" needs to be put in the cold storage for eternity! You should get to be friends first and leave the physical part for a later date! The perception of pleasure and satisfaction is a function of the brain; so if your minds resonate, the sex shall be good (whether adequate or not)! But the extreme levels of enthusiasm, lack of anatomical knowledge and understanding of human physiology, prevalence of myths perpetuated by friends and the media, the numerous taboos associated and the inexplicable levels of "non-communication" that persist between couples leads them to indulge in the ritual anyway!
And consequently, the coffers of quacks and self-proclaimed "sexologists" (or a genuine medical doctor, if at all) are filled by anxious and distraught couples over a myriad of issues ranging from performance anxiety, frigidity, vaginismus, dyspareunia, impotence, to frankly bad sex! And another legal eagle may find new clients suddenly citing "irreconcilable differences"!
Whereas in a good marriage, the couple ought to be comfortable enough with each other to frankly discuss the above issues and reach decisions to iron them out emotionally, medically or surgically as the case maybe! But majority of the people love the sweet taste of denial and procrastinate till hell freezes over and then one fine day reach to the conclusion that they'd rather cry over spilt milk!
Kids can soothe a burnt marriage! There are many cases where the family rejuvenates with the birth of a child who ushers in a new wave of change; and more seriously a new ray of hope in a family on the brink! Many a couple have stayed together for the sake of their kids and rediscovered the bond that drew them closer in the first place and made newer ones in the process!
If you know and realize that you have kids for your desire of parenting and not for the kid's sake, you shall always put their interests first! And in the process stay together; for no child deserves a broken home whatever the reason that either spouse may state as a lame defense! Any child when born is equal to every other one out there and deserves to have a complete home with a caring mother and a loving father; so why should he/she bear the brunt of the follies of his/her parents?
No matter what the new-age "gurus" and the "relationship experts" (who know nothing better than to make small talk on every other gasbag of a daytime talk-show) might claim, the impact of a good divorce is not necessarily better than a bad marriage once the family unit involves children!
Broken homes scar children for life! They end up growing without a complete family unit to fall back on. (Although single parenting is en vogue in the west these days, the concept is still not a hit so far as the child's perspective is concerned!) Having seen their parents (who every child looks up to as the role models in the beginning) fail miserably in a relationship, their take on relationships in life is very skewed from the onset! The emotional needs of every child require the presence of both parents, individually and together, at different stages of life! The positive influence that parents can have on their kids diminishes in broken homes, as part of it is derived from the authority that a parent gains from the child when he perceives them to be an ideal! When a kid perceives his parents to be a failure in social relationships, the tendency to rebel and defiance follows suit!
(Jeez! I should be discussing that in another post; here I go rambling again out of context!)
Epilogue
So how does the lengthy and irrelevant biology lesson figure in this Valium of a discussion?
As discussed the AB-blood type is not simply a mixture of A and B type cells but entirely new entity that retains both the antigens and thus has characteristics of both and yet a completely unique identity emerges. The marrow in this case propagates further cells bearing the distinct dual antigens
Similarly, the key essence of a marriage is the evolution of a common ego from the merging of two distinct ones without either of them losing their individual identity in the new entity that takes shape in the process! The success of the family then lies in the defense, nurturing and progress of this common ego that represents the family!
However as the complexities of human relationships increase, the basic factors that define a marriage are being ignored and superficial factors are being flouted as causes for togetherness as well as for separation!
The real truth is that whenever one ego overshadows the other there is darkness cast over the landscape of a marriage!
Problem of the Week
You have grown up in an everyday neighborhood nothing out of the ordinary. You have grown up with the same friends that you have known from your childhood. Many of them are still your best buds. One of them is your best mate, who'd give the shirt off his back to help you out if the need arises! You grow in to adulthood, find different spheres of the work and well, lose track of each other over time and then meet up one day out of the blue!
Scenario 1: Your friend is slightly apprehensive of meeting you. Your inquiry of his sudden bashfulness reveals that his preferences in life have changed! And that he tells you that he is gay and has known this for some time now. Although he has no attraction towards you and regards you as his brother, he has a tough time telling you all this. He has not revealed the same to his family and doubts if he'd ever find the courage to do that! For the rest, he is still your old prankster of a friend whose company gladdens your heart!
Now,
1) Having heard the innermost secret of your friend, do you look at him in a different light?
2) Would you consider that nothing has changed as far as you and he are concerned? Would your behavior change in any way?
3) Given that he has trouble confronting his family about this, would you help him through this and in the process ease his fears or would you let sleeping dogs lie and let him deal with it of his own accord? Which of the above two actions do you think would actually help him?
Scenario 2: Your friend is slightly apprehensive of meeting you. Your inquiry of his sudden bashfulness reveals that he has contracted HIV-AIDS. He has not revealed this to anyone else!
Now,
1) What would be your first reaction?
2) What are the chances that you'd judge him even before hearing his side of the story?
3) Would the mode through which he contracted the deadly disease affect your response?
4) Let us say he is straight and he contracted the disease through a casual one-night-stand,
or let us say he is gay and he contracted the disease through a blood transfusion during surgery. Would your response in both the situations be the same or different? What it had been the other way around in both the situations?
5) How would you help him cope up with this situation? More importantly, would you?
You have grown up in an everyday neighborhood nothing out of the ordinary. You have grown up with the same friends that you have known from your childhood. Many of them are still your best buds. One of them is your best mate, who'd give the shirt off his back to help you out if the need arises! You grow in to adulthood, find different spheres of the work and well, lose track of each other over time and then meet up one day out of the blue!
Scenario 1: Your friend is slightly apprehensive of meeting you. Your inquiry of his sudden bashfulness reveals that his preferences in life have changed! And that he tells you that he is gay and has known this for some time now. Although he has no attraction towards you and regards you as his brother, he has a tough time telling you all this. He has not revealed the same to his family and doubts if he'd ever find the courage to do that! For the rest, he is still your old prankster of a friend whose company gladdens your heart!
Now,
1) Having heard the innermost secret of your friend, do you look at him in a different light?
2) Would you consider that nothing has changed as far as you and he are concerned? Would your behavior change in any way?
3) Given that he has trouble confronting his family about this, would you help him through this and in the process ease his fears or would you let sleeping dogs lie and let him deal with it of his own accord? Which of the above two actions do you think would actually help him?
Scenario 2: Your friend is slightly apprehensive of meeting you. Your inquiry of his sudden bashfulness reveals that he has contracted HIV-AIDS. He has not revealed this to anyone else!
Now,
1) What would be your first reaction?
2) What are the chances that you'd judge him even before hearing his side of the story?
3) Would the mode through which he contracted the deadly disease affect your response?
4) Let us say he is straight and he contracted the disease through a casual one-night-stand,
or let us say he is gay and he contracted the disease through a blood transfusion during surgery. Would your response in both the situations be the same or different? What it had been the other way around in both the situations?
5) How would you help him cope up with this situation? More importantly, would you?
2 comments:
A little more (if I may) about broken homes and the role of parents.
For a child, his parents are his gods.
They are the ones who "know how things are supposed to be done" and for him, the objective of life is "come as close as possible to replicating their behaviour".
Whether conscious or unconscious, it is this drive which shapes our basic personality during the early years of life. And the way we react to social stimuli in the future is imprinted in during our childhood.
A person who has kids in the hopes of rescuing his marriage, but goes for a divorce later, is a hateful bastard.
He is to be detested because he has gambled with someone else's money. If he wins, the gains are his. If he loses, the losses are his children's.
In a broken home, the idol the children grow up to is (Alas!) inadequate. Not only is that person unequipped to provide all the stimuli a child needs, he/she may himself have baggage from the broken relationship and blame it on the hapless offspring, who grows up insecure and hostile.
Can you blame the kid for growing up wrong? He is the victim. His parents are the criminals. He was helpless. His parents were merciless.
And that is why having children is one of the most important decisions in any person's life. It is more important than even marriage, which is between two adults who can take care of themselves. To have a child means to take on a million responsibilities to ensure that the child gets what he needs to grow up right.
Couldn't have put it in better words myself!
Well, this in all true sense was going to be how I was about to extend the topic in a future post!
So bear with me, if I plagiarize some stuff from this comment!
Take a shot at some of the Qs in the problem of the week sections. It should make for some interesting debates!
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