There are so many forms of responsibility. Everyone has an opinion on what it is, where you learn and how to live up to it. As children we learn that it is our responsibility to remember to put our homework in our back packs. As teenagers we learn responsibility when we learn to drive or get our first job. The church tells us our responsibility is to it and the Bible says it is to God. If you ask a boy scout he will tell you it’s to God and country and Girl scouts will tell you it’s to do their best. So what is responsibility and how to define it? That is the real question everyone seems to have their idea of what it is.
My definition of responsibility was born a very warm Sunday morning in August 1998. Weighing in at seven pounds eight ounces my world changed drastically. I wouldn’t change having him for anything in the world. But it was a change; suddenly at the age of twenty I was responsible for another human being. Everything he needed was my responsibility; everything he learned would be on me. I held his future in my hands. Teach him to be a good man, kind and loving? Or create the next super villain? It is a huge responsibility and one that I hope I have done well. In the beginning it was scary, especially since the longest I had babysat before was eight hours. My little bundle didn’t go home, he was mine. Every decision of the last fifteen years has been made to make his life better.
The flip side of being his mother is that I have had to do it alone. Not that his father hasn’t accepted his part, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to be a parent. My son’s father didn’t have the positive role models that most people have. In fact his own mother didn’t want him. Even now, he considers us his only family. Unfortunately for AJ, the best father he has had has been a part-time one. His father just can’t seem to make the right decisions. He is easily swayed. How can he assume responsibility for a child when he can’t take responsibility for himself? I don’t hold it against him, no one took the time to teach him, to show him or even love him the way everyone should be loved by their parents. Many people think that I make excuses for him, it’s not that. I just understand him better than many people on the outside. Half the time he’s just judged without his story being told.
It hasn’t been easy. Most of the time people just assume that I am lazy and looking for a hand out. Again, no one cares to know the truth. Society doesn’t care that I have tried to teach my son to work for everything. Society sees me, a single mom, and assumes that I live off welfare. It assumes that I don’t want to work and it assumes I am looking for someone to pay my bills. My responsibility to my son and to myself will not allow these things to be true. More than once society has let me down, the system that is supposed to be there to help people has let me down. When AJ was just nine months old I was laid off. Because I was part-time I didn’t qualify for unemployment and the state welfare system said I made too much to get assistance. For three months while I looked for a new job we lived off my credit card. My responsibility to my son didn’t end with my job, but apparently society’s responsibility to me did. I was able to find a job in a daycare, at least this way my baby could come to work with me. Funnily enough, the state welfare system decided to help me once I found a job. It was at this point that I decided that the state welfare system and I would never be friends. To this day I loathe it. Not because there are people who take advantage of it, but because when I needed it I was denied.
There is a social responsibility to help those who are less fortunate than we are. I have been taught this by my mother from the very beginning. Every year, no matter how poor we were we always picked a star from the Salvation Army tree. I got one present less, but someone else would get a present under their Christmas tree. The bible tells us to help the poor; Mother Theresa felt it was not her responsibility but her life’s obligation to help the poor. The current Pope wants the world to help the poor. And yet those who are really poor are scorned upon because of the few who take advantage of the system. Until you know what it is like to be hungry and to wonder whether or not you will have a roof over your head, it is hard to understand. The problem with the government is that the congressmen have become too detached from the people. They do not know what it is to be so hungry it hurts. Or what it is like to scrape and scrounge to find enough change to buy a package of ramen noodles for your child to eat. For the most part, people sot in their warm houses with fully belly’s saying that something should be done for the homeless. Or that they should just get a job. Until you experience it, you will never know what it feels like. How can our children truly know what responsibility is when we have forgotten our own sense of responsibility?
My son is fifteen now. He is preparing for a life of his own and as his mother it is my responsibility to make sure that he is well prepared for it. Education has always been important so I decided to finish school in an effort to show him that education was important. Hopefully, he will see that there is need to finish school. Although we are just scraping by now, I hope he will see that with the right amount of education our income will increase. It will be nice to not be under the poverty line. I hope that he will see that it is important to be responsible for your actions and life. Although, I want him to know that school and work is important in life, I also want him to know that there are sometimes other things that are more important. In a world filled with due dates and deadlines, caffeine induced work ethics and even less sleep; the responsibility of an adult is to be true to themselves. To take responsibility for their life and their family. Sometimes, eating breakfast as a family is more important than rushing to get to work or school early. Sometimes, $30 is more important in the form of groceries than it is printer ink.
Adeventures in Parenting 