The rights and responsibilities of adulthood

When we are little, we know nothing about the rights and responsibilities of adulthood. The only things we know are that our parents should offer us all that we need because, if they wanted to have children, then they are also supposed to give us everything we want. Therefore, if we like a certain toy or if we want to eat a certain type of chocolate, then our parents have to buy that for us. We don't care that they possibly have not enough money for that. The only thing we know is that we begin to cry if they don't carry out our wish, as this is a child's most important weapon to terrorize his parents.

Still, little by little, we begin to understand the reality around us and we realize that parents cannot offer us all we want from certain reasons. We then understand that apart from their rights, parents also have some responsibilities. They have the right to scold us when we do something wrong or when they find out that we have lied to them. Moreover, they have the right to choose for us when we are little: they choose our clothes, they choose the food we have to eat, the school we will study at, the hours when we should go out to play and the time we have to return home.

But at the same time they are responsible for our education, because they are the ones to be blamed later, if we have a less proper education. That's why, when we beat a colleague at kinder-garden, parents are the ones to apologize for our deeds in front of the educator and the colleague’s parents. And when we get ill,they are responsible for not taking good care of us, and for giving us ice-cream to eat or dressing us inadequately.

The moment we become teenagers, we notice that it’s high time we were responsible for our deeds and for our behaviour in society. Now we have the right to be independent, but at the same time we have to be the ones to give explanations when we do something wrong. It is supposed that we are mature enough to solve our problems and to make people around trust us. For some of us, this is a difficult test to pass, but it is the best method to see that we are capable to be integrated in the society and to be accepted by a group, be that of friends or at work.