Hello everyone!!!  We all know that there are certain moral obligations that we have as human beings.  The question is what areas fall into the category of moral obligation? 

        Suppose you are a 3 year old child and your father walks out of your life.  Whose responsibility is it to continue a relationship, is it the father's, or the child's.  Let's suppose the father says after 17 years that it was the 3 year old's responsibility to initiate the relationship and continue it, not the adults?  Does that make you angry?  How would you react if that child was yours?  Let's add a little bit more information and explain that the father was in the military and we all know that orders can change therefore so does the last known address. 


       Let's fastforward 16 years.  The child is not such a child anymore and not yet a man.  He is still in his senior year of high school and looking forward to getting out of school to start the next chapter in his life when all of a sudden he gets his first contact from his father on facebook.  Nothing but a friend request, then the support stops out of the blue.  To find out that the father contacted them and told them that he quit school and petitions to stop support.  Legally this would be his right, correct?  Would it still be his right to do so if the son in question was actually still in school, as in this case, even though he is 19 now? 

       We can move on to the emancipation hearing.  The father has it postponed once and rescheduled, and because he is still an active soldier he is not able to attend in person.  No big deal.  During the hearing he attempts to have it rescheduled again.  This is denied.  Then he lets out that he has cancer and cannot speak for himself because he is medicated with heavy narcotics.  Based on past history do you believe him or do you assume that it is one more attempt to get out of paying child support (he tried 3 times at this point)? 

        Morally, as the other parent, do you encourage your child to reach out, or do you leave well enough alone and continue with status quo of this child only knowing one man as dad, and try to protect him from further heartbreak?  To me, I feel that morally the parent that raised the child should encourage him to reach out one time by letter if for no other reason than to let him know how he feels about not having a relationship with his father.  I say that considering he may actually have cancer this may be the only opportunity to make an attempt at mending the gap. 

        Let's fastforward again to 6 months later.  A third party calls the mom to see how she is holding up because another friend of hers saw on facebook that the father passed away.  This is the first that it is heard of and noone has details.  There is a lot of morally questioning going on in this story, and probably a lot of assumptions as well.  Who holds the biggest moral responsibility to this child.  Should he hear it through a friend of a friend who happened to stumble upon it.  Did his father have to take his contact information to the grave, and why would it not have been shared, even to the military when he was listed as a dependent?  Should his wife have taken the information off of the legal papers from the courthouse and contacted him herself to inform him of his father's passing?  What about the family members that still live in the same city, morally should they have attempted to get in contact with him to let him know?  Was it more important to emancipate the son you had no relationship with rather than to reconcile, even if it was only going to be for a short time? 

        Funeral and services being over and still the only concrete information that this young man has is an obituary in the local paper.  Do you feel that this is an acceptable way of letting him know that his time has expired and he no longer has the right to make a decision on what to do and how to reach out to get the answers he so badly needs? 

       So many adults tend to want to make decisions in similar situations based on how it affects their lives, giving no thought or care as to how it may affect the child.  When our children are younger we do what we can to protect them, and even as they grow into their own lives as adults we still try to protect them.  There is so much more to this story that most people aren't privy to and yet it is the same story for so many children and adults, the only differences are the participants.  For an outsider looking in, the only hope that we can offer is guidance through experience or resources, and support to ensure that these children that have experienced this type of feelings of unworthyness know that it is not their fault nor was it their responsibility to be the initiater, especially at a young age. 

        My son will be okay and I will continue to help him get past his feelings of anger, hurt, regret and the feeling of being unacknowledged, but how many children out there have the same amount of support?  How many have suffered at the hands of others because the one person who should have been there to protect them has been the one that hurt them the most?  As a parent I am now dealing with this major turn of events in my sons life, as an educator I wonder how many of the children that I have taught are going to have the same story to tell as my son.  For this reason I feel that I am now even more morally responsible for educating others and providing a list of resources that can help them when their final chapter ends in that part of their life.  The military is hard enough to maneuver for a civilian, and not everyone will have this connection but it is time that the liasons that are out there are easier to find also.   My sons biggest question to me was "mom, do you really think that he has cancer and is going to die?"  I couldn't answer that for him, and every door we tried to open so that he would know to allow him to make his ultimate decision (he also had to work through his anger), would not or could not help us.  We ran out of time.