Children

Every now and then you happen to read about parents who commit suicide and take their children with them to the afterlife. These are clearly extremisms, hallucinations, madness.
However, these pathologies disguise a tendency that is instead very widespread, so widespread that it seems normal, when in fact it is not normal at all: parenthood experienced as a sense of possession. Indeed, of property.
From the moment they are born, your children are and will forever remain your children. In the sense that they are your children rather than someone else's, not in the sense that they belong to you. "Your" in this case is an adjective, not a pronoun, for those who still refer to grammar.
No one belongs to anyone. This fundamental right of the individual also applies to the parent-child relationship. Your children therefore belong only to themselves, you are there to guide them in the best possible way to adulthood. The best way for them, not for you.
One notices on the part of various parents a continuous interference in the instinctive life of their children, the one that should lead them to fulfill themselves as individuals, as human uniqueness. I am not talking about interference in terms of safety or civic education, where it is even fine, indeed desirable, but rather on actual matters of PREFERENCE. And this is an unacceptable intrusion. Moreover, once they become adults, the children will throw these acts of arrogance back in their parents' faces. And obviously they will be right.
In some families it even works the other way around: do whatever you want, go wherever you want, come back whenever you want, use the web however you want, hang out with whoever you want, don't break my balls, but please, take the classical high school and law school, because art school and philosophy are stuff for slackers, and I want to have a child with a "respectable" job, otherwise what do I tell people? They might even be respected, perhaps, but in contexts a bit different from those expected, of the type "I kiss your hands..." or "bro, let's break his bones..."
My brother and I grew up in a humble and healthy environment, rural and artisanal origins, pre-industrial traditions adapted to modernity. We were raised with reasonable rules, presence, discretion. Firmness and flexibility were measured out with one eye on safety and the other on respect. For essential decisions, we were not given mandatory orders: it was enough to pass us good quality DNA and essential guidelines (call them "values" if you like).
The degrees of freedom made available to me have sometimes offered me the opportunity to do some stupid things, but the basic guidelines have helped me understand and straighten my course.
To someone my lifestyle might even seem like a mess, but it is MY lifestyle and I am completely at ease with it: I shaped it for myself thanks to the respect my parents had for my choices, even when they were not in line with their visions or expectations. This precisely because they always thought of me as their son, not as their property.
I will always be grateful to them for this: I realize that many people have not had the same luck.

This post was machine-translated from Italian.