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Vol.3 The
Role of Family. |
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[Prologue]
A family of
four, including two children (a
son and a daughter), lived in a
small house in a rural area.
Both parents were healthy,
unemployed, and indolent
although they had two children
to support. The parents
received illegal welfare
payments to survive and spent
most of their time inebriated
from noon onwards.
The
mother did not prepare cooked
meals for her children but only
provided them with fast food
meals. The children relied on
neighborhood restaurants to
provide them with rice, which
they brought home after school.
Neighbors who saw this felt
that the children’s futures
would be limited.
[10
years later]
The daughter
became employed by a company
and the son became a university
student. The daughter wears
excessive makeup, is rumored to
have multiple relationships
with many men, and changes her
employment continuously. In
contrast, the son has an
aptitude for studying well and
has received a university
scholarship.
Would you like
to hire the son? Once the son
is fully employed by a company,
what would be your reaction if
your daughter expressed desire
to marry such a man?
[General vs Specific Theory]
Most people would publicly
state that they are willing to
hire this son or have him marry
their daughter since the son
has a good personality and he
cannot be blamed for his
parents’ bad behavior. However,
although they may agree
publicly, they often say “no”
in private.
The main issue
in this case is: “To what
extent does the family
environment affect a child’s
psychological development?”
Separating this issue from the
discrimination issue, I would
like to discuss this matter
from an objective view point.
In the process of our
investigation, we sometimes
find that the target of our
investigation has committed a
crime in the past. In the
newspaper reporting of this
crime, it is often commented
that the suspect was raised in
a wealthy, happy middle class
family.
However, when we
closely investigate their
family environment, the facts
are different from what was
reported in the newspaper. We
found that most of the families
were dysfunctional or on the
edge of breaking up.
[Parents’ anchor children on
the right track]
Reflecting
on your past, I believe that
some of you have experienced
nearly going off the rails or
have actually left them.
Investigating tens of thousands
of people’s lives, I came
across a lot of very
interesting cases where I found
common backgrounds for those
people who experienced
difficult situations but could
get back on the right track,
and for those people who
couldn’t.
Most of the
people who bounced back from
the setback had strong family
ties while most of the people
who could not recover from
their fallen circumstances had
a dysfunctional family or even,
in some cases, turned their
back to their parents as
children. If the family members
develop amicable and strong
ties, parents will be able to
pull their children back on the
right track.
This is
nothing to do with either
parent’s financial resources
nor their level of education.
The key is to create an
amicable and happy home for
children.
[What is an
amicable and happy home for
children?]
Family issues
include overindulging children,
excessive interference in
children’s lives, neglecting
children, failure to
discipline, etc. Because of the
increase of nuclear families,
grand parents who have abundant
life experiences have no chance
to support parenting and in
many cases, there is nobody to
run the family with strict
discipline at home. Since each
family has its own way, each
family’s cases should be solved
within the family with their
own ingenuity.
However,
there is only one universal way
to create an amicable and happy
home that keeps children on the
right track. That is to
maintain a happy marriage. This
is all what we can do. Even if
the parents have no money or
little education, if they are
happy and live a happy
marriage, their children will
be able to return home with
ease.
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