At What Age Can You Stop Blaming Your Parents?

Someone at a Brooklyn restaurant said age 25. But doesn’t it depend on for what?

“My parents” by magbag is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I sat in a hip Brooklyn cafe, feeling like a country bumpkin who had driven up from the sticks (which I was). It must have been fall, not too hot, not too cold. I waited for my friend to arrive. A white man sat with his friend a table away. I didn’t catch much of their conversation until he remarked, “You can only blame your parents until you’re 25.”

I almost choked on my straw. ‘That means I only have four more years to find something!’ I thought to myself. This stranger’s words have stuck with me for 18 years.

Only now am I analyzing what he could have meant. Blame them for what? For the person you have ended up being? Of course, our upbringing largely shapes our decisions, but as Kahlil Gibran wrote so beautifully in his poem On Children, children are their own beings.

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

I’ve heard many people say, “Yup, I’m going to ruin my children.” They don’t have children. I have yet to hear a parent say, “Yup, I’ve ruined my children,” or “I am currently ruining my children.” That’s because we all…