Canter Bridge

We parents watch attentively for the return on our investment.

Parenting is not a catch-and-release endeavor nor a spectator sport. To the contrary, our identity is wrapped up in the results. To some degree, they define us.

Those who keep the law are wise children,
but companions of gluttons shame their parents.

We have tools, with our modern discourse of individualism and our casual approach to rectitude, for letting ourselves off the hook quite quickly when our grown child runs amock. Indeed, we may have needed to react against the rigid assumptions that wrote off a parent for another adult’s deeds.

Yet the communitarian deep structure of biblical wisdom notices—even if it does not prescribe—the profound embarrassment of the father or mother whose grown child walks a different path. Such a parent forsakes the blessing of a wise child and bears the shame of an errant one.

Curiously, it is the companionship of gluttons that stands over against filial wisdom in the antithetical architecture of the saying. Wisdom, in this light, is seen as balanced restraint rather than any other of its attractive profiles.

Some children learn how to say ‘no’ in adequate proportions. Others become addicted to ‘yes!’, no matter how perverse or excessive the offer.

Parents stand by watchfully, a modest smile of satisfaction curving the lip of the most fortunate. Others—aghast—stare at the ground, pondering what went wrong, how long ago, and whether on my watch.