Rachel Canning is an honor student at a private school, and has received a $20,000 scholarship. Lately she was suspended from school a few times, got caught drinking, and lost the captaincy of the cheerleading squad. Also, her parents don’t approve of her boyfriend. They kicked her out of the house, and now she’s staying at a friend’s house rather than living on the streets. She’s suing them for college tuition.
There’s a bunch of idiots calling her a spoiled brat. These people obviously have never met a teenager in their lives, and simply went straight from being 11 year olds to being 23 overnight.
This reminds me of a friend’s synopsis of “Girl, Interrupted”.
“A teenager acts like a teenager. Her parents freak the fuck out that their perfect china doll is showing agency, and lock her up in a mental institution.”
Look you fuckwads, making another sapient being is an enormous responsibility, and one that people shouldn’t enter into lightly. When they rebel – as all teenagers do – you suck it up and act like goddamned adults. If you are an upper-middle-class American you’ve taken on the responsibility of putting your offspring through college simply by conceiving them. You brought a new life into a world where securing a career takes an investment equal to years of median-level salary. This is your responsibility.
How many of the people cheering on these parents would be cheering on someone who adopted an adorable puppy, and then dumped it at a dog pound a year later because it wasn’t cute enough anymore?
How many of the them would be cheering on homophobic parents who chased their high-school-age son out of the house when they found out he’s gay? Abandoning him to live however he could on the streets.
This girl is lucky. She has friends she can stay with. Those friends have enough legal sense to realize society may have a vested interest in ensuring parents can’t simply abandon their children if they get a little unruly. She’s smart and pretty and her parents are well off, and I guess that’s a good enough reason to attack her and called her a spoiled brat. If they took five damn minutes to think about this, maybe they’d realize you don’t just create a new human and then discard it when it doesn’t fully subjugate itself to your will, ESPECIALLY when you were warned this is exactly how teens act. What the fuck happened to being responsible for your decisions?
But I guess if these parents’ role-model for a good parent is God, it’s not surprising they lack that level of responsibility. He’s notorious for murdering anyone who doesn’t debase themselves enough to soothe his fragile ego.