By Cyril Anderson

The relationship between parents and their children is an essential place where akhlaq, or ethics, are of the highest importance.  After all, what else are ethics but the science of improved relationships between people, and what relationships are more important and essential to the building of a strong society that the relationship between parents and their children.  A focus on the proper ethics, both of children toward their parents, and of parents toward their children, is seen as essential in the context of Islam, which strives toward a complete moral system.

The principle most frequently stressed is the principle that children need to be respectful to their parents.  This is, within reason, a quite sensible principle, and is in recognition of the hard work and time put in by the parents to try to raise the child.  Mothers go through long months of hardship to carry their children within themselves, and go through hours of painful labor to bring their children into the world.  In general, parents make many sacrifices, and undergo worry, and stress, and hardship in what is generally a selfless effort to bring up the next generation in a healthy, safe way. 

Parents feed, house, clothe, teach, and protect the child.  It is impossible to put a money value on the work and care given by parents.  Children therefore have a debt of sorts towards their parents, and part of the reasonable payment of this debt is for children to respect and be kind and helpful to their parents.  They should not give their parents trouble and worry, and should strive to follow, or at least give respectful consideration to the advice of their parents.

One important part of this which is often given insufficient attention however is that the need for ethics and good manners does not go only one way.  Parents also owe certain proper ethics to their children as well.  Parents have the responsibility to provide for the basic needs of their children, and have the reponsibility to teach their children, to provide moral guidance to their children, teaching right and wrong.  Parents have a responsibility to practice what they preach, teaching in the best way -- by example.  Children have a right as well to the most valuable and crucial resource that parents have to offer, more valuable than money, toys, electronics, or anything else -- their parents’ time.

Parents have a responsibility to do what they can to help their children reach their full potential.

In return for these awesome responsibilities willingly shouldered by their parents, children must follow the leadership of their parents, doing their best to respect their judgment, understanding the responsibilities that the parents have towards them and the wisdom that parents have in the hindsight of greater experience.

At the same time, however, parents do not have to be tyrants in their authority over their children.  The parents, as the holders of responsibility, are the ultimate decision makers in the household, but the children, where reasonable, particularly as the children grow older and more mature should have an opportunity to make their voice heard in important household decision.  As the children grow older, in recognition of the fact that they are becoming more mature and closer to the time when they themselves will have to make responsible decisions over their own household, they should be given increasing say in decisions and should be treated more and more as equals, as adults.  As they grow older and more intellectually capable, children increasingly have a right, within reason, to understand the reasons behind their parents decisions where it affects them.  

On the other hand, children have a responsibility to not be overly argumentative with their parents, and should recognize the work that their parents have done to help them over the years, and should recognize that their parents have more responsibility and experience than they do.  Children, correspondingly, as they grow older and more mature, have a responsibility, to respond more and more like adults and less and less like children when the decisions of their parents conflict with their own wills.  If a youth wants to be taken seriously as an adult, he cannot respond with childish screaming and tantrums when he doesn't get his way.  Mature adults discuss matters in a calm, reasonable manner.  On the other hand, it is unrealistic for parents to expect their children to deal maturely with constraints to their will if the parents are not able to set a strong and good example in this regard.

Children, alternatively, have a responsibility as they get older and more capable to help their parents out around the home, to not be a burden upon their parents, but to do their share to make the household function.