Holding people responsible for their choices.

[Frosty]

Something I really like watching FDR for is that it's one of the few places of discussion that dare hold people accountable for their choices and ultimately their actions, and it seems to be unwaivering in the application to both men and women, and my experience in life has been overwhelmingly that people are much less likely to hold women accountable for their actions and so it comes more of a shock almost everyone when they are.

 

Recently I've begun wondering to what degree we can hold people responsible especially with regards to something complex like relationships. The typical issue that occurs with call in shows regarding broken relationships is getting the person to admit they made a mistake with regards to who they let into their lives and holding them accountable for that mistake so they can make better choices in future. I generally agree with this position and I apply it to my own life with who I make friends with.

 

It was only natural that I applied this to my own parents and have generally held my mother and father accountable for a less than ideal upbringing. Past about the age of 10 I was raised by my mother when my father left, we had moved far away from all immediate family so for a large part of my teen life onwards I had zero contact with anyone from my family, me and my brother and sister spent a few years in foster care in our teens when my mother failed to be able to cope, luckily my friends family took me in during this time so I wasn't with strangers.

 

I had a discussion recently with my brother and he's more forgiving of our mother, he understands the idea of holding people accountable (especially that we should acknowledge that there's a lack of this with respect to women) but he's quicker to put limits on the blame for our mother and I think it comes down to what is reasonable to expect someone else to know or predict about another person when becoming involved with them. There's cases where people obviously lack empathy and you become involved because they're for example really attractive and we can squarely hold these people accountable for simply not thinking at all. But what about when someone isn't very well educated, doesn't have a lot of self knowledge, is under pressure in society to do act a certain way and isn't able to get access to knowledge and statistics we have now?

 

I realise that this might sound like me throwing up excuses for her, these aren't things I believe they're things I'm considering as possibilities. Right now I'm in a place where I'm really indifferent about family and relationships in general, I have absolutely no incentive to go and visit my mother who moved away from where me and my brother live, or reconnect with our family who are even further away, I feel like if the conflict in my head regarding my mother and to what degree I should hold her accountable for my upbringing can be more lenient on her, I might be more inclined to visit her and move towards caring more about family. I don't feel like emotionally bothered about being a very indifferent person because that's just how I feel, but intellectually I know this is something that is probably caused by childhood issues and is sustained by avoidance of getting close to people and whatnot.

 

It's difficult because emotionally not caring about this stuff from an intellectual standpoint is actually quite handy because people around me generally tend to find family interaction to come with just about as much bad as good, almost like it's a chore that they also enjoy.

 

Anyway this is kind of rambling but I thought I better state the source of my thoughts first before I expand it into a more general discussion that we could potentially apply to everyone, acknowledging we made a bad decision and improving is super important, but when it comes to holding people accountable for the outcome, if that person is in some way ignorant then how do we weigh and judge that? On a more personal note should I bother making an effort to get back in touch with relatives and family when I feel indifferent, when it's likely that it's largely down to their own actions that I'm indifferent in the first place, isn't that kind of what a parent deserves if they raise a child in an environment where they isolate them from family?

[A4E]

I have a simple view on this topic.

 

Condoning bad behavior will enable a (more) harmful society.

Ostracizing or retributing bad behavior will create a less harmful society.

 

And in case someone can find a person who is fine with anyone harming him or stealing from him, then everyone implicitly agree that we need and want a less harmful society.

 

 

Trying to find excuses for bad people is meaningless, unproductive, and inefficient, as it is a giant waste of time. Going on such a wild goose chase will severely hamper any and all efforts to create a peaceful world.

 

When I see a mosquito, I don't try to find excuses for it and let it have its way with me. I recognize that it is going to harm me, and so I will protect myself accordingly.

[J. D. Stembal]

I cannot recall if I replied already and the post in still in mod purgatory, or whether I intended to reply later. The topic is so important that I will reply again, if I feel like it.

Thank you for taking the time to discuss the family history a bit, Frosty. More on that later...

Most importantly, we, as philosophically-minded folks, have to practice what we preach. I find myself thinking about decisions that I could have made differently in my own past, and I am resolving to make more informed choices in the future, especially with regard to the fairer sex.

Unfortunately, women do not generally follow examples set my men.

Men are expected to be responsible and provide the roses, dinners, drinks and condoms until such a time when the woman wants a child. Then, if the male provider is not forthcoming, she will initiate alternative measures. When a woman tries to get you to not use rubbers because she's already on the Pill, she is fishing for a semen provider. I have a sense that this is how most marriages begin. Oh, honey, I'm pregnant! Isn't it a wonderful surprise?

With hope, we can create a community of ruthlessly honest women through the spread of philosophy. I've been set up for the accidental pregnancy more times than I can count on one hand, but luckily, I was never snared by the violence of the Matriarchal Matrix, which is fortuitous because I'm too pretty for prison.

Back to you mother...

What does her family narrative sound like? Did your father really leave her, or was he driven away? Why did she move, twice? I am highly skeptical of the story you present because it prompts many more questions than it answers.

I have a sneaking suspicion that women often intentionally mate with men that they know they will have to oust from the family in the future. They also know that they can pull the victim card later to charm another man into helping them out. This is why the feminist message is so vicious and brutal. We are attempting to shut down the efficiency of modern hypergamy by educating the clueless men out there about it.

These are some of the topics that men need to begin to discuss openly in public with each other.





 

[Brad Sherard]

Thanks for sharing such a personal subject. Even among like minded people where this might seem like preaching to the choir, I imagine it can't be easy.

 

As for the question of responsibility vs ignorance, a good tool for differentiating lack of understanding from willful wrongdoing is to note whether or not these lack of standards are universally applied or not. What I mean is, a thief is marked as evil not by the fact that he initiates violence by stealing, but because he also insists upon ownership of his own possessions. He holds two standards upon people; one for himself and one for others. He isn't some fool that doesn't understand the concept of property, thinking anyone can take anything in the immediate moment and use it. No, he knows and upholds that principle except when inconvenient. He knows better.

 

So apply the same test to people in general. If it is ignorance, you won't see them upholding standards of behavior in others while avoiding it in themselves. Look at what your mother expects from you and ask yourself if she expects the same from herself.

[Frosty]

Condoning bad behavior will enable a (more) harmful society.

Ostracizing or retributing bad behavior will create a less harmful society.

 

And in case someone can find a person who is fine with anyone harming him or stealing from him, then everyone implicitly agree that we need and want a less harmful society.

 

Trying to find excuses for bad people is meaningless, unproductive, and inefficient, as it is a giant waste of time. Going on such a wild goose chase will severely hamper any and all efforts to create a peaceful world.

 

I agree that we don't want to condone behaviour and it's important that when you do make a mistake and someone points out the reasons why, that we're able to improve and avoid the mistake in future, that is absolutely not in question.

 

However I do make a distinction between condoning a behaviour and holding people responsible for that behaviour, in most warps of life we treat people differently depending on if they're capable of understanding the consequences of their actions, we treat minors differently, same with people with mental health issues, sadly we often treat these things as binary (on or off) rather than a scale, so someone on trial for murder can be found to be insane and will be sentenced differently, but there's no scale of understanding there.

 

I want to stress again that I'm not trying to find excuses for her, I know that it's super tempting to believe that's what I'm doing but I'm not, I'm genuinely not decided on the issue and I've so far err'd on the side of caution and held her completely responsible for these actions, but I've been met with arguments that it might not necessarily be fair to hold that strict standard but rather it's more nuanced. What sparked my interest in the topic started with my mother which I explained for context but I think there's a larger and more general discussion to be had about the topic which is more what I'm interested in.

 

Most importantly, we, as philosophically-minded folks, have to practice what we preach. I find myself thinking about decisions that I could have made differently in my own past, and I am resolving to make more informed choices in the future, especially with regard to the fairer sex.

 

What does her family narrative sound like? Did your father really leave her, or was he driven away? Why did she move, twice? I am highly skeptical of the story you present because it prompts many more questions than it answers.

 

I have a sneaking suspicion that women often intentionally mate with men that they know they will have to oust from the family in the future. They also know that they can pull the victim card later to charm another man into helping them out. This is why the feminist message is so vicious and brutal. We are attempting to shut down the efficiency of modern hypergamy by educating the clueless men out there about it.

 

Sure, but some of these choices might have been made say out of impulse without thinking about it, which is something we can reasonably hold you accountable for, and some of those choices might have been made because you were ignorant about the outcome, in which case we can still educate and correct future similar decisions but we surely cannot hold you accountable to the same degree. And even if we could argue that we hold you accountable regardless, like we assert you should have had a deeper understanding of women before you made your choice, doesn't that also depend to what degree you had access to resources to educate yourself?

 

She's never been particularly critical of my father, she's pointed out some of the obviously bad things he'd done in the past which I can confirm, but otherwise it would be really easy for her to spin him as the bad guy as she's one of my few sources of information for him and she's refrained from doing that. Now that could be because he was a lot worse and she'd rather not admit to marrying someone like that, but my gut tells me that since it's so socially accepted that women are the victims in these circumstances that this kind of manipulation of the truth isn't required. I think the break up was fairly mutual they argued a bunch shortly before they separated, I know my dad was depressed and from what I've been told somewhat chemically imbalanced as he attempted to take his own life so there was obviously stressors from both sides, I think he was a lot unhappier than she was and ultimately he was the one to walk out.

 

She moved more than twice actually, we moved when I was about 10 for the first time, my mother strongly wanted to travel and they moved out their house and took a fancy camper van around europe for probably 3-4 months during which time we were home schooled. When we arrived back in the UK we travelled north slowly looking for a place to settle and we ended up hundred of miles away from where our relatives lived. They broke up not long after settling down, after that we moved from where we were to a village close by but on the coast and stayed there for a few years before moving yet again into a town close by where we stayed throughout my high school and college years, even once I moved out to go to Uni she'd moved yet again, this time miles away several cities over. I hated moving as a kid I almost always lost access to my close friends and suffered the pain of being somewhere new and being the kid trying to fit into somewhere new yet again.

 

If you're sceptical of the story then that's fair, all I can say is everything I've said is true to the best of my knowledge. Needless to say that my childhood was pretty messed up.

 

Thanks for sharing such a personal subject. Even among like minded people where this might seem like preaching to the choir, I imagine it can't be easy.

 

As for the question of responsibility vs ignorance, a good tool for differentiating lack of understanding from willful wrongdoing is to note whether or not these lack of standards are universally applied or not. What I mean is, a thief is marked as evil not by the fact that he initiates violence by stealing, but because he also insists upon ownership of his own possessions. He holds two standards upon people; one for himself and one for others. He isn't some fool that doesn't understand the concept of property, thinking anyone can take anything in the immediate moment and use it. No, he knows and upholds that principle except when inconvenient. He knows better.

 

So apply the same test to people in general. If it is ignorance, you won't see them upholding standards of behaviour in others while avoiding it in themselves. Look at what your mother expects from you and ask yourself if she expects the same from herself.

 

It's actually not too hard to share, I tend to be fairly detached emotionally from it all, it feels almost as I'm describing things that happened to someone else, no doubt mostly due to my upbringing.

 

This is actually a really interesting answer, I think that's a good way to help differentiate intent when doing bad things. My only issue with this is that if you're knowingly going to do something which heavily effects yourself then this judgement doesn't make as much sense. When you marry and have kids you obviously effect the person you marry and your children but you heavily effect yourself which is why I'm more prone to lean towards ignorance. That and because I know education especially for girls was much worse when my mother was at school (she's 63 now I think) and there certainly wasn't an internet with free flow of information and things like FDR, not to mention there was huge social pressure on women to find a man and settle down early out of school, women often didn't go on to further education for these reasons, they had children much more early. I think these things can be reasonably seen as contributing towards how someone might be ignorant towards philosophy, self knowledge and being aware of things like psychological markers and behavioural traits of bad people.

 

I don't know that my mother expects anything of me any more, she moved away quite some time ago, we see each other at best once a year, she thinks that I must hate her, but I don't I'm just extremely indifferent about the whole thing, in my opinion I think that someone who raises a child to be like that kind of deserves the outcome they get, or maybe that's just an excuse for me to not go and see her because I'm lazy and don't want to spend the money on travel, it's hard to tell at this point.

 

Back to the more general, thinking about this some more I know what I'm sure of, that I have at least some self knowledge and that I can and should absolutely hold myself responsible for the people I chose to be close to, there's just no way at this stage I could claim any kind of ignorance, but that's completely moot because I'm a MGTOW. I believe that we should retrospectively admit when we've made a mistake and correct for the future. But when it comes to judging others who I believe are reasonably ignorant I'm not so sure, I'm not trying to give people a pass, the only way I can come to terms with it is to imagine myself in their position with their level of education and options to learn and when I imagine myself in the position that my mother was in I'm not so sure. A lot of my own progress with philosophy and self knowledge has come from finding FDR, had I not had access to that who knows what I'd know now, I can't say for sure it's knowledge I would have sought out else where without some initial hook to get my interested.

[J. D. Stembal]

Frosty, again, this is powerful information to have, and it is heartening that you are sharing it here. It demonstrates courage, a muscle that must be frequently flexed to develop properly.

I free admit that I know better than to get sexual involved with certain women. I knew the red flags, and ignored them to get my dick wet. I wagered many times that the cost of obtaining access to eggs was not too high, and made many miscalculations after becoming "Sprung on the Cat" as Sir Mixalot once pronounced. This is not uncommon in the manosphere.

Men knowingly and intentionally do all sorts of stupid shit to attract the eggs, like buying used German cars.

 

I am particularly concerned about the constant moving, the foster care and your father's suicide attempt. Suicide attempts are cries for attention. Real suicides do not leave a survivor. Your father was suffering and your mother contributed to it, rather than seeking a mutual resolution. Married men don't off themselves or think about suicide unless their spouse is extremely toxic or the man is strung up by the toes in family court by the former spouse.

How many other men did you mother date during your childhood? If you didn't like moving, why did she do it so often? Did you tell her how you felt, and what was her response? Get down to the bottom of what she was doing while you and your siblings were in foster care.

 

[brucethecollie]

How does your mother feel about your childhood and how she raised you?  Is she aware of how her actions caused you harm?  

 

I had to confront my parents recently about things.  I remain in contact because I have heard the explanations (for the sake of helping me understand the underlying issues that motivated their ignorant and mislead actions) and I've heard apologies.  And I've witnessed changed behavior.  It was tricky at first when I sought to bring all my painful issues up with them but we went through each one by one and I can forgive (though never forget) mistakes when someone is aware of them, sincere in apologizing, and showing the will to go forward with respect to me and themselves.  If it's something they are doing in the present I discuss openly and honestly.  If they don't want to discuss it I retreat until they do.  My parents have responded well to my patience, coming around to agree to most of what I share with them and working hard to think about things they haven't ever considered before.

 

But, anyway, what I'm saying is that for me, how a person thinks and acts today matters a lot.  Someone who never understands or acknowledges how they hurt me (like my own brother) and thus, can't be sorry and can't stop the hurtful actions is banned from my life.  I can feel compassion for him because he has not fared well in his personal struggles but I have to take care of myself and my little family.  In general, 99% of the time, I don't carry around a weight from the mistakes loved ones made which affected me negatively.  I see them as victims, largely of themselves and whether I choose to have contact with someone or not, I try to let go of anger and instead use my energy to fuel my determination to be the best person I can be.  Kind of like having a long sigh and then going off to do what must be done-that is, the right thing.  And for you that may be staying away completely or trying to make contact and attempt communicating, based on your careful reasoning.

[Frosty]

I free admit that I know better than to get sexual involved with certain women. I knew the red flags, and ignored them to get my dick wet. I wagered many times that the cost of obtaining access to eggs was not too high, and made many miscalculations after becoming "Sprung on the Cat" as Sir Mixalot once pronounced. This is not uncommon in the manosphere.

 

Men knowingly and intentionally do all sorts of stupid shit to attract the eggs, like buying used German cars.

 

I am particularly concerned about the constant moving, the foster care and your father's suicide attempt. Suicide attempts are cries for attention. Real suicides do not leave a survivor. Your father was suffering and your mother contributed to it, rather than seeking a mutual resolution. Married men don't off themselves or think about suicide unless their spouse is extremely toxic or the man is strung up by the toes in family court by the former spouse.

 

How many other men did you mother date during your childhood? If you didn't like moving, why did she do it so often? Did you tell her how you felt, and what was her response? Get down to the bottom of what she was doing while you and your siblings were in foster care.

 

Yeah I made the stupid mistake of getting into trouble with a woman who was bad for me, even after learning some self knowledge and getting better at spotting red flags, slowly falling for someone under the right circumstances gives you that haze, I had a good friend to help me be more objective but I still proceeded in the end with the knowledge that it was silly but i'll take the risk and accept the responsibility, didn't work though, silly really.

 

Yeah none of it's is particarly good but the moving was disruptive, the suicide attempt was only an attempt because he was rescued not because he didn't go through with it, it was a car in a garage with the engine on and the garage nailed shut with 6" nails, it took the fire dept to cut the door off, he was pretty close to not making it. Again not making excuses but as I understand it he was a bit chemically unstable and ended up on meds after the attempt to help keep him more balanced, I don't know the details though.

 

She didn't date anyone else really, probably the most messed up thing that occurred was she wrote to some guy in prison (I have no idea why, some weird program) and after many years of that it became romantic with the guy, he got out and they tried to have a relationship during the period we were in foster care, it only occurred to me many years later that those 2 things might be related, there was some time between them things occurring but it was certainly less than a year. I've never confronted her about that and I'm pretty sure she'd deny it and say it was a coincidence.

 

I always protested moving, she claimed it was for convenience with respect to schooling and things like that, but we were on benefits and that's all paid for by the school, she's continued to move after all 3 of us (me and my bro/sis) moved out, so it's obviously some compulsion she has, she see's it as normal and probably doesn't even understand it's bad for children growing up.

 

How does your mother feel about your childhood and how she raised you?  Is she aware of how her actions caused you harm?  

 

I had to confront my parents recently about things.  I remain in contact because I have heard the explanations (for the sake of helping me understand the underlying issues that motivated their ignorant and mislead actions) and I've heard apologies.  And I've witnessed changed behavior.  It was tricky at first when I sought to bring all my painful issues up with them but we went through each one by one and I can forgive (though never forget) mistakes when someone is aware of them, sincere in apologizing, and showing the will to go forward with respect to me and themselves.  If it's something they are doing in the present I discuss openly and honestly.  If they don't want to discuss it I retreat until they do.  My parents have responded well to my patience, coming around to agree to most of what I share with them and working hard to think about things they haven't ever considered before.

 

But, anyway, what I'm saying is that for me, how a person thinks and acts today matters a lot.  Someone who never understands or acknowledges how they hurt me (like my own brother) and thus, can't be sorry and can't stop the hurtful actions is banned from my life.  I can feel compassion for him because he has not fared well in his personal struggles but I have to take care of myself and my little family.  In general, 99% of the time, I don't carry around a weight from the mistakes loved ones made which affected me negatively.  I see them as victims, largely of themselves and whether I choose to have contact with someone or not, I try to let go of anger and instead use my energy to fuel my determination to be the best person I can be.  Kind of like having a long sigh and then going off to do what must be done-that is, the right thing.  And for you that may be staying away completely or trying to make contact and attempt communicating, based on your careful reasoning.

 

I think she feels like she did an OK job given the circumstances, single mother on benefits with no support from family and not many friends to speak of, all 3 of us went to Uni, so it didn't crash and burn but certainly there's a lot of mental baggage there for me and I suspect my brother and sister. I don't see most of my issues as problems which is why I don't seek any kind of therapy for them.

 

It sounds like you had relative success with your parents which is good, although I assume you have some kind of emotional attachment to them and see them fairly regularly? That's not the position I'm in right now I have no desire to see them or build bridges because I'm just detached from it.

 

I had a discussion with my brother about this last night and I was explaining this thread to him, he may even have found and read it, but anyway I think my conclusions so far is what I've put before, that ignorance of the damage you're doing is a reasonable reason to forgive, I think that she's just not aware of a lot of these more complicated topics of how moving around harms children's growth and things like that, it's just not something that occurred to her, she's not incapable of learning but she's generally not that smart and certainly not in any way philosophically inclined. I guess also motivation is the other factor for this, why you make decisions and that would require talking to her about a lot of difficult things and honestly I don't see there being any positive payback for me in doing that.

 

It was supposed to be more of a general thread about the topic of holding people responsible and it got more personal than I intended, that's not a problem emotionally, I was just more interested in the more general application of these ideas which then I was obviously going to apply to that relationship I have with my mother but also how I can judge my own and others relationships in future. Either way I feel being able to talk out loud (type) and get feedback is helpful, I have a much more balanced opinion on this now which takes into account more of the subtleties, rather that noticing the outcome is bad (or less than ideal) and then fully blaming your parents. As my brothers partner pointed out during our discussion, they were only raised by probably fairly irresponsible parents themselves.

 

Appreciate the people who took the time to read and reply, it's become a bit rambly.

[labmath2]

To address the more general point, responsibilty is based on two things; knowledge and reason. Many people i imagine are more knowledgeable than you realize. Especially as a parent, i think you can tell what your child like or dislikes and how they feel. The hard part is reasoning. Too many people substitute popular (social) reasoning for theirs. Think about the asch experiment or milgram experiment. How much responsibilty they hold (in my opinion) should depend on their capacity to see the problem after the fact.

[Susana]

Holding people accountable

 

Let’s take the example of "poor, uneducated, blinded by attractiveness and society."

What do you think is more important to these people? Finding the best possible answer to raise their children and live their life or just "going with the flow"  If you suddenly have termites or cacaroaches or something do you go out and figure out what to do?! Or do you just keep going along? If you are a renter you might pick option 2 but long term and even in the day to day this sounds like a disaster.

 

But I believe the real "answer" to look at these "excuses/explanations" is when people are confronted with the truth, for example if you were to confront your mother that her actions had a negative effect on you and you are hurt.....what would she say? What do these people say when their children demand or request better treatment? Do they even care or want to maybe change?

THAT has nothing to do with income, education, lust..... and everything to do with people's "character" if they are positive or not. If they actually "care" about you or their children.  Or do they only care about what is most convenient for them.

 

Also please read Real Time Relationships, I just finished it and it was great! really eye-opening.

 

 

Recently I've begun wondering to what degree we can hold people responsible especially with regards to something complex like relationships. The typical issue that occurs with call in shows regarding broken relationships is getting the person to admit they made a mistake with regards to who they let into their lives and holding them accountable for that mistake so they can make better choices in future. I generally agree with this position and I apply it to my own life with who I make friends with.

 

It was only natural that I applied this to my own parents and have generally held my mother and father accountable for a less than ideal upbringing. Past about the age of 10 I was raised by my mother when my father left, we had moved far away from all immediate family so for a large part of my teen life onwards I had zero contact with anyone from my family, me and my brother and sister spent a few years in foster care in our teens when my mother failed to be able to cope, luckily my friends family took me in during this time so I wasn't with strangers.

 

I had a discussion recently with my brother and he's more forgiving of our mother, he understands the idea of holding people accountable (especially that we should acknowledge that there's a lack of this with respect to women) but he's quicker to put limits on the blame for our mother and I think it comes down to what is reasonable to expect someone else to know or predict about another person when becoming involved with them. There's cases where people obviously lack empathy and you become involved because they're for example really attractive and we can squarely hold these people accountable for simply not thinking at all. But what about when someone isn't very well educated, doesn't have a lot of self knowledge, is under pressure in society to do act a certain way and isn't able to get access to knowledge and statistics we have now?

 

[Frosty]

To address the more general point, responsibilty is based on two things; knowledge and reason. Many people i imagine are more knowledgeable than you realize. Especially as a parent, i think you can tell what your child like or dislikes and how they feel. The hard part is reasoning. Too many people substitute popular (social) reasoning for theirs. Think about the asch experiment or milgram experiment. How much responsibilty they hold (in my opinion) should depend on their capacity to see the problem after the fact.

 

It can be hard to judge other peoples knowledge, here at FDR everything seems to be questioned and rationally arrived at where as a lot of people are really open to lack of knowledge or mis-information because they just don't have that same philosophical interest and drive to learn. Sure you can tell what your child likes but that's oftne itself not enough, kids like sugar but just giving in to their cravings for it and feeding them it would be harmful so you'd need knowledge that extends past just how they react to cirumstances. Also a lot of the time damage that is done simply isn't very visible at first and we need external sources of knowledge such as studies to help us get more accurate knowledge.

 

I wasn't aware of them experiments that gives me something to study that I'm sure I'll find helpful, appreciate the heads up.

 

But I believe the real "answer" to look at these "excuses/explanations" is when people are confronted with the truth, for example if you were to confront your mother that her actions had a negative effect on you and you are hurt.....what would she say? What do these people say when their children demand or request better treatment? Do they even care or want to maybe change?

THAT has nothing to do with income, education, lust..... and everything to do with people's "character" if they are positive or not. If they actually "care" about you or their children.  Or do they only care about what is most convenient for them.

 

I think this is where I run into a problem because I don't really see any benefit to confronting her about this, I don't have any realistic expectations that it would end well, I suspect she'd just be really upset and confrontational with excuses like she was a single mother and did the best she could with what she has.

 

Debating other topics with her really just proves to me that she has this mindset of getting an idea dogmatically in your head and then irrationally defending it, I've had very similar experiences debating religious people, they tend to hop between several pillars of argument that holds up their belief and when you knock one down they rely on another and forget you just knocked the last one down. It's frustrating, some people just don't like to change their mind.