It is not always the case that your mom cries when you've done something wrong. I don't mean to squash anybody's ideal of what a mom or a
parent should, could, or can be. In the ideal world certainly, where your mom is perfect and exists only to make you happy (in the long term,
Aristotelean sense), then when your mom cries as a result of your actions, then you have done something wrong. However, in the
real world, I think it gets a lot murkier.
When a person and their parent(s) are in agreement about what needs to happen, then there are no problems. If you have the same ideas about what you need to do to be happy, or be succesful, or whatever those goals may be, even if you don't want to do it, you can at least agree that your parent is in the right, becuase you share those goals. But, not everybody believes that the same thing is the "right" thing to do in a given situation. Perhaps this is just my moral relativism speaking here, but at the very least, no two people can totally agree on what is right in a given situation. Therefore, in many senses, if you have done something your parents think is wrong but you think it is right, there is no clear cut solution. Just becuase your parents are your parents do not make them arbiters of all moral reason. (
Cheesy Example: If your parents perhaps have something against people of a different race, but you disagree with them, is it wrong to disagree with them? Or
do children have a right to their own moral opinions?) I won't try to voice my opinion on when people are allowed to have their own
moral judgement, but at some point, people can decide for themselves what is right and wrong for them.
I've made my mom cry. A lot. I'm not ashamed about my actions that have caused her to cry. I don't mean to say that I haven't done anything wrong, or that I'm somehow morally superior to my mom, it's more along the lines that I didn't find personal fault with my actions.
Personal Example: My mom cried when I decided to go out with my best friend,
senior year in highschool. I knew my mom didn't like her. It didn't stop me from saying yes when my best friend asked me out. Why didn't my mom like her? She thought she was weird. Not anything like "Oh, she's a bad person." or "I don't like her becuase she's mean." or "I've heard bad things about her." None of that. Just..."I think she's weird." Four or five years later now, and my mom now knows her a little more, and really likes her. (Communication issues, aside, here...) At the time, however, my mom was really upset about the fact that I was dating her. Her being upset hurt me really deeply. I knew there was absolutely nothing wrong in the world with me going out with my best friend, who was and still is the most devoted and caring person I have ever met. Yet, seeing my mom cry and how much I hurt her made me cry, and gave me a short fit of depression and a stomachache so violent that I couldn't deal with the situation any more. It was one of those evil holes in the pit of your stomach when you get really upset that eats away at your insides and leaves you crawling with a sense of
fear and
despair. Then, like the emotionally immature highschool senior I was at the time, I ran away from the problem, and told my
best friend how I was feeling and broke up with her, and my mom never spoke of it again. My best friend (who still is my best friend and still very close) got very upset about the whole thing because I had acted like a fool. For a while afterwards, she developed what I took as a complex about people she was going out with shortly running away from her. Just like I did. So, in the space of a week, becuase of how upset I got becuase of my mom crying, I threw away a chance at a relationship with somebody I cared deeply about and hurt the closest friend I'd ever had.
(
Excuse the language, but it seems in the spirit of the title of the node.) And
that is why I don't think I've fucked up when my mom cries. I think it's
more fucked up to think, when people get upset becuase of something you've done, that it's necessarily you who has fucked up.