Is it appropriate to analyze one’s parents?
Generally speaking, it is not respectful, and certainly not reverential, to analyze one’s parents. Thus, to do so would be to violate the mitzvah of kibud av v’em, honoring one’s parents (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 10:20), and revering them (Leviticus 19:3), which includes a prohibition against embarrassing one’s parents.
However, if analysis of one’s parents is necessary for the health and welfare of the child as determined by objective authorities, then it may be allowed and even obligatory. It would be subject to the limitations to the mitzvah of honoring parents discussed by poskim when it may detrimentally affect the child (see, for example, Rabbi Yosef Colon Trabotto in Shaalos U’Teshuvos Maharik 366).
Obviously, even under these circumstances, any analysis of parents should be done with utmost discretion and confidentiality not to embarrass or hurt parents unnecessarily. Professionals may also advise to limit the child’s exposure to more information than necessary about his or her parents. These matters, like all those touching halacha, need to be consulted with legitimate Torah and medical authorities.
— Rabbi Simon Jacobson,
renowned Lubavitch author and lecturer
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The Torah obligates a person to have yirah – fear or awe – towards his parents. The Gemara indicates that we must bear public embarrassment from a parent rather than speak harshly to him or her. The child must experience the parent as a powerful figure, to be awed and feared, regardless of whether the parent is in fact such a figure.
In analyzing a parent, one seems to take a more superior attitude toward him or her. The child delves into the parent’s motivations or life events to see how the parent developed his or her particular array of strengths and weaknesses. The child, I worry, often walks away thinking he or she now knows better, which is the opposite of morah, fear or awe.
(Even were the parent to need analysis, halacha requires certain parental needs to be handled by non-children because they involve a lack of morah. Children, for example, should not take blood from a parent or restrain a deranged parent even for the parent’s own good.)
On the other hand, analyzing a parent might help a child adopt the obligatory morah and kavod. For many, understanding a parent’s challenges heals childhood dramas fueling unfortunate reactions. Unresolved issues can be alleviated or ameliorated by a new perspective, enabling the child to better treat the parent as Hashem tells us to.
The context matters, and the point of the analysis must be remembered – that the insights are being sought primarily to put the relationship on its most proper footing. It has to be a matter of: “This or these figures, whom I am obligated to treat with awe and fear, have elements of their psyches I seek to consider/discover to relate to them more closely as G-d told me to.”
In that framework, analysis of a parent seems permitted, possibly positive.
— Rabbi Dr. Gidon Rothstein, author,
regular contributor to www.Torahmusings.com
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We live in the age of disrespect. The concept of respecting elders or respecting authority seems to have passed from our mindset. The fact that this question is even asked is indicative of this point.
You judge or analyze people below you, or maybe even your equals, but someone who is above you and is supposed to be respected and revered isn’t to be judged.
Analyzing one’s parents, or passing judgment upon their strengths, weakness, or anything in between indicates a complete lack of understanding of what respect is.
So, suffice it to say, I don’t believe it is anywhere within a child’s right to analyze or in any sense judge his parents.
— Rabbi Ben Zion Shafier, founder of The Shmuz
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It depends on what is meant by “analyze.” Certainly, sitting in judgment of one’s parents is forbidden. We are mandated not only to honor, but also to revere, our parents – we must possess both kibud and morah toward them. Analyzing one’s parents – and their virtues or vices as parents or individuals – would violate the latter obligation.
This applies even if parents act abusively. The Gemara (Kiddushin 31a) states, “If the child is wearing expensive clothing and sitting among noblemen, and one’s father or mother tears his clothing, strikes him in the head and spits in his face, the child cannot embarrass them but must remain silent, fearing the King of Kings who commanded him to act in this manner.” This obligation is codified by the Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah 240:3).
Admittedly the Gemara’s case is extreme, but the point is clear: scrutinizing, critiquing, or rebuking our parents is generally forbidden.
However, if a parent torments or traumatizes a child to the point of psychological dysfunction, it would certainly be permissible – even perhaps therapeutically indispensable – to discuss one’s upbringing in a counseling setting.
Discussing parents and parenting is a staple of certain types of therapy. But it should be done, wherever possible, with respect and reverence, and eschewing the tendency to blame all of one’s troubles on other people. Indeed, recognizing that no one is perfect can even engender the assumption of personal responsibility for one’s own fate in life, and that can lead to healthy outcomes.
If “analyzing” parents means better understanding their decisions in order for the child to learn parenting skills, then the answer is yes. After all, as a wise rav once said, “G-d takes revenge on children by eventually making them parents.”
— Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, mara d’asra of
Congregation Bnai Yeshurun of Teaneck, NJ
