According to Osho, parents become cruel when they treat children as extensions to complete their unfulfilled ambitions and to gain a false immortality, using them as means rather than honoring them as ends. To avoid repeating this, love for love's sake: revere the child as a unique guest, drop projections and ideologies, refuse to mold, and give unconditional respect, space, and freedom to unfold.
Don’t use kids to finish your dreams; just love them and let them become themselves.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Why are parents so cruel to their children? Is there any sense in making them responsible? And how can one avoid making the same mistake?
There is something ESSENTIAL about climbing trees. If a child has NEVER been doing it, he will remain something poor, he will miss some richness -- for his whole life. You have deprived him of something beautiful, and there is no other way to know about it! Later on it will become more difficult for him to climb on the tree, it will look stupid or foolish or ridiculous. Let him climb the tree. And if you are afraid, help him, go and teach him. You also climb with him! Help him learn so he doesn't fall. And once in a while, falling from a tree is not so bad either. Rather than being deprived forever.... The child wants to go out in the rains and wants to run around the streets in the rain, and you are afraid he may catch a cold or get pneumonia or something --…
Ayaz was the boon companion and slave of the great conqueror mahmud, the idol breaker, monarch of ghazna. He had first come to the court as a beggarly slave, and mahmud had made him his adviser and friend.
THE OTHER COURTIERS WERE JEALOUS OF AYAZ AND OBSERVED HIS EVERY MOVEMENT, INTENDING TO DENOUNCE HIM FOR SOME SHORTCOMING, THUS ENCOMPASSING HIS DOWNFALL. ONE DAY THESE JEALOUS ONES WENT TO MAHMUD AND SAID, "SHADOW OF ALLAH UPON EARTH! KNOW THAT, INDEFATIGABLE AS ALWAYS IN YOUR SERVICE, WE HAVE BEEN KEEPING YOUR SLAVE AYAZ UNDER CLOSE SCRUTINY. WE HAVE COME NOW TO REPORT THAT EVERY DAY AS SOON AS HE LEAVES THE COURT, AYAZ GOES INTO A SMALL ROOM WHERE NOBODY ELSE IS EVER ALLOWED. HE SPENDS SOME TIME THERE, AND THEN GOES TO HIS OWN QUARTERS. WE FEAR THAT THIS HABIT OF HIS MAY BE CONNECTED WITH A GUILTY SECRET: PERHAPS HE CONSORTS WITH PLOTTERS, EVEN, WHO HAVE DESIGNS UPON YOUR MAJESTY'S LIFE." FOR A LONG TIME MAHMUD REFUSED TO HEAR ANYTHING AGAINST AYAZ. BUT THE MYSTERY OF THE LOCKED ROOM PREYED UPON HIS MIND UNTIL HE FELT THAT HE…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT ARE THE MAJOR MISTAKES IN BRINGING UP CHILDREN? The major mistakes in bringing up children are many, but I will talk only about the most important. First: the idea that they belong to you. They come through you; you have been a passage, but they don't belong to you. They are not your possessions. Out of this idea of possessiveness many mistakes arise. Once you start thinking that they are your possessions, you have reduced them into things, because only things can be possessed, not human beings. It is the ugliest act you can do. And those poor children are so helpless, so dependent on you, they cannot rebel. They accept whatever your idea is. And to protect your possessiveness you make them Christians the moment they are born.
First, I had said: give love to your parents. Those who have asked the question are asking for love from their children for themselves. That is where the mistake lies. All parents ask for love from their children. Your parents must have asked it of you, and you could not give it. You too are asking your children, and the chances of receiving love are very small. Your children will ask their children in turn. What I said was that children should give love to their parents—not that parents should demand love from their children. And love never comes by demanding it; even if it does, it has no value. The moment demand arises, love dies. Secondly, a parent’s love for the child is spontaneous, effortless, natural. Just as a river flows downward, so too does this love flow downward. A child’s love for the parents is very unnatural, very…
Beloved Osho, is there any biological chance of an unconditioned, free and loving relationship between child and parent?
Give the child all your experiences. Make him aware that he was conceived in a very loving orgasmic moment, that love is a great gift of existence. And you have to make love the central point of your life, because only through love can you step beyond blind nature into the world of super-nature, where no blindness exists, where you become a seer. Yes, it is possible, but not possible through biology alone. It is possible if you are courageous enough to make your love your temple, your place of meditation. Then you will be attracting a soul already having the potential of uniqueness. And then give him every possibility for freedom, even if it goes against you. The freedom of your child is more valuable, because your child is the future of mankind. Your days are past. What does it matter if it goes against you? What have you…