Family, Jim Morrison and Eminem

Jim Morrison wanted to kill his father, and Eminem wanted to kill his mother. Both were expressing sentiments that are a direct function of the family arrangements from which they had come.

Jim Morrison's generation was raised in patriarchial households in which the fathet with the whip was the authority and the woman was the nurturer. Needless to say, they loved their mothers and hated their fathers. Children love parents who are nice to them and hate those who hurt either them or the parent who is nice to them. In a family arrangement that was the 1950s, it would be logical that the children would love their mothers and hate their fathers. The mothers were the nurturers; the fathers were the authority. Children will always love the first and hate the second.

With Eminem generation, the situation is different. Many of these people have been raised by single mothers, who took over from the fathers the authoritative role, and many of whom were too busy or overworked to adequately nurture the children. So – surprise, surprise – whom do people growing up in such situations hate.

Of course there is potential for misconduct in both the nuclear family and the single parent situations; and we can be guaranteed that we will find out from the children just what this potential is. We've seen how the nuclear family can go wrong with Jim Morrison, and we've seen how the single parent household can go wrong with Eminem. Neither is the one-size-fit-all solution. Both can be done right, and both can be done wrong. Thought must be put forth on how to make both situations workable and avoid the frequently legitimate wrong that takes place in each situation.

Neither Jim Morrison nor Eminem were particularly nice people; but they did express what many other people felt, resulting in both of them having a huge following. People raised in patriarchial nuclear family, where the father with the whip is the authority and the mother is the nurturer, will love their mothers and hate their fathers. People raised by single mothers who themselves become the authority will hate their mothers. It appears that the only way to avoid either scenario is for the parents – whether single parents or parents in nuclear family – to relate to the child at the child's level and treat the child as an intelligent form of life, doing away with the need for authoritarian or violent tactics entirely. And in situations where this is the case, I've witnessed the children loving their parents and remaining loving to their parents when they have grown up.