As a recent post pointed out, the opinion of society at large tends to shift regarding certain important matters — like whether parents are responsible for their offspings’ addictions. There have been eras when parents were blamed for every possible negative twist of fate that could befall a child, in addition to anything a child could possibly do to outrage the elders. Also, there have been time periods when the fashion was to let parents off the hook.

To complicate matters further, during parent-blaming periods, there are of course defenders who say, “It’s not always their fault.” Some influencers take it upon themselves to spread the word that parenting is such a huge responsibility and enormous challenge, nobody could possibly do it right. Therefore, anyone who has children should be given every possible ounce of forgiveness, in perpetuity.

Of course, conversely, in times and places when popular opinion exonerates parents, there have been gruff and unforgiving individuals who lay the blame for every misfortune at the parental door. So at any given time, it is always a mixed bag.

The subject is an extensive and painful one — especially when society at large is the source of censure. For parents to be assailed by the opinions of relatives, friends, educators, politicians, clergy, etc., is bad enough. When it is the younger generation doing the blaming, that is another whole dimension of grief. The more this is looked into, the easier it is to suspect that the great majority of addiction starts with a revenge motive, the wish to inflict some very negative feelings on the adults responsible for one’s birth.

A lot of young people criticize their parents for every possible reason, from passing along a stupid color of hair, to making them eat veggies and go to Sunday School. Others lay on their progenitors a much heavier blame. “You made me an addict” is a serious accusation that should be very carefully examined. The most elementary justification for that statement could fall apart in a minute.

On the other hand, the accused parent might be guilty enough to be convicted. A parent who routinely tied a boy down and shot him up with heroin could unquestionably be sentenced to prison. That would be an extreme case, the kind that only happens once in blue moon, and makes headlines in the most tawdry news outlets. And it probably has happened somewhere, to someone.

What about a girl whose father used to lock her in the basement all day every Saturday, with the honorable intention of keeping her out of trouble? Years later when that kid is a hard drug addict, can she legitimately blame Dad? Most therapists would likely agree that without that father, or with a different father, the patient would probably have been fine. But could a lawyer make enough of a case to retroactively sue the criminal parent? Probably not.

There have been eras when children were confined to mental institutions for their whole lives, because they did something unacceptable that, today, would be no big deal at all. Women were especially vulnerable to being put away in response to any deviation from the bleakly uptight era’s ideal of perfection.

And yet at the same time, in the same country, there must have existed the occasional Victorian paterfamilias who said, “Of course I’m not going to lock up my daughter in the insane asylum because she put on trousers and rode a bicycle!”

Today, there might be a father who says, “Of course I’m not going to punish my daughter for eating THC gummies!” Still, at some future time, if the girl becomes a junkie, that tolerant dad might be prosecuted for setting his child on a bad path — even though millions of young people have enjoyed THC without ever “graduating” to opiate addiction.

Of course, when the law becomes involved in parenting, things can go sideways. Today, moms and dads are expected to teach the offspring how to cross a street safely; but can be prosecuted for letting a child make use of that knowledge by going to the park right across from their home.

This whole train of thought picked up steam because of a Gil Scott-Heron song, “Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” which came out on the 1971 album Pieces of a Man, and was also issued as a single with “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” on the B-side. The lyrics are written from the point of view of an opiate addict.

Thanks to how the internet is constructed, the casual observer can see that “Home Is Where the Hatred Is” appears to be one of the most frequently studied and thoroughly analyzed lyrics of all time. Some lines are,

Close your eyes to watch me die
You keep saying, “Kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it.”
God, but did you ever try?
To turn your sick soul inside out
So that the world, so that the world can watch you die?

The lyrics seem very explicit until the listener says, “Wait a minute, what exactly is the definition of ‘home’ in this context?” The last line is “You know I can’t go home again.”

But how could a person know that, when the definition of “home” seems to remain still a mystery? For a lot of people, “home” isn’t an address or a pile of bricks or lumber. It’s the people. Actually, the first line is the one that hurts the most:

I left three days ago
But no one seems to know I’m gone

Written by Pat Hartman. First published November 21, 2025.

Sources:

“Home is Where the Hatred Is,” YouTube.com, undated.

“Gil Scott-Heron Home Is Where the Hatred Is,” YouTube.com, undated.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia, used under Creative Commons license.