Do you have to love your parents?

[Pineapple]

I believe that asking "Do you have to love your parents?" is the same thing as asking "Do you have to cry when you're sad?"
The is no moral/social/intellectual obligations...You just do. And if you don't; well, whatever.

I rarely cry when sad.

Exactly: whatever. There's no repercussion for not crying when you're sad; for example, it would not be a reason to sentence you to death if you were to be tried for murder.

[nerd1]

We are meant to love others (love as in act selflessly towards). That would include our parents, whether they were excellent or terrible ones.

1) Differentiate between morally obligatory and morally exemplary.
2) Can selfless acts exist? These are acts that the moral agent does while not wanting to do that action. Wanting to do what is right is a selfish cause for apparently selfless acts. If selfless acts cannot exist then it cannot be obligatory to preform them.

this goes back to the "is there free will" debate. If you believe that humans are hormone-driven flesh-sacks then that point is moot because we would always have an ulterior motive- even sacrificing ourselves to save someone else would be because we believed there was some benefit to be gained, whether that's life after death or helping the human species as a whole, which is also programmed into us. If you believe free will exists then yes, selfless acts are possible.

[esran]

i dont believe you have to. i do believe that pick a random person in the world and read their mind, and they probably do, even if they dont think they do.
evelutionarily speaking, it is benificial to have a close relationship with parents for protection. also, those who care for you you will grow to love. even if they dont care for you, and hurt you, so long as they give you food you will love them if for nothing else than for stockholms syndrome. concerning emotions, there is little free will, and unless you are an outlier(extremely different from the average person on this issue), you will love your parents pretty unconditionally at least until you hit 12.

[TheAccuso]

I don't think that we have to do anything mandatory, i know seems a bit general but it's a main concept imo.
The most things are growed in a natural way the most they're great.
To be a little more focused on the parents part i think that a parent's role is to build you as an human being and when you've reach the confidence with your actions based on your ethics, then you can decide who to love or not, even your parents and if they impose you to keep love'em maybe they don't love you the way you want to be loved.

[Camoninja]

You don't HAVE to do anything. If your parents are ideal and you hate them, that's your decision. People might think you're crazy, but there's nothing they can do without your agreement to change you. You would feel wrong trying to punish a person for feeling the "wrong" emotions toward those parents, if the person still was polite to them, wouldn't you? I'd call it a should, but not a must, in that situation. Since you would have less reason to love less than ideal parents, it's even less of a must for the rest of those parents.

[regen2k9]

You don't HAVE TO love your parents.  Many people don't.  Yet, even in the absence of such love, many people spend their lives wishing their parents loved THEM (they may, but just not show it, which is an entirely different question), but I digress. One does not need to love one's parents, but we must realize that love is reciprocal, in which case, one can only not love one's parents if one's parents don't love the individual.  I would characterize a one-way love-based emotion not as love, but as a yearning for love.

[northcity4]

I mean yeah, some versions of the bible use 'honor' instead of love. To love your parents is an interesting request.

Lets go pretty bad as someone used earlier: you have drunken abusive parents...now obviously you don't HAVE histo love them, but should you?

I am not going into detail, but I will say I didn't have the perfect parents but had I not shown forgiveness or unconditional love (there are consequences for what you did, but I still care about you) I wouldn't really have a relationship with them.

This also ties win with the sincerity topic on religion: you have a boss who asks you to not to wear that specific watch to work ever again. You can wear anything else, just not that watch and doesn't give a reason, You could choose to say that your boss has no grounds to say that and disobey or you can say I don't understand why, but you are my boss and I will respect that.

From my experience, if the question stated by OP was 'should we' instead of 'do we have to,' I would say yes. Brings a much better scenario, even if you have the worst parents ever.

[ARTHANASIOS]

I personally believe that you should love any person in the world (even the evil ones), but you don't have to do so. Forced love is not love at all and in the end it will turn into hatred...

[northcity4]

Correct, being forced to do things is what ultimately makes a person hate something. I am actually writing a message about that for a youth group I help. I try to show that when you just force your kids to not do things like watch porn or take drugs, you are only stopping the action and those desires get suppressed (Freud's theory on advertisement) and once they move out and can do what they want, they get they get the freedom to do as they please. The mistake made my a lot of parents is not doing something=no desire.

In reality, the truth is just because you don't do something doesn't mean the desire is gone.

Sorry for going off topic, but when you are forced to love you parents, that is like back in the day when they arranged your marriage. If we arranged marriage in America today, the divorce rates would skyrocket. It's when you choose to love your parents it is sincere and through any trial stands because it is agape, not eros, or in this case, forced love.