When you’re a parent, you might think that when you’re doing everything you can to provide for your child that one day, they’ll pay it back to you in their own way. But the thing is—they may not. And one TikTok mom says that’s okay—that kids don’t actually owe their parents anything.

Lisa Pontius is a 33-year-old stay-at-home mom from Charleston, South Carolina and gained a following on TikTok for her parenting perspectives. However, her latest video garnered a bit of controversy when she blatantly explained that kids don’t owe their parents anything, even if they took care of them their whole lives.

Part of her point is to explain that when you have kids, your job is to provide for them—so if you do your job right, you’ll likely be rewarded in the end. But if you don’t, well then, sorry, but your kids don’t need to give you anything in return.

In fact, she also goes so far as to say even if you do a GOOD job parenting, if your kids don’t want to pay it back, then they don’t have it—it’s not their job.

“It’s a parent’s job to provide for their children. It’s a responsibility. Not everyone rises to the occasion, but that’s like the bare minimum, taking care of your kid’s physical and financial needs,” she explains in the now-viral video. “The level above that is their emotional needs, which good parents do, but all of that is not a contingent relationship. You’re not loving and providing for your children with the expectation that they will blindly obey and do whatever you say as adults.”

She continues to say that you of course want to do everything in your power to set a solid foundation and raise your kids right—but some children will go off and separate themselves from their parents, and that is to be expected sometimes.

“Hopefully we do a good enough job raising our kids and fostering a good relationship that our kids will want to have relationship with us when they’re adults—but you don’t get to pick your kids, or who they are, or their personalities,” she says.

She ends her tirade explaining that children are people and “they don’t owe you sh*t because you took care of them.”

While in the beginning of the video she said she’d probably get a lot of haters for this perspective, she in fact got the opposite: Thousands of people who couldn’t agree more with her. Apparently, it’s in fact, the older generation that may not see things quite this way.

Check out the video below of Lisa explaining her thoughts on this and tell us what you think!

@itsme_lisapAlready anticipating the Karen’s in the comments #parenting #parentsoftiktok #parentchildrelationship #respect #boundaries♬ original sound – Lisa P

What do you think—do children owe their parents anything, or no?