IN A country where family is sacred and Sunday reunions are second only to religion, a bill like the Parents Welfare Act of 2025 seems like a natural extension of Filipino values. Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson’s proposed legislation aims to enshrine filial responsibility into law, penalizing adult children who abandon or neglect their aging, sick, or incapacitated parents. On paper, it’s a noble crusade — protect the elderly, uphold Filipino family values, and restore dignity to those who raised us.
But noble intentions can hide dangerous assumptions.
A pointed commentary circulating on Facebook challenges the heart of Lacson’s proposal. “Should a child be forced to support someone who damaged him?” it asks. The bill, it argues, glosses over complex familial dynamics and paints with a dangerously broad brush: parents as perpetual victims, and children as selfish villains for refusing to pay up. But what if children who were abused, disowned, or emotionally orphaned long before their parents grew old? What about those who were told they were a disgrace—until they landed a job abroad?
This isn’t just emotional rhetoric. It’s a reality for countless Filipinos who carry the invisible wounds of family dysfunction—wounds that laws like this one risk ignoring entirely.
Lacson’s bill doesn’t appear to provide exceptions for estrangement, abuse, or past neglect. It assumes that biological ties automatically equate to moral obligation. That once you’re a parent, your rights to support are eternal. And yet, it offers no reflection on a parent’s responsibilities—moral or otherwise. In this version of justice, a parent can cut off a child for being gay or for marrying “the wrong person,” then later haul them into court for failing to send remittances. Is that justice, or a legal form of vengeance?
There is also something deeply unsettling about the idea of turning the courtroom into an extension of the family dinner table. If this bill becomes law, imagine the future – children dragged to court by parents they no longer speak to, accused not of a crime against society, but of failing to maintain a private relationship that may have been fractured beyond repair.
This bill forces us to ask: Can love—or obligation—be legislated? Should the law intervene in private relationships with such heavy-handed moralism?
To be fair, the spirit of the bill stems from a very real problem. The abandonment and neglect of elderly parents—especially in poorer communities—is tragic and shameful. Our society is changing. Migration, poverty, and generational trauma have transformed what “family” means. Some elderly parents truly are left behind, living in squalor while their children build lives overseas or in gated subdivisions.
But the law must be wise enough to distinguish between neglect and necessary distance. Not all separation is abandonment. Not all children are ingrates. And not all parents deserve unquestioned reverence.
If Lacson’s bill is to gain genuine moral authority, it needs nuance. It must reckon with trauma, not just tradition. It must ask not only what kind of child abandons a parent, but also what kind of parent breaks their child in the first place.
In a country where family is often both a refuge and a battleground, we need laws that heal, not ones that simply force reconciliation by subpoena. Otherwise, we risk writing into law a version of family that exists only in fantasy, while ignoring the pain that lives in far too many Filipino homes.
