Obedience: A virtue?

Since childhood days I have been told that obedience is a virtue but, I am now convinced that it’s rather an arrangement which makes things easier for the adults. Nothing wrong in making things easy for yourself but, the side effect is that the child looses his/her identity. Also, when he/she tries to regain the identity, he/she gets easily labeled as a rebellion. It’s a habit for the child as well as parents. Even now, if I don’t obey my mother, not only my mother, but I also feel something unusual J.

I feel real pain when I see people around me forcing children to obey them. To get rid of this pain, I try to trigger discussions on what are the long term effects of this method but, people are usually close minded. For some of these subjects, our minds have been programmed in certain way for ages and people are unknowingly ensuring that they program their next generation in the same way. Let me admit that till 3-4 years back, Namrata and I were also programmed in the same way and what looks most intuitive and obvious now, the opposite was obvious and intuitive then. Obedience used to be a virtue for us also.