Nick Crews, trying tough-love without that tricky “love” part.

I was happily unaware of the e-mail that retired Royal Navy officer Nick Crews sent to his son and two daughters in February, expressing his and his wife’s disappointment in them, until an attorney brought it to my attention during my legal ethics seminar yesterday. Apparently the screed made Crews something of a folk hero in Great Britain. In other news, the Brits elevate jerks to folk heroes just like we do.

Crews decided that he and his wife had reached the end of their ropes with their three adult children’s career and domestic misadventures, so he felt what the kiddies needed was a swift kick in the pants, old school. He wrote all of them a withering e-mail denouncing them as failures and fools. Some samples:

• “Which of you, with or without a spouse, can support your families, finance your home and provide a pension for your old age? Each of you is well able to earn a comfortable living and provide for your children, yet each of you has contrived to avoid even moderate achievement. Far from your children being able to rely on your provision, they are faced with needing to survive their introduction to life with you as parents.” Continue reading →