When one person is held responsible for everyone else’s behaviour, accountability stops being a principle of fairness and becomes a tool of control.
I grew up in a family where accountability was very important. At least, it was important when it came to me. My brothers could do things that were hurtful, destructive, or downright cruel, and somehow I would end up being blamed. If I protested, I was the troublemaker. If I became angry, there was something wrong with me. If I defended myself, I was told to shut up. It took me many years to recognize what was happening.
We often hear about scapegoating in dysfunctional families, where one person becomes the convenient target for blame. But there’s another dimension to this behaviour that deserves attention. I call it selective accountability. It’s when responsibility is not distributed according to people’s actions, but according to who is easiest to blame, control, or silence. And it can do enormous damage.
The Broken Glasses
When I was about six years old, my glasses broke. My parents bought me a replacement pair. Within minutes of receiving them, my younger brother called me over. “Come here! Come here! I want to show you something.” Being a trusting little boy, I approached him. He promptly ripped the new glasses off my face and snapped them in two.
Now, you might expect my father to hold my younger brother responsible for deliberately destroying my glasses. That’s not what happened. My father gave me hell for getting too close to him. Think about that for a moment. A six-year-old child was tricked into approaching his brother, had his glasses deliberately broken, and was then blamed for allowing it to happen. My younger brother wasn’t punished. I was.
The lesson was unmistakable: other people could mistreat me, but I was responsible for preventing their behaviour. And if I failed to anticipate what someone else might do, the consequences were mine.
Responsible Even When I Wasn’t There
This wasn’t an isolated incident. When my younger brother misbehaved, my father or mother would sometimes demand to know why I hadn’t been watching him. “Why weren’t you looking after him?” Sometimes I hadn’t even been present when the incident occurred. It didn’t matter. I was held accountable for my younger brother’s actions, regardless of whether I had any knowledge of them, authority over him, or ability to prevent them.
That’s not accountability. That’s assigning blame to the wrong person. Children need to learn responsibility, but responsibility must be connected to what they can reasonably control. Otherwise, they learn something very different: that they can be punished for circumstances beyond their control.
When Defending Yourself Becomes the Offence
My older brother had a habit of belittling me. Even as a young adult, I remember playing the drums when he made a cutting remark. “You call that drumming?” I became angry and started to defend myself. “Yeah, well—” I was told to shut up.
Once again, the focus shifted from the insult to my reaction. The person who initiated the hurtful behaviour wasn’t held accountable. The person who objected to it was silenced.
This was a recurring pattern in my family. My brothers could tease, ridicule, or undermine me, but if I became upset, I supposedly had an anger problem. My parents repeatedly characterized me that way, even though I was one of the quietest people in the household. Looking back, I wonder whether what they called an anger problem was sometimes simply my unwillingness to accept mistreatment without protest.
Even Kindness Was Disruptive
The emotional atmosphere in our household was remarkably silent. Nobody welcomed you home from school and asked how your day had been. Nobody showed much curiosity about what you were doing, what interested you, or how you were feeling. Ordinary expressions of affection and interest were largely absent.
During the final years of my mother’s life, I began doing something that seemed perfectly normal to me. As I left for school, I would say, “Have a nice day, Mom.” The first time I said it, she was startled. “What? What did you say?” I repeated, “Have a nice day, Mom.” It was as though I had introduced a foreign language into our household.
But something wonderful happened. She began saying it back. Eventually, she started saying “Have a nice day” to my brothers as well. And my brothers mocked me for it. “Have a nice day, Mark,” they would say in a condescending tone. Apparently, even an ordinary expression of kindness was unacceptable if it disrupted the established family pattern.
I wasn’t being hostile. I wasn’t demanding anything. I was simply acknowledging another human being. Yet somehow, that made me a disruptor. In my family, even kindness could become an act of rebellion.
When the Pattern Reappears in Adulthood
Years later, I encountered a disturbingly familiar experience while living in a housing co-operative. I experienced behaviour that I regarded as bullying. When I challenged it, rather than seeing my concerns addressed fairly, I found myself accused of being the troublemaker and the bully. In my experience, insinuations and accusations circulated that damaged how other people perceived me. I felt as though I was reliving my childhood. The person speaking up about mistreatment became the problem.
This is one reason selective accountability can be so destructive in organizations and communities, not just families. When complaints are judged according to personalities, alliances, or who holds influence, rather than the actual conduct of everyone involved, accountability loses its moral foundation. The result can be a culture in which people become afraid to speak up. And those who do speak up may face consequences simply for challenging the established order.
The Psychological Cost
Growing up with selective accountability can shape the way we see ourselves and our relationships. We may become overly responsible for other people’s feelings and behaviour. We may hesitate to establish boundaries because we’re afraid of being labelled difficult, selfish, or angry. We may spend enormous amounts of energy explaining ourselves, trying to convince others that our feelings are reasonable. And perhaps most damaging of all, we may begin to distrust our own emotional responses.
Anger, for example, is not inherently unhealthy. Anger can tell us that something is unfair, that a boundary has been crossed, or that our needs are being disregarded. Of course, anger doesn’t automatically make our interpretation correct, and it doesn’t justify aggression. But feeling anger is not a moral failure.
When a child is repeatedly criticized for becoming angry in response to mistreatment, that child may learn to suppress not only the anger but also the needs and boundaries behind it. Over time, the person may become very skilled at accommodating others while struggling to stand up for themselves. I recognize aspects of that pattern in my own life.
This pattern also had a psychological cost to my younger brother. He was never disciplined and was taught that others were always the cause of his problems.
Accountability Is Not the Same as Blame
Genuine accountability begins with a simple question: Who did what, and what responsibility reasonably belongs to each person? It requires looking at actions, circumstances, intentions, and consequences. It also requires applying the same standards to everyone.
Selective accountability works differently. One person’s behaviour is excused, minimized, or ignored, while another person’s reaction is scrutinized. In families, this can protect a favoured child or preserve parental authority. In organizations, it can protect influential members or those who control the narrative. In relationships, it can leave one person carrying responsibility for problems that both people helped create.
None of this means we should automatically believe every accusation or assume that anyone who complains is innocent. Fair accountability requires listening carefully to everyone involved. But it also requires refusing to confuse the discomfort caused by a complaint with wrongdoing by the person making it. Sometimes the person who disrupts the peace is the person trying to restore fairness.
What Would Jesus Say About Selective Accountability?
This subject also has a spiritual dimension. In Matthew 7:3–5, Jesus asks why we notice the speck in another person’s eye while ignoring the plank in our own. It’s a powerful warning against judging others while overlooking our own shortcomings. In Matthew 23:4, Jesus criticizes religious leaders who place heavy burdens on others without helping them carry those burdens. Both teachings challenge the misuse of moral authority. They remind us that accountability must begin with examining our own behaviour, not merely finding fault with someone else.
Christianity, at its best, should encourage compassion, humility, fairness, and personal responsibility. But these values mean very little if they’re preached on Sunday and abandoned in everyday relationships. It’s easy to talk about love. It’s harder to ask someone how their day went, listen when they’re hurting, acknowledge when we’ve been unfair, or apologize when we’ve caused harm. Love isn’t merely something we believe in. It’s something we practise.
Breaking the Pattern
One of the most important lessons I’m learning is that I can take responsibility for my own behaviour without accepting responsibility for everyone else’s. I can acknowledge mistakes without accepting false blame. I can listen to criticism without automatically assuming the criticism is justified. I can feel anger without becoming aggressive. And I can stand up for myself without becoming the troublemaker I was once accused of being.
Perhaps most importantly, I no longer need everyone who has treated me unfairly to admit what happened before I can move forward. An apology would be welcome. Genuine accountability would be better. But I cannot make another person examine their behaviour. What I can do is examine my own, establish healthier boundaries, and choose relationships in which responsibility and consideration flow in both directions.
Because accountability should never be a privilege exercised by the powerful against the vulnerable. It should be a shared commitment to truth, fairness, and respect. And perhaps the simplest place to begin is with something my family once found so strange: “Have a nice day.”
Four ordinary words that acknowledge another person’s existence. “Have a nice day!” Four words that, in my childhood home, began to break the silence. Sometimes meaningful change begins with something that small. And sometimes the person accused of disrupting the family is the person trying to bring a little more humanity into it.