VIEWPOINT: Childhood legacies and the family…
They said single parent families had the propensity to produce lonely, disturbed, attention-seeking, troubled children. But I must highlight the devastating effects of growing up in a family with both parents, where father is abusive and psychologically degenerate and mother as a result is emotionally eschewed. It is interesting to observe how different people are; how different their needs are. But once we stop and do a historical analysis we recognise that almost everything we suffer from emotionally, mentally, or psychologically as adults is a result of the quality of our childhood.
We see women running from abusive relationship to relationship hoping, dying, bleeding (literally in some cases) to get the love of a man, trying to get the support, the respect, the comfort that her father never showed her. Since he abused her mother, and never really came home at night, but when he did, sure enough, he’d find something to make everybody feel anxious about. Whether it be his dinner that was warm instead of steamy hot, or the radio playing too loud, or the expensive light, telephone and water bills he had to pay. We see men who can’t stay in a relationship with one woman without having two or three other women on the side, and we hear educated, assumedly sensible people tell us that it is the cultural reality and destiny; that a black man cannot commit to just one woman.
This the black man does, since his father never came home at night to share in the family joys and burdens, but rather was out with so many other women. These women became his outlet or his getaway from the “stresses” of home and children and the incredulous task of being the provider in an economy that was altogether unfriendly to the marginalised black man. And the wife and mother would be left at home to do homework, laugh and play with the kids, to wash his clothes and cook his dinner, to prepare for her own job in the morning, to share his dinner when he comes in at 11:00 pm from work, and to be beautiful, supportive and naive when he comes in. Unfortunately, she couldn’t be beautiful and supportive when he came in, and the marriage therapists say that this would push him further into the arms of another woman.
What created this vicious cycle? Who can we hold responsible for the onslaught of madness and the dearth of family values and support. And what will happen to the children who are socialised in this kind of setting? Over and over we see it. It is not a proverb, or a slogan, it is the truth,
“Children do live what they learn.” If this is what we learnt from our parents, and if this is what we are living as adults, then is this how we are going to treat each other and is this what we are going to teach our children? Or will we be like some of our parents who said, ‘do as I say and not as I do,’ but we all know how that worked out. We need to break this cycle of the curse of the broken home values being passed from parent to children whether both parents are present or not; and we need to be more responsible when having children to ensure that we have them in the institution of marriage where the child has a mommy and a daddy. I salute and respect all single mommies and daddies out there, but face it, children want and need both of you. This is not to say that marriage is iron clad, security proof for a supportive loving home where mommy and daddy will live happily and support there children, but it is a start and it is the best way to order and structure a family.
But structuring our families with marriage and acknowledging that children live what they learn is half the battle. We also need to do a bit of introspection, and some of us actually need counselling. For it makes no sense to apply the marriage structure to your dream of having a family or to your existing family when as an individual you lack a proper sense of self-development, esteem and worth. We must look into the mirror and discover and address our many flaws and faults. We must also reveal these faults and flaws to capable friends and perhaps counsellors.
We must start this process of healing the family and our children by healing ourselves. We have to change the way we think. Some of us are so far away from who we really are, from the open sores that we have since childhood that we don’t know how to feel, hence to understand someone else’s feeling, hence being unable to emotionally communicate, and that’s a problem. We need to undress ourselves and look at what is really there. We need to take a good long stare into that mirror, and no longer try to cover up cuts that become puss infested sores. Instead, let’s begin to medicate ourselves with proper thinking, counselling and meditation and start to heal ourselves and be well, so that we can hear and heal others. This a basic human gift, a gift that is needed for any community to develop, especially our families.
So as we continue to live and grow in this jungle that we call a society, let’s ensure that we begin the healing in our hearts, so that it can transcend to our homes and to our children.
