The need to control

SHE soared with the freedom that her parents gave her, partying, drinking, and going out with boys. At 16 years old, Cynthia Beckford was living the life she wanted with no reservations.

“When you are young you feel that nothing can happen to you, so you do things that in the end leads to consequences and my actions led me to becoming pregnant,” she lamented.

Now at 35, Beckford is ensuring that her children do not end up trotting the path as she did.

“My 19-year-old daughter thinks that I treat her unfairly because of the rules that I have set down for her,” Beckford said.

Like many parents, Beckford has set rules for her daughter, in an effort to try to have the girl stay on the straight and narrow — and off the path of teen pregnancy, drinking or early sex.

It’s something many parents — especially parents of girls — do, as they perceive the world’s morals crumbling and as they fear losing their children to it.

But when is the controlling too much? Where should parents strike the balance?

Beckford does not allow her daughter to go out with her friends or if she does, there needs to be adequate supervision. Similarly, friends who visit the family’s home are monitored and made to leave at specific times. She said no boys are allowed there either. Her daughter is not allowed to date, at least not until she finishes university and can support herself.

“She says that she is an adult now and that I keep treating her like a child. But I say as long as she’s still under my roof, I will treat her like a child as much as I want,” Beckford said with a laugh. “It’s not that I don’t trust her, because I do, it’s the people out there that I worry about.”

Beckford is not the only parent who feels this way. Frederick Anderson, 55, has a 20-year-old daughter, and he said he is wary of this generation of young men.

“Young men nowadays don’t want to settle with one girl. They talk them up to have sex with them and after that drop them like nothing even happened,” the father shared.

He said that as long as his daughter is under his protection and care, he will not allow any young man to court her, “so that they can take advantage of her”. This has sparked arguments within the family.

Counselling psychologist Lola Allen-Jones said that parents control their children, especially girls, because they fear what might happen to them or they feel that they cannot trust them if they give them the inch they want.

“For parents to bridge a gap with their child there has to be communication and respect from both parties,” Allen-Jones said, adding that parents need to be honest and sit down and talk to the children about what they fear may happen if they were to surrender control.

“Once this is done, then they will find that it will be easier to let go of their children in the end,” she said.

It’s the trust issue that mother of a 10-year-old Sonia Richardson, said she believes she will have a problem with, once her daughter hits the teenage years.

“We are very close, but I don’t think I’ll be able to trust that she will make the right decisions, or that people — boys — will have her best interest at heart,” Richardson said.

She admitted that her fears for her daughter are based off events in her family, where there has been several teen pregnancies and “unhappiness all around”.

“It always starts out the same way — the boy tells the girl he loves her, and she believes him, and then suddenly she is pregnant and her life ends,” Richardson said.

“I fear that my daughter, no matter how smart, may fall into that trap too.”

But with control comes another issue that Beckford said her friends have pointed to. It’s also an issue that psychologists warn about, for parents who control.

“People say that I should let up on my daughter, now that she has passed the age of consent. They say I am sheltering her too much, that if she does not go out and make her own mistakes she will not be able to function when she ventures out into the world,” Beckford said.

It’s a point reiterated by 21-year-old Tamoy, who said her parents’ controlling ways caused her to drift away.

“My mother used to have a lot of restrictions on me, especially when it came to boyfriends. I abided by her rules, but when I had boyfriends, I would hide them from her because I knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it,” Tamoy said.

When her mother found out she had boyfriends, Tamoy said that her relationship with her mother became strained resulting in many arguments.

“Even now that she has given me the opportunity to do what I want, I can still see her struggle not to say anything when I bring my boyfriends over, so I don’t even bother to do it anymore,” she said.

But even these concerns aren’t enough to stop Beckford — or Richardson, who is now looking at enrolling her daughter in an all-girls’ boarding school to protect her.

Said Beckford: “I had no guidance when I was young, maybe if my parents showed a little more interest in me then things would have been different. I think that if more parents took my approach, not only with their daughters but with their sons, Jamaica would be a different place today.”