Recently a lot of my work has been with a family system, so not just an individual or a married couple, but other dyad's and triads in the family . I do enjoy working with families it brings about a difference in my work and change in the family system that takes longer to do in individual work.
Ivan Boszormeyi-Nagy was a Hungarian-American psychologist, he hypothesised that problems in a family arose from the imbalance due to a lack of fairness. Fairness is based on a genuine understating of the others perspective and taking ownership for ones behaviour. For example, If one family believes that their daughter should live in the same city as they do but their daughter's husband wants to move away, there will be a conflict in the marriage. The daughter might believe if she moves away from her parents she would be in debt to them or disloyal to the family. Her guilt at leaving could cause her to believe she has to do extra things for her parents in order to repay the debt. According to Nagy, she would need to understand why she thought she had a debt to repay, and would need permission or support in accepting rules and obligations that she wanted to keep and to let go of the rest. Of course this is true for son's too.
This premise I feel is crucial in our cultural context, parenting is often based on a reciprocal debt from the children towards the parents. I wonder if this comes form parenting being less of a choice that people make and more out of marriage being a social construct for procreation and the biological limitations of the longevity of a woman's eggs.
I have conversations with so many eager to be mothers and fathers who are excited about being parents and somewhere the idea of parenting is linked into the the kind of person they would want their unfertilised egg to be. Now I am not saying having an idea is incorrect but its based on the parents idea and not on really who this child is, what their strengths are, or what they are inclined towards. I wonder if it's also this belief that contributes to the debt system that Nagy refers to. The other day I had a conversation with a friend who insisted she was going to have her children before 35 with or without a partner, again to me this underlines the immaturity of parenting that seems to be rampant, its about the parents need to be a parent not the child. I am not discrediting single mothers or fathers, but ask them if they would prefer a partner to do this with and in some shape or form I am sure they would.
When a family with young children comes to therapy there is so much anger and resentment towards this child/teenager for not fitting into the idea of who they hoped the child to be. "She/he is so ungrateful for everything we have done" or "He/she doesn't understand this doesn't happen in our family" is something one gets to hear often. Over time I have learnt to hear this as a plea for help to understand their child who feels like a stranger. Parents have invested their energies and hopes into this child and low and behold this child actually has a mind of their own, to the credit of these parents, but still a mind of their own.
From infancy there are subtle messages the child gets about forwarding the sense of self of the family, dressing up in a particular way, religious beliefs, family rituals. Not that any of these aren't important they are crucial in setting up a secure base for a child. Somehow in this process though the debt factor as Nagy describes it starts to kick in. Somewhere the messages of "have a child its good for you to stay busy" "who will take care of you when you're older" start creeping in. Parenting which is meant to be about raising secure, independent and thinking individuals becomes about raising the best representative of the parent or the a way for the parent to feel secure. Parents start to determine the kind of friends their children should have based on who the parents think they can be friends with or not, or who fits into their social class or not. Sure a parent is meant to influence a child's choice, but isn't it meant to be about helping them make choices, allowing them to make mistakes and figuring out what's the best for the child, irrespective how the parent feels about it? Ya sure lets not be radical am not saying allow your child to be an unproductive part of society, but am questioning shouldn't their productivity be about them?
A child experimenting with drugs, alcohol, with romantic/sexual relationships, all of these are worrying for parents as they should be but its an expected trajectory for teenagers. I am not sure I fully comprehend why parents feel a testing of these boundaries is a let down of some cloud of trust and sensibility they have created with their child. Adolescents are at their risk taking best. Challenging a system helps a system grow and not be stuck. Its almost expected that if a parent has given everything to this child in terms of being a provider the child must return this favour by being the perfect child. There is also a sense of if a parent has 'given' so much to their child somehow parenting can begin when the child is almost pre-pubescent, where as parenting on boundaries and rules needs to start from the get go. Parents cant choose to be parents when it suits them, its 24 x 7 from the get go till the child is a secure adult.
I am not sure how many parents recognise at the time of deciding to become parents (because hindsight is 20 20) that parenting's biggest challenge is being nurturing while allowing the child to develop a sense of themselves. Children do not ask to be born, parents choose to have them and then somehow make children feel guilty about all they have done for them if the child has not followed their pre-destined pathway.
In the UK legally children have rights and parents have responsibilities. A parents responsibility is to provide a home, protect and maintain the child. This allows children to grow up to be productive, healthy adults who contribute to society. It talks about 'general' guidance as opposed to determining the course of your child.
Also as parents its only natural to want to be around your children, especially as they become adults whom you can relate to more, however the belief that children should in their adult life make parents their priority doesn't really allow the younger generation to make themselves a priority. Do parents really want a relationship maligned with obligation? We get so lost in the 'have to' rather than the 'want'. Don't we see this play out when a married son wants to move out of his parental home? or when a young adult of a business family wants to be an artist? Or when a young adult decides to dress emo? (or are we back to saying goth? Who can keep up these days) What makes parents who otherwise seem like perfectly open minded people become so tunnel visioned about their children?
There is a lot of value in the Indian family cultural system but I feel we all really need to examine the idea of the debt of parenting that I feel underpins our family system.
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