'Love and Rage: The Inner Worlds of Children' | Excerpt

Fathers Their Presence and Absence

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its colour.

This is the thread running through the lives of many of the young people I work with—the absence of a supportive father. From the eight-year-old boy anxious about death and bullies to the 26-year-old woman struggling with her relationship to food and all the self-harming adolescents in between, the thread of their father라이브 바카라 absence accompanies them right through their emotional lives, affecting their relationship with their bodies, their inner worlds and their own feelings.

Each responds differently to this absence but mostly they seem lost and overwhelmed. Life, death, desire; strong emotions of love, anger, guilt; being connected to oneself and to others— the stuff that makes life worth living also provokes too much anxiety and seems to be too much of a risk.

It has different effects at different life-stages and it appears that the inevitable loss hidden in every life-transition hits hardest when there is a parent missing. The six-year-old whose father is aloof, busy or otherwise unavailable can make do with his mother for all his needs, or so it seems. She can cook, feed, get him dressed, drop and pick him up from school, help with homework, perhaps take him out to play in the evening if she has the energy, tell him a story and put him to bed at night. What does he need his father for then? The socially created and accepted roles for man, woman and boy child in India leave out so much yet it is the ideal that many families work toward—the gender roles and work divisions between care and work. Care Vs Work. As if care is not also work.

In this ideal, women get to be little else than mothers and men get to be many things other than fathers. This is a problem, since it certainly creates one for their children.

Around age three, the father begins to become important in an obvious way, even to the more inattentive among us. It begins in small ways, mostly to do with play, trips outdoors and sports activities. The mother remains important for care and it is rare for fathers to be involved in the daily care routine of their young child even at this age. When hungry, tired, ill or scared, mother or her surrogate is still the one who is trusted. Fathers often have little idea about what to do: often because no one lets them early enough and often enough.

Simply put, they lack practice so it is unfair to blame them for not being good at ‘care’. Between society, gender roles and lack of exposure they don’t stand a chance. Which does not mean they cannot be good at it or don’t want to. They often just don’t know who or what all they can be to their children. The loss is huge for the two involved, for the mother and for our society in India today.

This is changing in many families now and about time too. As families become more nuclear and hired help replaces the extra support of grandmothers and aunts, fathers often have to come in to the picture and do more with their young children. Whether it is taking them to the toilet, the school run in the morning, time spent on the weekend or stories at bedtime, fewer adults around means all existing hands need to be on deck for childcare.

It is not enough though. A closer look shows that six- to eight-year-olds are straining to get their fathers to play a leading role in their lives. Involvement in schooling, physical activity or in the politics of the playground are more common but they also ask for their fathers; they badger them for time, they ask to play word-games or help with math problems.

Sometimes more subtly, they are more amenable to getting dressed in the morning or to doing homework if their father helps instead of their mother. Often these demands or subtleties are overlooked by the father or fulfilled by a mother, grandmother or hired help—maid, tutor, teacher, driver. ‘Your father is a busy man, he has important meetings to attend, people to meet, money to make and after he has done all that, he is tired and needs to relax’ is the message the child receives.

The message the child imbibes, unfortunately, is far less benign,more along the lines of ‘So he does not really have time for me and perhaps it라이브 바카라 because I am just not good enough and he does not love me; Or there is something wrong with me, it라이브 바카라 my fault that my father, of whom there is only one in the world, does not have time for me.

An eight-year-old I met was very clear about wanting more time with his father. He said ‘Mumma can go to work and Papa can stay at home’, clear about who was rejected and who was desired, for now (our emotional states are dynamic and do not stay the same). He was angry with his father, pummelling him with toys during their game of throw and catch, saying he was either at work or resting on a couch or bed. Unfortunately for him, he was rejecting the parent he had around and did not have the parent he wanted around.

One seven-year-old I met resolved this problem for his family by refusing to go to school. On the surface, Madhur struggled with the classroom and it was a challenge for his school because he did not want to sit in one at all. By all reports, he was fine until he was in Class I. Now he avoided going to school, by bus or with his mother, refusing to separate from her at the school gate. He would cry, scream, become angry and to buy peace,his mother would stay. Madhur라이브 바카라 parents said that he threw wild, violent tantrums if he did not get his way. His father said that Madhur was unlike any child he had ever encountered; that he was embarrassed to take his seven-year-old son to a social gathering because he was out of control.

The family lived as part of a joint family in south Delhi with the father라이브 바카라 younger brother, his wife and their three-year-old son as well as the paternal grandparents. Madhur라이브 바카라 father worked long hours, six days a week and was only available on Sundays to spend time with his family when he admitted to being uncommunicative and wanting to rest. He said it would not be possible for him to attend sessions with his wife or son; that he was very busy and yet he needed help because he felt desperate. The parents blamed each other—mother blamed father for being absent and too aggressive with Madhur; father blamed mother for her lack of discipline with their son.

Madhur라이브 바카라 mother talked incessantly about her difficult relationships and her isolation in the family as his parent because everyone disliked him. I felt she was terribly needy and lonely, something her son confirmed when he said he did not want to go to school because he was worried what would happen to his mother. Father wanted Madhur to grow up; feed and dress himself, polish his shoes—memories of his own childhood of valuing things that his father had given to him—but wanting this from afar, without involving himself in the daily routine was not working.

Without involving himself in the daily routine was not working. Madhur라이브 바카라 mother overcompensated for his father라이브 바카라 absence and firmness by giving in or being un-boundaried and confusing. Both parents were physically aggressive with Madhur. His father was also occasionally violent with his wife. Both parents admitted to difficult dynamics in the family.

They described the grandfather as depressed and silent after retiring and moving to Delhi to live with the sons. The drastic change in lifestyle, the restrictions and loss of freedom had been extremely difficult for him. The relationship between father and sons was described as one of low communication.Madhur라이브 바카라 father admitted that he did not communicate much with his parents or his wife and child because he did not see the point.

(Excerpted from Love and Rage: The Inner Worlds of Children by Nupur D. Paiva with permission from Yoda Press)